The City of Sin

When you take the bus, you also walk. And walking you actually might meet someone you know. You also meet the homeless, although in So Cal they are usually panhandling at freeway exits with cardboard signs saying "homeless veteran, please help". Even panhandling here has drive-thru. Still, it is often pedestrians, the fellow poor, that are most generous. They know it could be them on the street, and they can stop and visit after dropping a dollar in the cup.

Another hundred degree day in the valley, and I just missed the bus, arriving at the other side of the street, a guy I know to be one of the sidewalk donors, is about to cross.
"Hey Ed, what's up?"
"Hey man, what's goin' on?"
"Nothing, where you headed?"
"Just getting something from the store. Hey, you know we're moving to Vegas?"
"Really? You find a job there?"
"Nah, Its just too expensive here, and Meena can't find any work."

According to a Center for Housing Policy study measuring the median wage against the median cost of rent, Los Angeles continues to be one of the least affordable cities to live in. This is not likely to change much despite recent passage of a bill that would raise California's minimum wage to 8 dollars an hour by January 2008.

Let's say you can find a Van Nuys Studio for 800 with bad AC and roach scat in the cupboards. After deductions you bring home maybe 1200 a month. That leaves you with 400. Even for a healthy guy like you, that's about the cost of health insurance, so if, while running to catch the 573 commuter express taking you to the coffee shop in Westwood, where you work but can't afford to live, you slice your ankle on a rusty muffler clamp shot from the street by the tire of a jock rocket ripping by at 65, but you avoid the doctor until the pain of walking on your purplish puss filled limb is too much, and you go to the hospital, where you are billed 700 dollars for treatment plus meds, well then, welcome to Vegas.

"So you got family there?"
"Yeah, I gotta brother and Meena's daughter lives there."
"Aw, that's great. Hey, and you'll have weather like this all the time!"
"Yeah..." He looks off at the intersection blankly.
"I'm just joking ya man!" I swipe at his shoulder with a fist.
He smiles and gives me a quick shake.
Just then an old Chevrolet sputters to the stop in the middle of the intersection. Ed runs to help.
After it won't budge he yells, "You gotta put it in neutral!"
Me and another guy run out to help push the sun faded beater to the curb. The seven man pit crew jumps over the wall and goes into action. They change tires, fill it with gas and push Jimmie Johnson back onto the track, and he goes on to win the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400.