DaveandkaraUStour2011: Days sixty-seven, sixty-eight, and sixty-nine.: zeroenthusiasm

zeroenthusiasm

DaveandkaraUStour2011: Days sixty-seven, sixty-eight, and sixty-nine.

Sep 09, 2011 14:30

At 7 in the morning, on the dot, we were woken back up by what appeared to my half-conscious vision to be two cops telling us we had to get up and leave. Now that I think back to it, they were probably just security guards, since I don't remember seeing a police emblem on their vehicle and vaguely recall sewn-on badges. We obeyed and stumbled around the corner with our sleeping bags bunched up in our arms. We sat against a wall by a strip mall at the corner of El Centro and Vine and eventually just got so fed up that we threw our things on the ground and nonchalantly laid down, head to head on top of greasy, dirty concrete caked in dried pigeon poop. The only thing blocking us from public view was parked cars. Anyone going for a job or walking their dog had to do it right by us. We woke up to the sun beating down on us and simply crossed the street to lay back down on the dirty sidewalk in the shade. I think for every time your sleep is disturbed, you sleep for an extra hour. No one bothered us while we slept there and we didn't wake back up until 11 when a homeless guy holding a Tupperware container of what looked like either vomit or gross soup started shouting and talking aloud to himself by us. Lined across the wall above us was a giant flock of pigeons, clinging to small edges with their tiny feet. They would occasionally burst from the wall in total synchronicity, fly in a grey and black cloud in a circle over the block and then return. None of them pooped on us, even though we were very clearly laying on top of a popular toilet for them. I like to think they were being neighborly. The legendary HOLLYWOOD letters stood in the far distance in our line of vision. It was weird to think we slept on a sidewalk on a street that has been mentioned in songs because it's so popular and well-known. We went to the Starbucks that was in the strip mall lot we had slept by and loitered until around 1. We ate lunch at an all-vegan restaurant called Truly. It was tiny and hot inside, but the food was incredible. Two trust fund hipsters, one girl and one guy, walked in and had Laguna Beach type conversations with each other while avoiding eye contact, moaning certain words, and not once lowering their chins as they sucked on their coconut juice.

After, we headed to the Museum of Death, something I could have only come up with in my dreams that somehow existed in real life. The entire thing was dedicated to death, murder, and serial killers. I wished so badly that I could teleport Tia to my side so she could enjoy it with me, since I knew Kara wouldn't enjoy it half as much as she would. The owner welcomed us with a monotone, fast-paced way of speaking, sternly warning us of what we were getting ourselves into. Little did he know just how prepared, and excited, I was about what I knew I was about to enter. On the front of the little desk he stood behind was a "sample picture" of a dead body with their head busted open. He let us put our packs by the desk, punched holes into our tickets, and let us walk by the roaming dog that lived there into the first room. It was a self-guided tour through several rooms, each dedicated to something different. The first room was serial killer art and merchandise, equipped with stories and even letters from the serial killer authors. The second room was dedicated to the history of the death penalty where newspaper clippings were pinned up and the real bloodstained t-shirt of an executed man whose electric chair death was botched. We then walked into a room all about funerals and embalming. One wall was plastered in funeral home matchbooks, another had funeral home fans; all used for advertising themselves. A video on a television played an instructional video to preparing a corpse for a wake, showing a real embalmer working on a real human corpse. One room was dedicated to Charles Manson, another to the Black Dahlia Murders, all with the real crime scene photos. Another closed room had real artifacts from the Heaven's Gate suicide cult, playing the leader's demented recruitment video. A wall was decorated in the hall with pictures of drunk driving deaths, accidental deaths, and real body bags. Taxidermied animals were in another room; the skulls of an elephant, giraffe, and other large animals sat behind a window outside. The last exhibit there was a small screening room where Traces of Death was being played on a screen in front of you and the walls were covered in newspapers from the last decade or more of serial murders, terrorist attacks, school shootings, and other tragedies with body counts. When we walked out, the owner stood there demurely as he was when we first walked in and asked us what we thought. I went on and on about how much I loved it and asked him if I could give him a copy of my zine about near-death, death, murder, and disease. He accepted it excitedly and flipped through it, telling me it was awesome. He asked where we were from. We only mentioned Albany and he told us that his father had owned Burger Kings throughout the 518 area, all through Albany, Schenectady, and Troy. He said, "Yeah, it's what killed him." We didn't question what that meant. This museum was not only one of my favorite discoveries of this entire trip, but easily one of the top five coolest things you can find on the entire west coast. We were surprised, honestly, to hear that it had been around for about fifteen years.

