Why my pyromaniac neighbor lives outside the law
The first fire started last August, in the tent of a man living at the base of the public stairwell beside my house near Echo Park. It consumed much of the surrounding hill and came within a few feet of my yard before the fire department arrived. Another individual moved in soon after, and the second fire began in a shopping cart where he stored some possessions.
Removing the Echo Park Lake fence is a gesture
When the park reopened two months later, it was behind a chain fence. I hated it. I thought the fence was an embarrassment, a constant reminder of our comprehensive inability to address the homelessness crisis.
The Forgotten Noir Detective
… the investigator who was pulled off the 1929 case was one Leslie Turner White, who served as inspiration for Chandler’s Marlowe, and whose autobiography, Me, Detective (1936), played a pivotal if largely forgotten role in the formation of American noir.
Pretending the Unhoused Away
A posted sign informs onlookers in stern capital letters that they have entered a 41.18 “SPECIAL ENFORCEMENT ZONE,” and that sleeping, lying, and sitting down will not be tolerated. In the shadow of this sign, a group of tents are pushed up against a fence. One is owned by Lucky, who stops cleaning to speak with me.
Volunteering with L.A.’s homeless can mean becoming a de facto caseworker
I met J. in 2019, the first time I did homeless outreach. She was living on an island in the L.A. River, hidden by a high wall of arundo reeds. She was bright and bubbly, with a laugh that you could hear across a quarter mile of concrete. I found offering candy bars to unhoused strangers intimidating, but interacting with J. was easy.
A letter to the cyclist who rode by the Atwater bridge on the L.A. River
These were the circumstances when you, spandex-clad and biking south along the river, yelled at the three of us to get out of the path, to which I responded with a predictable vulgarity.
Young Belarusians Dream of Creating a Normal European Country
A generation of entrepreneurs and artists are facing prison sentences.
The Forgotten Genius of Leo Perutz
BORGES listed him among the great mystery writers of the age; Robert Musil claimed he had invented his own genre; Italo Calvino, Graham Greene, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ian Fleming counted themselves as fans — and yet Leo Perutz has been almost entirely forgotten within the English-speaking world.
Are Hotels the Solution to Homelessness?
A commonsense solution to the housing crisis has gained backers amid the pandemic—but can the political will remain?
First Loves and Bad Fantasy: Re-reading David Eddings
Before George RR Martin, before Robert Jordan (though long after Tolkien), there was David Eddings. At the peak of his fame, his books were predictable best sellers, moving millions of copies across dozens of different languages.