My jewish friend,voice of doom and things to come

The bridge was always a given. I crossed it every day and didnt think twice of it. Stolzman and i would ride our bikes on it and stop on it to have a bowl, i crossed it to work,  i crossed it back, it was something i crossed. The zero idea on life is that it’s sort of like a tv series. Sometimes something happens and you can see it having an episode or two arch

There are crossovers

Sometimes though you find a significant action has sent thing into another direction,  it seems like if ever there was a moment to start a new season from it’s that moment

And sometimes something so large happens that it affects the course of the series for several years (seasons) and effectively gives it  a new direction, charges up the batteries and you find yourself living a life of well some sort of purpose. That moment for me was me and my Jewish friend and the first time we met.

The first time we met in person i was sitting on the sidewalk of a tagged up, abandoned burger king. This establishment would later be perceived as a threat to the citizens of boyle heights when plans were made to turn it into  a starbucks, they cried gentrification and they were up in arms almost as if they preferred the boarded up,  graffitid burget king,  but something more ominous was looming and we all didnt know

They’re tearing the bridge down”

At some point after securing cheap beer and walking a lot we headed to the sixth st bridge and from my jewish friend i heard the news that would send my life in a new direction which to this day still is in my day to day life. It didnt make sense at the time,  a bridge wasn’t something that was torn down, not  a landmark,  its like someone telling you the Adobe homes at olvera street were coming down or the hollywood sign was being demolished. But he was right.

I developed a sense of appreciation for that bridge that day because i knew our time was limited.  But that day despite everything that came before it all there was us meeting for the first time and going to the bridge.

Quinn

when the story of the bridge was said and done it wasn’t mines or shmu’s, it was quinn’s, there’s a world of difference.  We had homes to go to and beds to sleep in, all he had when we left was the bridge and his corner of it.

Our first formal introduction to quinn was like a wounded puppy sort of pacing and time bond  till he realizes you’re not going to kick him..Quinn came up to us after a bit of seeing us there and apologized for perceived homophobia and he told us he was taken aback by then Jesse and myself,  explained that his own brother was gay but was typically effeminate and he’d never encountered people like us. Gradually we learned his story before he vanished.  He said one day when he was a teenager he came home and his mom was gone.  He dropped out of school and supported himself. He told us there was this tree he would climb as a child and would jump from just to feel that airborne feeling for a little. Quinn told us that was the sensation he had when he fell off a roof and injured his leg, rods, scars he was constantly in pain and did crack to help.  He was one of the nicest crack users I’ve ever met. Sometimes he showed up pushing his cart up the bridge and would tell us he was going to crssh, often visibly more energetic he’d come and tell us he was going to go take a hit and would be back.  On Thanksgiving we came and brought him food, Jesse then made his favorite desert.  Quinn’s story was a sad one, he carried a lot of what he saw and experienced on the bridge and often would leave us just speechless, he was on the bridge to avoid the daily avoid the daily struggle of skidrow. We told him whenever there was planned closures of the bridge and sometimes he would come and drink with us we would play music he chose like an excited child he would ask us to play song after song and would share stories of his connection to these songs, moments in his story.

We didn’t know when the bridge was coming down but as I seemed certain to be close he told us meeting him had inspired him to do something with his life, and that was it. As the countdown began he stopped coming by..maybe it hurt knowing that his home of several years would be gone.  The last day on the bridge I wrote his name on the sidewalk on his spot,  we can only hope he made on his promise to change his life.

sometimes you don’t jump off the bridges you burn

It seems fitting  that my first introduction to desperation and an end came on the bridge.  I was traveling home post work with my mom as a kid and the driver stopped the bus full of passengers in the middle of the bridge and attempted to talk someone off of jumping.  I don’t know why that stuck with me but at that moment I realized how delicate it all was and the value of human compassion. .it was also at this point that I realized it was a place to an end.

In an episode of “lost” jack (played by Matthew fox) stops his car on the bridge and attempts to jump.  When I saw that scene it resonated with me because that was almost me a few times. 

The doctor is a nice gentle blonde woman she’s apologetic the entire time and maybe a little more welcoming than I originally expected.  She had theppreliminaries but has to ask anyways. I tell her life is dire, it doesn’t get easier and it doesn’t get better. I live in this zone of nothing.  I worry about the future and I find myself unable to sleep, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and start crying. I’ve never told anyone any of this before

She tells me she’s sorry that she won’t be able to help me since it’s her last day and tells me I’m going to be reassigned. She realizes she’s too apologetic and that I probably need something,  anything to show I’m not crazy or alone.

