White Boy/White Dog Move To Skid Row

Certified Beach Dude Moves To Downtown Los Angeles

The Metro system has been on my nerves this week- I guess every 6 months the bus drivers bid for new schedules and rarely do they get the same schedule. So just after you’ve figured out the idiosyncracies of each driver you may encounter (whether they typically are late, early, fall asleep between runs so they start late, etc), the Metro world gets turned upside-down. That happened on Monday. Nothing was happening when I was used to. Then I check the schedule and they’ve changed the time for the first Rapid out of Universal City from 5:00am to 5:10am - no big deal you may think, but when the Red Line drops me off like clockwork at 4:55, an extra 10 minutes in 40 degree, rainy weather this week put me in a bad mood. And to top it off, they STILL cannot figure out how to keep a bus from leaving there until first Red Line arrives- it is supposed to leave at 4:55am, when train arrives so most days I see it driving away from station (sometimes I get lucky and driver has fallen asleep as it’s the last run for that bus of the night, and they have a 20 minute wait between runs- it’s the starting place for a run). Couldn’t they just make it leave at, say 4:58- I’d be on it. It’s like the bus folks don’t look at what train folks are doing- and the train is first train of morning- si it’s people that are trying to get somewhere on time).

Oh, and bus on way home broke down yesterday on Ventura so we had to walk 3 blocks in rain to get where we thought a bus would pick us up but it took awhile…

But today was worst experience with passengers- first, when I get on bus, it’s packed, with little kids in aisle where I try and get through- I see small spot on bench between 2 fat ladies and decide I’m going to squeeze in, as bus lurches forward then stops- I bump one lady in shoulder- not hard, but hard enough she makes a scene in some language I don’t understand and whole bus is looking at me the “bad guy”. Ok- I put my head down and work on a flowchart.

On the Red Line, a hot lady sits next to me at the Vermont-Sunset stop- hottest lady that has ever sat next to me. So a black guy is going up and down and making a fuss, and he stops and looks at her them me ands says he homeless and asks for money (hot ladies always seem to get me in trouble downtown). In my usual “no nonsense” attitude I tell him “No”- he starts yapping about how he lives downtown and I say I do too- near skid row. He finds an open seat in front of us that is facing aisle, and procedes to keep yapping about how he’s a veteren that got discharged for “personality disorder” at which point I say “hard to believe”. More yapping as he unfolds paper that supposedly are his discharge papers and finally the chick next to me has had enough and yells at him “you are one ignorant motha fvcker!” I’m shocked, wondering what te hell I got myself into. For the next 10 minutes she berades him, he says a few things back, all the while at least half the train, mostly standing, is staring on, with eyes and mouths open.

Then he says “What you need is a black man” and starts making fun of how I’m just sitting there letting her do all the talking- she says “I’m MARRIED to a black man” which he does not hear and keeps on his mimicking of me at which point I yell- “I don’t know her!” but he keeps going on about how she has no class, using obscenities around kids (there was a 3 year old across from us with a black family). Then the black father starts in on her- in a classy way I must say, talking about how we have a black President now, she says Barrack’s half white, he says 10% black makes you black- and they she throws out she’s from a reservation in Oklahoma and 100% Native America (she looked like she could be, but had bleached blond hair).

The craziness finally starts to tone down as the “homeless” guy got a text on his phone with a nude picture. He goes on to say that’s his girlfriend, and how she bought him the $3500 bracelet he was wearing, and a diamond ring. Then he tells another passenger how he’s working overtime at post office for holiday mail… I think there’s some folks that would like to be that homeless.

After about 15 minutes of teeth-gritting tension, they all get off at Pershing Square- homeless guy making some comment about how he was going to follow the girl — I’m pretty sure she could kick his ass. And then a poor homeless guy- real one, hits me up on 2nd St and I give him the look of death at which he starts yelling at me. Not a good commute this week.

Ok , sorry for the bad edits and “stream of conciousness” but I have to get back to work… (more on my new project later- it’s interesting industry- let’s just say it’s almost 4:20 right now…)