We took the subway to another part of the city to check out the Museum of Contemporary Art. By this point, we were both drenched in sweat and my yellow Vacation shirt was covered in spots of black like an ink blot test from sleeping on dirty sidewalks the last couple of days. Kara thought it was funny, but I didn't really believe her when she told me it was hilariously dirty. We checked our bags at the front and spent almost an hour looking around. A lot of the art, like the Andy Warhold bullshit and the simplistic nonsense from Cy Twombly, was that terrible, meaningless kid that could have been done by accident by a toddler who got their hands on a large canvas and some buckets of paint. But a lot of it was also really amazing. We generally enjoyed the place. Some of the exhibits were better than others and it covered every medium from painting, mixed, collages, sculpture, abstract, and even video. I walked around, writing down artist names that I liked like a total dork. I was pretty sure the guards in every room and the yuppies standing silently together, staring at pieces with their fingers pinching their chins were all staring at me for how dirty I was and leaving the rooms we'd enter because we smelled so badly. By the time we reached its end, we were wondering where the hell the Miranda July "Eleven Heavy Things" exhibit was. Unfortunately, it was at another MOCA location. When we got out, we relaxed by a beautiful fountain across from a mammoth sculpture of crumpled-up steel. Asian tourists took pictures in front of virtually everything around us and old men with cameras whose flashes were the size of their heads stood around, probably wishing we'd get out of their shots. We walked across the street and chilled out in a Subway where we only bought a soda refill cup.

The subway was nothing like New York City's. It was pristine, interestingly decorated, and quiet. And they apparently took a more aggressive stance against graffiti.

The MOCA.

That is not my shadow. That is 100% dirtiness.
I decided to go into the bathroom and finally change my shirt. I had to laugh to myself in the bathroom when I was finally able to see the back of my shirt and its shoulders. It looked like I had been run over by a car who then reversed and ran over me again. One of the important straps on my pack ripped just as I was trying to pick it up to leave, so Kara sewed it up and we ended up sitting there longer than anticipated, as I laid my shirt out over the Subway table for those pictures above. We started walking and ended up stopping in one of the dog parks to sit and watch, admiring the dogs and all their childlike wonder. It was really nice out. We went to a graffiti shop and gallery called Crewest. I was mainly hoping to get my hands on some new supplies. When we got there, the door was locked and a sign hung up in the window saying to knock loud. We did, a lot. A tall, older man with a colorful shirt and a limp walked out from the back, not looking very happy, and let us in. After we entered, he continued standing right where he was, holding the door open, watching us intently as if he was waiting for us to turn right around and leave. It was maybe the rudest thing I'd ever seen someone do at a shop (of any kind) before. We ignored it and browsed the extremely limited and over-priced, exclusively Montana selection of supplies and then looked through the gallery, which was full of really amazing stuff. The entire time, the guy stood and stared, as if we'd grab a masterpiece off the wall and run out at any second. We got out of there as fast as we could. The particular area we were in was quiet and bland and it seemed art and galleries were their specialty. We went to a bus stop and waited next to a girl who stood and took pictures of herself with her iPhone the entire time. When we finally got on the bus, she sat all the way in the back and continued. We walked two miles through a mostly Hispanic town of tiny, pastel-colored, one-floor homes with tiny, gated front yards and past a strip mall or two to an all-vegan place aptly called The Vegan Joint. It was another Asian-owned place and the menu was almost exactly like Truly's, but neither of those are complaints. The food was great and pretty cheap, too. When we got going, we were the last ones out. The owner asked us in his broken attempt at English if we were traveling and asked if we were driving. I had to explain hitchhiking by sticking my thumb out, since it doesn't seem like the word exists in many other languages. He was amazed by the concept. He asked a few more questions (the whys, how longs, and wheres) and when we told him we were just doing it for fun, he smiled large and said, "That's beautiful." I thought about it and he's right: that word is perfect for this situation.