It’s the middle of the night and I’m thinking of the worst. I’m at the arches on the bridge when suddenly another bike comes up and Stolzman is there, a calvalry, he made it and makes sure I am safe, talks me down from whatever part of my brain is am locked into. We get on our bikes and head home.

She composes herself ” I think you have ptsd relating to incidents from your childhood, it’s like this.. your brain just goes into fight or flight mode. Think of something primal like if there was a Dinosaur or something your reaction is instantaneous.  Sometimes something happens to people and they find themselves constantly in that place,  that’s where you are.” I cry.

It’s a little over a year before the bridge is supposed to come down and Jesse and I are on the bridge when I see someone sitting down with their back to the wall, something that never happens there, some sort of new type of person you see at nowhere,  not there for bootyographia or anything just sitting there on the floor facing the arches, greatest view of downtown in front of him and he doesn’t care he’s sitting there in his own head.  I tell Jesse one of us should make sure he’s ok, Jesse goes across the street and comes back says that guy says he’s all right.  A half hour later I decided I am not satisfied with that answer since he’s still just sitting on the ground,  head lowered

“Hey, you’re not thinking of jumping or anything are you?”

He looks up, young guy with sporadic tattoos,  just like me. “No, why have you seen it happen here before?”

“Maybe”

His name was Gato, quinn (more on him another time) told us that he was there when it happened.  Says the police showed up, an old man tried to talk him down, and suddenly I flashback to us leaving and him sitting on a light post and me not thinking much of it because he assured both of us he was all right.

” He jumped and they were inflating something to put down there but it didn’t work this time, he jumped and I looked over and I saw him lying there, broken, eye out, trying to still breathe” He apparently lived for awhile.  Quinn is upset as he tells us this and tells us of another time he was woken up by a young man by the spot he sleeps, sitting on the ledge, quinn gave him a lot of the ” I don’t know what you’re going through but it’s not worth it” dialogue and after he was sure the kid was ok he went back to sleep, cops woke him up shortly after asking if he had talked to the kid who had just jumped.

Part of the reason we did good on the bridge and at nowhere is because we were tthere on a weekend night and often we talked to people or kept people from doing something.  There was a young lady once drinking a liquor bottle who told us she didn’t have custody of her kids, thought she’d reconcile but she called her kids and found out there was another female living there now. She was alone on the bridge for no apparent reason, something to do. We talked to her (I introduced myself with “It’s ok, I’m gay, are you all right?”) She ended up taking to us about her life and how much she missed her kids for a good thirty minutes. She left and we made her promise she’d live.

I leave the doctors office and meet Stolzman in the lobby, I don’t say much, I can’t say much. We get our bikes, catch the red line to downtown and bike over the bridge as we normally do. It’s day, suns out peaking behind clouds,  but it’s raining, I’m biking as hard as I can up that hill toward the first metal arch from the westside and rain falls on me and I’m laughing. I’m alive.

 

vices

The one thing I should make clear about nowhere, the bridge and my mates is that vices and the moderate consumption of vices does that make you a bad person.  People can function in non needed (word, family engagement etc) times, you drink a forty,  you smoke bowls etc etc etc.  In the end  nowhere was the perfect place to engage in vices. A lot of the reason why those vices aforementioned were consumed was because they allow you to cut through a lot of the middle muddle b.s that prevents one from properly appreciating things like a good sunset or random photo shoot, in a sense vice helped us deal with being at nowhere and in detracting us from the sad truth it was all going to go away. In life you sometimes have a unreliable narrator. This individual you trust in taking you on this journey ,never having been there yourself you have nothing  but this individuals narrative of the world that surrounded you and the events that occur in that world. So a lot of this will ask the reader if they fully trust the narator, a sort who was often under the influence of vices both as he wrote the narrative and as he lived it, the narrator never considered a gonzo sort of approach because there was hardly any time to do it all.

Vices allow us to take a short cut from the bullshit.

Not of this

By the first time I went recreational like to nowhere I was already familiar with it all.  I had biked the bridge, I had walked it, I spent depressed times contemplating on it only to be stopped by Stolzman (more on that some other time) shmu took me to nowhere less than an hour after we met and even he had a personal connection.  We were preaching to the choir when we went nowhere…you could go on and on about the view, architecture etc but you would be talking to someone who already knew, to the third party observer it would seem like a conversation between two of the “stepford wives.”  Enter Jesse  (at the time).

You know how sometimes in movies (especially war ones) you have a character who is a greenie and new to the ragtag group of whatever, often used as a device to introduce the audience to an existing universe…that was Jesse. It was a unique experience showing this world to someone else (all magic carpet ride like). Looking at nowhere through new eyes you realize how much you really take things like the bridge for granted.

