scary homeless guy in Los Angeles, CA
July 27, 2006 on 8:59 am | In California, Travel | No CommentsLast Friday, Chris & I were kicking it in downtown L.A. and trying to find a jazz club. After leaving one club, we were stopped by a talkative homeless guy wanting us to help him out. I offered him a Starbucks card for a free drink and he acted insulted and said homeless people need money too and it’s tough living on the streets and he’s not out to rob or hurt anyone. He just kept talking and talking-trying to find out our political views, what we were up to, what kind of music we liked…..you know, basically trying to be our buddy. He told us if we liked jazz we should go to a certain place which turned out to be a bar with a juke box that stunk like a locker room. The people in there were nice though and one guy bought a round for everyone, so we decided to stick around for a while. After we gave the homeless guy five bucks he left saying he had to go do something but would be back.
He returned after a few minutes and we wound up buying him a drink. He wanted us to go with him, and looking back I’m not sure why we did. I guess because we’d been drinking and maybe we felt just a tad sorry for him because the lady behind the bar was trying to shoe him out.
Anyway, we were walking along following him even though he wouldn’t say where he was taking us. He kept saying we were the coolest “white” people he’d ever met. I asked why we couldn’t just be cool people, why’d we have to be cool “white” people? And he was all fixated on race saying we come from different cultures.
We came to a spot and he asked us to sit down. We were both hesitating…like why here? Of all the places to sit down, why this secluded dirty looking place? He said he just wanted to talk. He was very disarming.
We sat down. I was on the end and Chris in the middle-the homeless guy gets up and wants Chris to move down so he can sit by me-what the heck? And he says I’m fine and does that offend Chris and have we ever thought about having a 3-some with a black man? I’m looking at him in shock, but luckily Chris sees a piece of cardboard right behind us moving and realizes there’s someone underneath it…..we both jump up, and the guy hiding under it tries to act real still. It was great camouflage. Rob, the homeless guy is still talking trying to convince us to sit down again, but no way, we’re ready to get the heck out of there. We just walk away ignoring all his pleas for us to come back.
Kind of scary looking back-what was the guy under the cardboard going to do? He could have had a knife or something-who knows….but makes me a little less trusting. I want to think that people are basically good. Chris says that all people are bad until they prove themselves good. It bothers me to find out someone has ulterior motives….and since ultimately a homeless guy doesn’t really care what our political views are, what our taste in music is, and certainly not what zodiac signs we are-we shouldn’t feel bad next time we see a homeless person and just walk away….walk away…
Holiday in San Francisco
December 25, 2004 on 6:57 pm | In California, Travel | No CommentsWe had a jam packed holiday vacation beginning Friday around noon-we left as soon as I got out of work. I drove the whole way-it was a 13 hour drive from Phoenix, and having been up since 5 A.M. I felt it too. The last stretch was through a very dense fog. It was a relief to finally make it to our hotel, The Adante, around 1 AM. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and fell asleep pretty much the moment my head hit the pillow. Chris, however, party animal that he is, went out on his own for a couple hours. I woke him up at 5 A.M. with me to drink our Dr. Natura Colonix Cleanse together and hear about his night out.
He had a couple drinks at one bar, then hung out at another til 2 A.M. when he was surprised to learn the bartender was going around collecting everyone’s beer bottles, so people were drinking in a hurry, which he thought was bizarre. He called his friend, Eric, in Michigan to vent about this injustice. He left the bar and wandered around for a while. A homeless guy approached him for money. Chris asked what he wanted to do with the money, and so they walked around discussing life for a while, and he eventually gave him 3 bucks. Chris realized he was lost and had to ask directions back to Geary Street.
After drinking our fiber sludge and hearing his adventures, we went back to sleep for a couple more hours, until we were fully awake at 8 on Christmas morning.
We walked around, took a crap load of pictures, explored Chinatown, browsed through shops-we each bought 10 postcards for $1 in one, and some nice smelling fruit soap in another for 49 cents. We were lured into a Chinese restaurant where new dishes were brought before us in hopes of tempting us to buy even more than we had ordered. Our egg rolls, sweet buns with meat inside, and meat puffs came to over $14 so it’s a good thing we had some restraint, but it was all good.
We walked down a pier-sat down and just enjoyed being together for a few minutes, and watched the water. We took a trolley for $1.25/person to Pier 39 and browsed through shops and saws lots of interesting things going on. We saw a bunch of wild sea lions lounging on wooden piers, and making quite a bit of raucous. That was really something-we had never seen them in the wild like that before.
It was on the cold side and we were a bit under dressed, so in Chinatown, we each bought a souvenir sweatshirt for $11.95. It came in handy. There were some neat novelty items and gag gifts. A realistic looking squishy donut would have made a good one for the cop in the family.
We sat down while I nibbled on a crab cake, and watched a street performer juggle and do other tricks to entertain the audience. For his last act he said he needed 4 skinny guys and pulled Chris up on stage to sit in one of the 4 chairs-while leaning against the other 3 guys. Slowly, all 4 chairs were pulled out from under them and they maintained their positions. It was fun to watch and Chris came back with rosy cheeks and a big ol’ smile. Meanwhile, after Chris went up, an older lady sat next to me and asked where I was from. She couldn’t believe I wasn’t a foreigner. I wonder why? Now I’m perplexed…hmm…
For $20 the two of us went on a cruise under the Golden Gate bridge and by Alcatraz. Cold, but neat. Chris raced around the ship taking picture after picture. We probably have around 400 pictures from just one day.
We took another trolley back the way we came and walked up a steep hill-stopped by Walgreen’s to buy a couple gallons of water. Went back to our room for a bit, then went out again to find somewhere that was still open for Christmas dinner.
We waited in line at an under-staffed cafe, but the wait was worth it. My lemon butter chicken with mushrooms was excellent and Chris enjoyed his steak. We shared a calamari appetizer. Afterward. we stopped at Swiggy’s, a blues jazz club, but turned in early, with a long drive ahead of us.
We got up at 4 and quickly set out on our long drive back to Phoenix. It was still dark and took a long time for the sun to come up. Once it was light I stopped several places to take more pictures. We spent a little extra time at a beach with sea lions laying down nearby and took some closeups.
Drove drove drove drove drove drove drove…….then we drove some more only stopping for gas, food, and occasional picture breaks…
We got stuck in traffic outside LA and in half an hour found we had moved less than half a mile. It took 2 or more hours to get back up to highway speeds. How do people mentally survive having to do that everyday?! I would go crazy. Finally after our long day of driving, we made it home at 1AM which was 7 hours longer than we expected the drive to take. I didn’t have much opportunity for sleep or reflection because I had to work in the morning.