I was walking in my neighborhood the other day and I stumbled upon six large boxes overflowing with signs. Signs that were just sitting on the curb minding their own business but their business was decidedly curious. Panhandling signs. More to the point, it was a bit like stumbling upon the panhandling sign Valhalla. If someone had decided to open a “signs only” shop catering to the homeless contingency in Los Angeles, they could not have done a better job. This awesomely thorough, thoughtful and comprehensive (if bedraggled) mess of signs I discovered on Logan Street just outside the Gabriela Charter School had a dog-earned and moldering message for whatever kind of beggar you might choose to be. There was the patriotic and immediately guilt-inducing “Homeless Gulf War Vet. Needs work. God Bless.” The suspiciously optimistic “Going back East. Help me on my way.” There were direct pleas in all caps “HOMELESS PLEASE HELP” and more circumspect announcements “Kindness Heals.” Humor was well represented: “Need fuel for private jet. Fuel is expensive,” “Help me get home to Mars,” and multiple riffs on “Why lie? I need a beer.” There were a few politically-minded directives “Department of Homeless Security Checkpoint” and the frankly confrontational “Fuck You. Pay Me.” There was the defiant “I want nothing,” and the blatantly heartbreaking: “Options limited due to poor life decisions.” “Please help me feed my baby.” The one that hit home hardest was “Miracle Needed.” I mean, doesn’t that go without saying?
I’ve always been interested in people's individual stories. It’s a bit of the “there but for the grace of God,” I suppose with people living on the streets. When I was in grad school, I found this amazing apartment that had a former life as a church. I was on a very meager budget and when the real estate agent showed me the place, I was ecstatic. I immediately fell in love with the stained glass windows in my living room and the building’s rustic charm. How could it be so cheap? My first night sleeping there, I found out. The apartment building was directly across the road from the Flagstaff train station and pretty much every freight train traveling to the west coast comes through that town. My little apartment would creak and shimmy every night all night. It was a rough transition with a train coming by every 10-20 minutes, but I got used to it. So much so that it forever gave me the ability to fall asleep in pretty much any circumstance. I can drift off on plane takeoffs, on moving trains, in cars, with just about any amount of noise.
As a byproduct of living this close to the tracks, I watched and sometimes interacted with a nonstop parade of (mostly teenage) rail riders, stowing away illegally on the passing freight trains. Many of them were on their way to San Francisco (probably the Haight), the mecca for all homeless youth since my parents were teens. Most of them had dogs traveling with them too. A lot of them were drug addicts. Most of them were escaping some sort of horrible abuse at home. They were high on what they perceived as freedom. They quoted Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. They had tattoos and piercings and dreadlocks and mohawks. They wore fatigues. They were missing teeth and covered in grime and romance. I still got the feeling that many of them would probably course-correct. That this was a diversion and they might find their way back to a more traditional life at some point. Then there were some that had a certain look – a point of no return 1000-yard stare. I worried about that look.
There were also the homeless alcoholic Indians who would wander onto the railroad tracks once or twice a year to simply lie down and fall asleep. We’d read in the Daily Sun how the train conductor was sounding the horn and pulling the brake but it was never in time. I always wondered if these men (it was always men) were intentionally giving up, or just too sick and tired to care where they rested. You’d see them staggering around during the daylight hours jabbering incoherently to anyone who’d cross their paths. The textbook rheumy gaze got under my skin, always reminding me that with our family history it was a good thing that I stopped drinking when I did. I have Mestizo blood in these veins.
So when I wandered up on the sign carnage this week, I was done. You had me at hello. I needed to know all. Perhaps the weirdest part of the scene was just trying to give it some real-world context. I was kneeling there on the street rifling through all of these signs, giggling and sometimes struggling with a lump in my throat as I just took in the humanity of it all. I imagined the creativity and pluckiness of this hobo 3.0 (let’s call him Bill). This homeless dude who woke up in his tent every morning underneath the 101 and Alvarado* and flipped through his boxes to make a choice as to who he was going to be that day. Was he going to be a Jesus Freak? Did the wind feel like the jaded Angeleno drivers would connect more expediently to a salt of the earth, down on his luck veteran? An alcoholic, well-meaning father just trying to provide for his underage wards? What is the secret sauce to maximize your handout potential?
I imagined him catching a lucky break that morning, suddenly finding himself the surprised but grateful owner of a beat up, but still serviceable ride from one of my bougie neighbors. Let’s call that neighbor Liam. Liam the former bassist and his fiddle-playing girlfriend were renting in Echo Park. After years of struggling, Liam had recently landed his first corporate gig as a music supervisor for a popular television show. They found themselves in the enviable position of being able to purchase a new car. Well, not a new car exactly. A classic car - a 1970 Dodge Charger that cost more than a 2014 Beamer would have. Liam was thrilled to now have the means to buy the car he and his eleven-year-old soul had been dreaming of for years. Rather than selling their late model Volvo wagon to a buddy, in a moment of inspiration he decided to drive over to the underpass and donate his car direct to the people (stopping to thoughtfully gas up). Hence, homeless Bill (also in a moment of optimism) decided to leave his accumulation of signage at the roadside as he certainly would not be needing them anymore. That tank of gas could get him as far as Stockton and his sister’s place if she was still in town. Sky being the limit from there.
But on my walk back home, the cynical/more practical side of me came to a separate but equally (more?) plausible scenario. This is Los Angeles, after all. Filming notifications in my neighborhood are a weekly occurrence. It suddenly seemed much more likely that an absentminded P.A. on location simply forgot to load these boxes onto a truck. Depending on the shooting schedule that week, no one may have noticed yet that the prop boxes of homeless signs were M.I.A. Because of course, in Los Angeles, the film studios have boxes of “homeless” signs.
A third option then came to mind. Maybe the signs were a part of an upcoming art installation by a sculptor, left out to get a little more grit, to get intentionally rained upon. In any event, it spiced up my ramble quite a bit.
*In case you’re reading this from somewhere less urban than the mean streets of Los Angeles and you are appalled by my focus on the sign content rather than the fact that we have a homeless “problem,” I just want to mention that we are all just fine. Our kids are growing up city kids. Most days I am happy about this and I prefer our kids growing up here rather than a whitewashed, homogenized zone. It’s a choice. Though a life in the suburbs would give Townes and Daisy more green spaces to cycle on and roam over, it’s no secret that the days of kids going out and ambling are largely gone (even for those kids growing up in the burbs). And we know all too well that the boogeymen are much more likely to be trusted family friends and scout leaders than a stranger living in a box. Places like Littleton, CO and Newton, CT have pretty much shattered any confidence I had in the myth of the suburb. William T. Vollman’s Riding Towards Everywhere is a great book for anyone interested in modern day rail riding and its attendant mythology.
