In the Land of the Zombies

The days are getting shorter, the mornings darker. Still, in a feeble attempt to keep my sanity I rise at 6:30 and try to run a couple of times a week before work. It keeps my nerves in check, and my breathing steady. I dread getting up, but it makes me happy.

When I started the day was bright, the sun up. I could see downtown when I crested my final hill. Now, I set out in the pitch black. I am running in the moment when the street lights have gone out, but the light has not yet come.

I run across the Hollywood Bowl parking lot, under the freeway underpass, and across into a sweet little neighborhood called the Hollywood Dell full of cute houses, lots of hills, and, early in the morning, coyotes, rabbits and sometimes deer.

But as the economy gets worse, and the mornings darker, I am seeing other wildlife. I am there when all the homeless people rise from behind their bushes and rocks and park benches. I am there when they come out of the woods and parks dressed in black, with their hoodies still pulled tight over their heads. They are half-awake, just like me, stumbling out of strange places to begin the day.

I do not scare easily. But the other morning, I suddenly felt I was in the land of zombies. All these people, who feel groggy and half-dead, and invisible to the world most of the time, were awake, with me. Alone on the streets.

Is this why zombie movies are so popular right now?

Because when you are awake when the rest of the world sleeps, this is the world you see?

Home to the Homeless

We just returned from 2 1/2 glorious weeks away (more on that to come) to find a tiny Hooverville just steps from our front gate. The homeless have snuck in behind the Quality Inn and set up camp. This is not a tiny camp, or a tired man sleeping on the ground. In two weeks there are mattresses, towels hanging down from branches, lots of supersize plastic Coke bottles, drying clothing, and lots and lots of trash. When we left there was a hedge. Now there is a well-beaten path leading into this secret outdoor room. Behind the gate of the fire escape from the hotel (it fronts on Highland, and the back gate over a little bridge is perpetually locked) someone had hung a sheet. Behind that was a perfect mattress, made up with clean white sheets, fresh pillows and a warm blanket -- (It looked so clean I wanted to climb in, Jonathan noted) -- all swiped from the laundry room of the hotel.

I feel the conflict of every over-educated, socially responsible-aspiring person in the city. I want to help. I do not believe in shunting homeless people onto the street, or arresting them so they can go off to hunt for another place to crash until they are kicked out there. On the other hand I do not want mentally unstable, or drug addicted people lighting fires and hanging out mere steps from my front door.

It is as if the recession has washed up on our doorstep.

Now what?

Worst of all, the homeless are technically on city property-camped out on a strip of land between our street and the hotel. But the hotel does care. They said earlier this year a homeless man was camping there who kept sneaking into the back door and breaking into guests' rooms, until the manager found him and tackled him to the ground. He was sent to prison for three months, but it looks like he is back.

What a difference three weeks can make. I walked down to get coffee this morning and there was a gang of dudes swaggering down a lower street of Whitley Heights, and some permanent encampments down by our preschool. The Starbucks stairs were even more crowded with homeless people begging for money--some of them reading library books! Our area is always the line where grit and glamour meet--but this feels different. It feels sadder, more desperate, and a little scarier.

This is Hollywood, 2009.

What is our role as socially conscious citizens?

I just don't know.