It must be odd to have memories that don’t have a length of longevity that someone like shmu or myself have.  But we learned a culture together and had experiences on there together so ultimately when it was closed off and we couldn’t go back the sense of loss was equal if not more so because the memories are so fresh.

We all grew up there (metaphorically) but no more than. Jesse

We had an argument and met up at nowhere post work. As I hurried up the path to nowhere from the downtown side I grew in anticipation of seeing Jesse again after a visit to his mother’s home and seeing him when I got nowhere I realized how much we had grown in this one spot, our own corner of Los Angeles.  Gender ideas and pronouns/ names changed there and illyex  (Illyria Exene) matured as a person.  I wanted to go back to what we had that one day when we met up at nowhere but I realized I wouldn’t be able to, the world, like us was ever evolving and changing.  I could hear a train coming from the tracks underneath out feet and I could see the arches and smell the faint aroma of old urine on the arches but I knew the day would come that even that was gone. Nowhere had become a place that was greater than me and my bond to it, it had become our place.

Like visiting a relative in hospice we journeyed nowhere…always knowing it could be the last time we would go there.  These marches to nowhere was a path that we took together.

 

where do we go from here?

Shmu told people for two years (maybe longer). He was like that guy in office space who keeps worrying he’s going to get fired. He would keep us posted on what was happening. Every new announcement meant we would have just that much more time at nowhere. Summer came and went etc. The people we met at nowhere, my mom all wanted to know where we would go when we couldn’t go to nowhere anymore.  “Probably the fourth st bridge ”

“You have to be loyal” my mom said.  Nowhere closed, barricades were put up, a disgruntled annoyed police officer was placed. It’s the day after and we’re standing awkwardly like jay and silent Bob forced to go somewhere else when they can’t stand outside of the quickstop when it is burned to the ground. We start moving henges around. Boylehenge our home for now.  It’s a weird desolate area now. See the bus stop has been closed, the bridge has no traffic on it, conveniently the dominoes pizza and 24 hour laundromat across the street burned down. In the end we knew it might come to this but we didn’t expect this amount of empty nothing.

The one only other time we formally hung out at the henge was when the bridge was closed off and we couldn’t get on…only this time it was because the bridge was full to capacity. We stood at the henge that day doing our usual reflection on life, random families and individuals unable to get onto the bridge pass us by and take photos or try to work up the courage to come talk to us.  It seems that it’s only when life threw them a roadblock that they took notice of this henge and this snowman who lives there. It’s a scene that is repeated when the metaphorical roadblock becomes a real one. A woman walks up to us “this is really cute”. We talk to her as we organize the henge and clean up. We watch families and couples who got the social media update that the bridge was closed try to walk up to the bridge to take photos only to have disgruntled cop shine lights at them and tell them to turn back.

“He wasn’t nice to them or anything he could have been like sorry ladies it’s closed, instead of just yelling TURN BACK NOW!” Our new companion states as a group of elderly women walk past us slowly.  We talk about the changes to the area the way some people do a dying relative. She leaves and walks away and we continue cleaning since it now seems the city won’t be doing that for us anymore.  “…can I take a photo?” She inquires returning,  documentation of this spot being an afterthought.

We finally settled down as city trucks roll up and park.  I start to worry about their presence but in the end they leave us alone. That doesn’t stop me from being anxious about the future …will they eventually seal this area off? Will they show up with a truck and dump hengie and the concrete slabs in some city sponsored hole? Last night we had our last moment at nowhere,  tonight we will have our last night at the henge. “The workers are probably drunk and stoned, they don’t care about what we’re doing” Illyria assures me.

Illyria suggest we change the peace sign made of small stones into an icon of the bridge a few minutes later we do and it’s good…for now.

 

cracks

They say the bridge has to come down because it’s deteriorated beyond repair.  To the casual observer you can see what they mean. Since I started going to the bridge recreational like I noticed that it was one good quake away from going under yet the amount of lack of caution people place to huge gaping holes in the concrete is insane. There are places at nowhere that you can literally see the train tracks below. Often we kick discarded whatever into the crack. It’s an easy way to get rid of trash and do some house cleaning.  Except in order for it to fall through it has to hit at the right angle because if it doesn’t it  becomes PART of the hole. Lined around the edges of the hole that goes through the sidewalk and onto the tracks down below there is trash, rusted metal, jagged something or other and broaches  (more on that another time for now just know that’s what we call the huge roaches that live in the crack). All of this crosses my mind as I witness a very young kids barely mastering the art of being bipedal get his foot caught in the crack. Dad who’s there for photo shoot purposes tries to jerk the kids leg UP

I pictured the kids leg getting scratched up,  viruses etc rushing to any of a number of cuts. Illyria stops and stares suddenly seeing the same horror I am.