We sat in the dark doorway of an abandoned retail space and sat online until my customer session from the Vegan Joint ran out. We walked over to another strip of shops that was connected by the same lot to some bartending school and a Christian science reading room. We found a dark alleyway four stairs down from a loading area and some dumpster and decided to sleep there. A dumpster at the other end of it kept us nice and blocked from public view and a large cubicle wall leaned up against some shed was great for sleeping on top of. Unfortunately, while moving it, I got caught on some blunt edge of a large pipe running along the wall and ended up cutting open my right butt cheek. It hurt pretty bad, but it didn't bleed that badly. (It would just hurt to sit for a week.) We slept really well as a loud funk cover band played across the street from us at a pub.

I wish we'd find more alleyways like this.

We woke up at 9:30 the next morning, nice and cozy and protected from the sun thanks to high roofs. We took our time. My ass was still in a considerable amount of pain and a small hole had been torn in my favorite shorts. We walked back to the Cheviot Hill Shopping Center in hopes of loitering at their Starbucks, but the place was packed and had a line that extended all the way to the entrance as if it were a concert. Californians love their Starbucks. We went to the nearby grocery store and bought more bagels and jelly with the very last of my food stamps and then drank soda at the Subway, waiting for the Chinese restaurant to open. I had a hankering for some Chinese-style tofu, since it's the food we never really eat while on the road. We fed two pigeons some bits of our older, mushed bagels and then ate some really gross food at it once it opened. We were both really exhausted, so we loitered at Starbucks as soon as a seat became available until 3. We walked to a place called The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a strange place that had exhibits dedicated to obscure and archaic beliefs, technologies, and other rejected histories. We spent almost three hours in the place. Every time we thought we'd reached the end of a room, another one appeared through a doorway. There was a small gallery of portraits done of dogs that had gone to space; a small room of crazy letters written to an observatory; a room all about the different things you can do using the cat's cradle string game; a room of small-scale trailer park dioramas and encased artifacts found in Los Angeles trailer parks; and even a room filled with obscure, ancient remedies (like whole mice on toast, seen below).

Definitely one of the other coolest things we'd found on the west coast, and only for a $5 donation.

We got on the bus outside and took it to another stop to get the 6 to Venice Beach. When we got off the first bus, a guy ran off and handed us $5, saying, "Get yourselves somethin' to eat!" We got off at the Westfield Mall in hopes of getting some vegan shakes, but we had completely forgotten about it being Sunday and the ridiculous closing times that come with it. So we caught the next bus to Venice Beach as the sun went down. We were the only people left on the bus before we got there, so the driver pulled over to use the bathroom and talk on the phone. She asked us questions about our travels and was so excited with our answers. When we told her we had hitchhiked across the entire country and down the west coast for fun, she exclaimed, "I've heard a lot of things being a busdriver, but that just topped them all!" The buses in LA have tiny TVs on them with educational programs and a map of the bus's route that moves in real time. Where we got dropped off was right by the wharf and tons of expensive restaurants surrounded by tourists and surfer types. We got outta there pretty quickly and walked in the opposite direction of it, hoping to find somewhere to eat and sleep. We stopped at a Subway in a strip mall lot and reunited with it after several weeks of not eating it. I think we fell back in love with it, too. We sat around a while and waited for all the employees of the two second floor businesses to leave. By 11, when they were all mostly gone, we walked up the stairs and went behind some unlocked gate door that lead to a part of the roof where all the heaters and vents lead to from the Chinese restaurant below us. There was no way for anyone to see us and the sky was nice and clear above us. Every couple of minutes, this big thing would rumble for a little while, but it was fine by me. We slept really well up there that night.

