CS Gas – East Hollywood Blues

Whilst walking to an appointment through this eve I had the pleasure of catching up with Bex, a dear old friend from the days of New York past now living in Seattle.

Our conversation turned to our time in the City and the various reasons we left. I told her about the drag show on 20th Street in the Flatiron district I attended a few times in ’09 and how boring it was, not the Warhol style performers we adored back in the day but performers who looked like they used to be the same friendly women who were really friendly men dressed like friendly women and prowled the Meat Packing District back when we were young bohemians – only this time the Irish barman was their tout and pimp. I took this as proof positive my New York was gone.

As I stopped at a street light, the guy next to me tapped my arm. “The guy is talking to you,” he said pointing to a gender indeterminate individual sitting at a card table covered with detritus.

The gender indeterminate individual was covered with a coarse gray blanket, a white Arab style headdress and a red cloth covering his/her mouth. He/she was also spraying something in my general direction from a distance of about 70-80 feet.

“Yeah,” I asked. “Whadda you want?”

“You called me a faggot,” he/she said, spraying his unnamed fluid in my direction.

“Ah, ” I said turning my back to he/she who obviously hadn’t received the memo that the new denizens of in the rapidly gentrifying, Hipster/Millennial scarred ‘hood known as East Hollywood now refer to said noun as ‘the F word.’

“What are you spraying at him,” the guy who tapped me on the arm asked.

“Pepper spray,” he/she replied.

“How come I can’t smell the CS gas,” I yelled over my shoulder.

“I made this myself from pepper and hairspray,” he/she said.

The DIY Movement lives!

Another day another deranged shooter in East Hollywood.

This time I found out from the LAPD themselves, not an alert popping up on my phone. It seems a knucklehead barricaded himself in an apartment in the SRO next to my building. So after my workout when I was at my most sweaty and slimy the Cops won’t let anyone on the block.

“It’s an active shooter situation,” the Cop says.

“When will it be over,” I asked.

“It will be over when it’s over. No more questions. Go that way,” he pointed down toward K-Town. I was in no mood to argue with the guy about needing a shower, especially with the SWAT team staging what looked like a raid behind him so off I went to the Local to wait out.

There is no place better to wait out an active shooter than at the Local. Jack the Albino behind the bar and our three Russian gun nut pals agreed and thus we waited drinking and trying to figure out what sort of rifle does one use to hold off the LAPD in an East Hollywood SRO when A Line and Man Bun came in with their dog complaining about the Tear Gas in the air.

They had never been in the Local but it was the closest clean well lit place to go. Man Bun gripped his dog tightly.

“Those Cops poisoned my dog! She’s choking,” he cried while A Line tried to remain composed as she called her Mother.

“Oh my Gawd can you believe it Mother? Gun violence is finally here. In East Hollywood! I’ll never be safe again.”

The refused all drinks and water for their dog from Jack the Albino while they waited with the rest of us for the all clear go back to your homes to sound out.

While walking outside to catch a whiff of the CS gas wafting up Beverly towards Silver Lake because hey wouldn’t Hunter S. Thompson do the same thing, I overheard two cops talking and was able to piece together the events of the day in my corner of East Hollywood. It seems the LAPD had been looking for this Guy in the SRO for three weeks because he shot at and hit his soon to be ex wife and her new boy toy outside a movie theater near the Miracle Mile.

Although no status had been offered vis a vie the condition of the boy toy and soon to be ex it appears that the LAPD takes attempted divorce by public shooting very seriously. Therefore they tracked said knucklehead to the SRO next to my apartment and surrounded the place. They only evacuated the block when he pulled out a gun and shot the door frame. SWAT had been called and had occupied an apartment with a clear line of sight into the domicile now being used as a bunker. Negotiations were continuing but had been pushed into overdrive by the emergence of a mirror, a credit card, some white powder and what appeared to be a rolled up $20. Hence the Tear Gas.

Two hours later the neighborhood was given the all clear to return to their homes sans the SRO residents who would have to wait until the LA CSI unit finished their work. It seems our knucklehead had brandished a weapon and fired in the VERY general direction of SWAT team member who in turn gave him Suicide by SWAT which was over 6 hours in the making.

I walked back to my joint with great determination and relief. I stunk so much I was beginning to offend myself and a shower would surely be a welcome relief for everyone in a three mile radius. I walked up the stairs and found the apartment SWAT had occupied during the siege was mine. It was also readily apparent from various marking in the dust on my fire escape that the fatal shots had been fired from three feet outside my kitchen thus allowing the stench of gun powder and involuntary death to permeate and hang over everything in my home.

I walked outside, down the stairs and into the street in an attempt to get away from legal side of the crime scene where I found a righteously indignant almost to the point of being WASP’s from Greenwich, Connecticut A Line and Man Bun arguing with a plain clothed member of the LAPD demanding reparations for their inconvenience and now poisoned dog who in true Chihuahua fashion was biting at the LAPD plain clothes cop.

This was the last bit of weirdness I could stand. It was time to go to the same desert where Phil Kaufman took Gram Parson’s corpse and burned it.