Dad then jerky the kids leg sideways in the hole like he’s getting ketchup out of a bottle. Kid is crying

Oh you wanna go to the hospital? You’re fine,  you’re fine!”

Please for the love of God take the child to the emergency room. Tetanus shot…something! Anything! And as they walk away I feel guilty over the condom wrappers and toilet paper with questionable material and glass stuffs we’ve kicked in there during our time nowhere

 

Oh the people you will see

There’s a culture that exist on the bridge.  That’s something my circle became aware of almost immediately.  We learned that there are really an amount of archetypes that you see at nowhere :

1.  The people who live there.  There are folks who live there full time and part time. The full time individuals live in the river itself (under the bridge dwellers) they apparently hold a lot of rivalry with those that are above  (these individuals are another story which we’ll get around to).
2. Those that go there daily.  From the lady we see jogging with her dog. To the people we see commuting to and from work.   They know us by now and give us a nod. We’ve come up with names for them there was a guy we saw wearing a work shirt…”zinc Caffè ” so we started calling him zinc.  On one occasion we saw him by the bridge hanging out with a friend…early on it dawned on us that we both knew each other…we kept calling him “zinc” and he never corrected us
3. Tourist.  Tourist have no shame. They will take photos and video of you even if you’re looking. They come and like a thief in the night they take off. They stand right next to you..lingering smoke haze and all…their time at nowhere is limited and they know it. They don’t know if they’re going to see this place again since it’s scheduled for demolition for a hyperspace bypass (you’ve got to build bypasses)
4. Bootyographia (or booty shots)…more on this later
5. Filming. ..now this actually required a sub section itself. ..more on that later
6. Artist (instrument players and people who have canvasses. ..sort of rare)
7. Instagram meets ups…about fifteen…twenty people show up and they hang around for a few minutes…the most attractive female will generally loosen her clothes as the guys take photos of her leaning on an arch…these guys are annoying.  Suddenly you and everything you’ve got if theirs to photograph
8. Photographers….the ones that take time lapse photos are horrible.  They just stand there a slave to their cameras
9. Depressed suicidal types (these do happen and we try to help)
10. People that know the power of an awesome view. ..us…a few others we bump into. They show up and mingle. ..share a story or two and go about their way.  We’re all just temporarily United by this area
11. Racers…dangerous fucks. They speed down the bridge. ..midlife crisis types with no regard for human life..sometimes we call 911 when they crash. .more on that later
12. The homeless
13. “Walkers” staggering drunks trying to get home…sometimes they’re dressed up like army guys …more on that later
14. Gangsters….hardly
15. Skaters (more common) we call them “mighty duck fucks”
16. Tours…this group sometimes host what they call a “taco tour” a brown skinned individual plays Harriet Tubman and he takes lighters skinned individuals on bikes safely to the east side to various taco establishments. ..they all stand at and pose at nowhere. ..their guide will then graffiti a stencil..more on them later
17. The lost and bewildered. ..there was an opera once. ..more on that later

And there’s your cast of characters

BTW. ..we call ourselves “the guardians of the eastside” ….more on that later

Genesis

It’s a cold morning and I’m tired.  Having just got off a greyhound bus in downtown I decide I’m close enough and tired of sitting enough to just walk home and pass out.  I reach into my bag and I pull out a coffee thermos which contains my pipe and cannabis (I carried it this way during my trip and no one suspected).

I’ve just had a long introspective trip. Which doesn’t seem to be ready to let go despite me being back on familiar territory.  The meaning of the whole trip was some sort of closure. In my bag just now carry ashes from someone I was close to…loved…placed inside a pain relief bottle. ..on my right wrist I have a  bracelet I am told belonged to him.  I made a promise to the person who ultimately sent me packing that I would continue to wear it. The whole trip was to find out who he was. Having spent time with his partner (the same one who had to elect to take him off life support) and now having something tangible of this person I never met.  I wonder what to make of myself now.  I wasn’t able to talk to my friends about him since I was really the only person who ever talked to him, having spent a few days sharing stories with his partner and being told by him that whatever relationship I and he had matters seems to have lifted a weight off my shoulders.  People can always tell when something inside them has changed. 

Such are the thoughts and experiences I carry with me while I’m crossing the bridge home.  Having lived in boyle heights  85 percent of my life I know it like the back of an appendage.  When my mother would take me with her to the office since she couldn’t find a sitter,  I rode the same business route I currently do to work. The bridge was always a sign I was close to home.

I stand on the spot I would later call “nowhere” and for the first time I see beauty. Before anyone and anything that would come, before city demolition plans and Jewish friends and penis games bootyographia and car crashes there’s me and my grief slowly leaving me. I’m home. I made it. I’m nowhere.