When we woke up the next morning, we were totally protected from the intense sun, but had managed to get soaked somehow. Our best guess is that it was condensation that may have leaked from one of the venting machines near us, but that doesn't explain how it got right underneath us without any signs of a trail. So our sleeping bags were pretty soaked and that totally sucked. We had no other choice than to stuff them back into our bags. And when we went to Starbucks to search for a nearby laundromat, one did not exist (just expensive dry cleaning for expensive suits and whatnot). We ate PB&J bagels and I wrote until 2 there. Then we walked along Venice Beach along nice luxury apartments with unique architecture and diverse plant life on their yards, tall structures by the sand, legal graffiti walls, and fat cops on motorcycles. It is by far one of the coolest places I've ever been to. Unfortunately, we didn't really have time to go in the water. Kara was on her period, anyway. So we got a ridiculously over-priced dinner at an organic macrobiotic vegan place I ate at the last time I was in California called Seed. the food was delicious and messy, but I can't imagine paying $3.50 just for an Izze. From there, we found ourselves walking for almost two miles in ninety-something degree weather to a bus stop we never actually would find. We took another bus on a whim to LAX. Our goal was to get to an outer part of Los Angeles before we started trying to hitchhike. We knew right away that it just wouldn't be the right place to try and get out of that way. When we got to LAX, we were lost and confused even more. It was an even worse place to try and hitch out of.

Half the beach was like picture one; the other half was like picture two.

Feeding a hesitant pigeon.

"World's smallest front yard."

Saw an all-white pigeon at LAX.

So we took another bus that we knew was at least going south about twenty-five miles. The ride was only a dollar, but also took forever as it twisted and turned down random roads all the way to an area called Torrance, which boasted its social "balance", supposedly representing evenly the residential, working, and commercial class. I'd have to say that we agreed. Luckily, we had passed right by a ramp onto 5. After a bathroom and soda break at some gas station where two gangsta-ass employees talked in detail about the difficulty of playing piano, we found some cardboard and walked to the ramp, standing on the sidewalk just before the crossing signal. Traffic was good, but there wasn't much of a shoulder. The first hour went by and we were handed a dollar by a passenger in a pick-up truck full of lawnmowers and another dollar and some change by someone riding a van that was called a Super Shuttle. A kid driving one of those blue shiny "cool" cars with the fin on the back handed us two dollars crumpled together, which caught us off guard. While Kara stood with the sign, I called Cameron and told him we probably wouldn't be making it to El Cajon that night. He said he'd call Chad to see if he would be down to get us, but Chad never answered his phone. So we stayed there and persisted with our sign, which we would sometimes turn around to the other side, saying WE ♥ PICK-UPS!, hoping a pick-up truck would be swept off their enough to let us hop in. An Indian man in a shiny black douchemobile made blowjob gestures at Kara while I was on the phone and it really upset her. But yet another cool-guy car stopped and gave us $5. We walked to a Burger King and got a mountain of fries for dinner with our donations, ate for a half hour until our stomachs hurt, and then returned to trying to hitchhike out. Neither of us could sit on the ground due to very tiny, territorial ants, one of whom chomped on my arm with its little pincers and actually hurt me. A Hispanic couple gave us a dollar. An old woman passed by listening to radio pop; another old woman passed by with a Misfits skull air freshener hanging from her rear-view mirror.

