Judging By the Neighbors

This morning I witnessed a sight that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy, were they- as I was - about to eat lunch: an old, old woman - maybe 95, or 100, even - skeletal and shapeless, save for the enormous, Notre Dame-esque hump of her shoulders and back, in raggedy, torn clothing, pouring a large bucket of what I can only describe as "vomit-like substance" onto her lawn for a fleet of hungry and impatient pidgeons.

The scene unfolded directly outside my balcony, on the huge, mostly-empty lot with a tiny, run-down shack in the very back of it next door to our building. At first, as I watched her slowly shuffle up the dead grass, bucket in hand, towards the pidgeons, I thought, ok, so another old lady feeds pidgeons leftover bread because she's lonely, or whatever. I said, look Y, there she is, our very own Boo Radley. He went, "What, you've never seen her feed the birds her bucket of slop before? It looks like throw-up, she does is every day." I said, why it's not slop, it's only a little bit of bread OH MY G-D SHE IS POURING A BUCKET OF VOMIT ON THE GROUND!!!!!! It was about the most disgusting, and supremely disturbing things I've seen in awhile, and that includes "Derailed," with Jennifer Aniston.

L, my mother-in-law, had the likely reaction of every market-minded So-Cal property-owner: "That's who owns that enormous lot?! It must be worth a couple million! What on earth does she do with that space??"

I'll tell you what Boo does with that space. She rents it out to dilapidated-car, boat, and RV owners who have nowhere else to park their hideous monstrosities when not in use. On any given day of the week, there are five to ten of the ugliest, dirtiest creatures on wheels decorating my otherwise not-unpleasant view of the Rite Aid and Pizza Hut down the block. Before Y and I moved here, on of our visits to his parents, I remember taking a walk, the weather being heavenly, and noticing all of the fragrant and lovely fruit trees abloom everywhere. Humbled, I remarked how true, and accurate were Rousseau's famed jungle paintings of orange trees, how the reality of them was even better. And I thought, hey, if we live here one day, I could get used to this.

An orange tree indeed overhangs the very balcony I just mentioned. It's lovely and fragrant. But it is neither lovely nor fragrant enough to disguise the atrocities sitting and taking place upon the sprawl of its backdrop.

I wish I could tell you these were our worst neighbors. Truth be told, the woman is quiet, and if she wants to spill the contents of her and whoever-she-might-be-hiding-in-there's stomachs onto her goldmine of a property in her last years, well, then, that's her prerogative. I gaze out other windows.

Across the street, however, sits the "Whitsett Capri," or what my father likes to call our "Section 8 Housing." Most of the apartment and condiminium buildings in Valley Village haven't been updated from the outside since they were built in the late Sixties, and have similarly cheesy "names" emblazoned in tacky pastel script across the front. The "Whitsett Capri" looks like the motel Y and I were once forced to stay at somewhere in Hicksville, Pennsylvania, when we got into a snowy car accident in the middle of the night en route to Chicago from New York. It looks like most of the hotels you'd find in Hicksville, USA, and its patronage is right in line. Actually, the residents of the Capri are much, much worse than your typical redneck. All kinds of drug deals go down there, drunken brawls occur nightly - it's a scene.

So one Friday, L was supposed to drop Elan off at our place, when she called first, her voice rich with concern: "Um, I was about to take him home, but I passed by your place and there are two like FBI officers standing on your front steps aiming the largest rifles I have ever seen in real life across the street. And there's a few more across the street, kind of hiding behind Rite Aid? I'm thinking I should just take him back to my house..."

I looked out my bedroom window - things were as described. Sighing, I asked, "Are you sure they're not filming an episode of "24" or something?" Because once Y was leaving work late at night, and when he got to the lobby he saw tons of people scattered about, just sobbing hysterically, faces in their hands. He stood there, dumbfounded, for a few minutes, and was about to approach one of the criers when a security guard pulled him away and informed him that they were filming something. It was only then that he noticed the camera crew. Gotta love LA.

But they weren't filming anything. I hung up with her, and clicked back to my father, who had been holding on the other line. I told him what was going on, and he said, "Maybe you and Ariel shouldn't go outside for awhile, ok? Maybe just stay away from the windows, too." The only other time my father told me to stay put was on the morning of 9/11, when I was about to leave my Brooklyn pad for school in lower Manhattan, flipped on the news with breakfast and saw the first clips of chaos ensuing at the Towers. Like every good little girl, I called my daddy in Chicago for advice, and he told me, "Maybe skip class today. Stay home, and keep your cell on."

He turned out to be right that day, so I stayed inside and tried to ignore the SWAT operation taking place a few yards away. Besides, Y had ordered me and Ariel to lay flat on the floor, under the bed, until it all blew over.

After an hour or so, curiosity got the best of me, and I peeked outside the front door. Well. Apparently I'm the last to know that like freeway car accidents, crime busts are a major Angeleno spectator sport. The ENTIRE building was standing outside, huddled together tossing popcorn into their mouths, watching seven armed, uniformed men wrestle a single muscular, mohawked, tattooed, and half-naked one onto the ground on the porch of the Capri, into handcuffs, gagged and TIED onto an awaiting stretcher. He was fighting them all the way, legs and arms flailing, mouth spitting, until they stuck him with a needle and he collapsed. We never found out what he had done, but it was obviously something bad to warrant a small army of the nation's top law enforcers taking down ONE MAN. Everyone was cheering, trading stories of how long they'd been out there so far, a few holding crying babies in their arms, haphazardly covered in blankets. Screw the babies, right? We got our very own "Cops" episode!!!! And we were there!!!

Need I mention that I NEVER had any such experience during my years in Chicago?

I am not sure why, in a neighborhood, and market, where a two-bedroom, 1-bathroom house goes for three-quarters of a million - and NEVER MIND a home that might actually serve a family - a little gem like the Capri continues to exist. I would think developers would have a bidding war over the rights to knock it down and create shinier, more expensive housing, serving a similarly shiny clientele.

But for the time being, Wysteria Lane it may not be, but if tonight's Elvis impersonator butchering the classics from yet another neighbor's backyard party is any evidence, Whitsett Avenue provides more than enough drama for your average Sunday eve.