After a while of trying to hitchhike out of somewhere that is seemingly hopeless to escape from, all the cars and the people in them begin to look the same; they eventually blur together into the same couple of human-automobile banalities. The twenty-something with the sex drive of a tenth grader, wearing smooth skin and gelled hair, driving the closest thing to a Fast and Furious car as they can afford; the lone man in plain business or construction attire, a Ford Truck Man, riding alone in a pick-up big enough to carry at least six inside of it (and six more in the back); the old person riding a car too young for them as their arthritic hands tremble on the steering wheel; the lone mother who sits at red lights in her pick-up or van, leaning her head on one hand, avoiding eye contact while her entire life's regrets fill the bags hanging underneath her eyes; the old Asian or Indian woman who doesn't even know that she should look at people who get caught in her peripheral vision; the VW buses being driven by people who don't know that the vehicle they're inside has a very important reputation that they must live up to; the pick-ups who are ten feet above the ground like monster trucks for some reason; the too-cool-for-you suit-and-tie who drives some expensive, glossy car that is bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle, but probably actually has way less room than one; the gangsta riding a car that is all black, including tinted windows, only shining from their obnoxiously shimmering rims that are probably only made of plastic; the giggly packed car of shopping teens that is probably under one of their parents' names; the rusty truck packed past capacity with second-level migrant workers; the truckers riding eighteen-wheelers whose face is only a silhouette and the fiery dot of a lit cigarette; the Explorer filled with every member of a white middle class family.

At 10, two stumbling kids, no older than twelve each, walked up to us and tried to ask us if we had a cigarette in the coolest way they could think of. I dissed the kid when he tried to give me pound. We decided to give up when the watch hit 11. We had been there for four hours and had only made a couple bucks when we really just wanted/needed a ride. The area wasn't very homeless-friendly. In fact, we hadn't seen even a sign of a single homeless person there. So we said, "Fuck it," out of frustration and laid down under the bridge we were next to, right on the sidewalk next to the road. Our sleeping bags were still good and wet, so we had to wrap ourselves up like a burrito in the tarp, which was loud and uncomfortable. Under the bridge, every car sounded ten times louder than it actually was due to the echo. Right before we laid down, a convertible with a handsome Spaniard in it pulled over and handed me $6 and said, "Pray for me." He sat there, gave us thumbs up, and a very creepy smile. It was difficult falling asleep there with all the noise. It was also actually very cold without our sleeping bags to protect us. Three hours later, about quarter after 2, I woke up to a cop car letting off their loudest air horn noise and shining their flashlight right in my face as I struggled to wake up and figure out what the fuck was happening. "Ya can't be doin' that here!" one of them yelled. We started stirring up and suddenly, they were pulling a u-turn to ride over to us. They hopped out of their cars and walked toward us in unison like macho men. I was sitting up in my tarp still as they shined their blinding lights in my eyes. I squinted and yelled, "I can't see anything when you do that!" He responded, "That's the point!" What? He asked, "What's goin' on here?" I quickly gave him the run-down that we were hitchhiking from upstate New York and were on our way to El Cajon to meet up with some friends. They looked utterly stunned by this concept like the cops all the way back in Milwaukee. The other doofy cop started asking us questions like that of a bro's, like, "So are ya fuckin' Shaolin monks, like fuckin' David Carradine, just travelin' the world to see what you can see?" I looked at him like he was stupid and very seriously responded, "Yes." We just sat there as they barraged us with questions. We weren't in any trouble and, once again, were just being interrogated for their entertainment.

The dominant cop said to us, "Frankly, I'm in awe that you thought this was okay to do! Here in Torrance, we don't tolerate it. We're a lot more conservative here in Southern California!" Seriously? "You do this sorta stuff here, people will call in a heartbeat!" Clearly, that wasn't true, since we had hitchhiked right there for four hours and then slept right out in the open there for three without having them called on us. Eventually, they got to the part where they asked us how we afforded such a trip. It was then that I just stopped answering their questions cold and ignored them. An awkward silence commenced and he eventually just said, "Well, you guys are gonna have to stay outta sight, outta mind tonight." We walked across the street, extremely annoyed, and found a dark alleyway between a post office and an abandoned barbershop. We pissed at the end of it and wrapped ourselves back up in our tarp. My knees were trembling from how cold to the bone I was. It was a terrible night of sleep.

A chihuahua wearing a cute polo shirt! And Kara Dr. Doolittling a cute, brown dog. I watched one dog sniff another dog's butt while they were pooping.