*UPDATE 9.19/10, just found pics on camera of this incident, see bottom of post
Saturday mid-morning, I'm feeling good, work all caught up, and it’s a balmy 70 degrees in L.A., so I dress a little nicer than usual to go out and about, "fancy pants," I joke to the mirror, and bound out the door.
Once again, I forgot about the neighborhood until it was too late.
Then I let the neighborhood turn me.
See, last year or so, I’ve taken to staying inside. Since moving here in 2005, I've had to find ways to get things I need delivered. I order online then stick a hand through the door to sign a UPS receipt. This is how one adapts to life along Sunset Boulevard in East Hollywood. Going out your door is not wise.
But I'm a social animal. so inevitably start to crave human interaction, like last Saturday, I mean that's why I live in a city, isn’t it? So I put on some Saturday fancy pants, fixed my hair, and went out to do a stroll along the boulevard.
Sunset Boulevard.
Must have been thinking about last century, a movie in black and white I saw one time. This is what really happens when you go for a walk in my neighborhood today:
About a block and a half from home, a guy stopped in front of my face. He had no shirt, no teeth except one gold one in front, and a hairpick snagged in the wad on top of his head. Seems my once middle class white lady look ignited an inner hatred he’d had inside him since growing up in the projects, where he’d hear adults repeating the mantra, “White folks cause all the problems,” “White folks, white folks,” especially middle class white folks in fancy pants with sweet little old lady lipstick…
Right there on Sunset Boulevard, where several women with lunch bags stood waiting for a bus and watching, this guy attacked me. He was whacked out, probably cracked out, and at the sight of me some synapse inside his head ignited everything he hated about white people since he learned to talk
And I was there for him to dump it on.
He stopped in his tracks and hollered at me. I stepped off the sidewalk and tiptoed around behind a tree. When he realized he couldn't see me anymore he became irate and found me on the other side of the tree. I crept back onto the sidewalk on the other side and he followed close behind me, running his mouth with the mantra: “white folks” mixed with other mumblings, his voice like some kind of animal.
The light changed I scampered across the Sunset and tried to walk on down the street like everything was really fine, just a little old white lady out for a Saturday afternoon stroll.
But from there I was not in synch with the day.
The bus I wanted to catch to get out of the neighborhood runs only once an hour and it pulled away just as I was yards from reaching it. A regular bus passed close by and blew a load of debris onto me from under its wheels, followed closely by a second bus that did the same. I now had a layer of dirt particles mixed with sweat, under the sweater I thought it was going to be cool enough to wear that day.
Screw it, I thought, I'm going back home. Once again nothing in this town is worth the dreck you have to go through to get there. I didn't even want to walk all the way to the stop light to cross the street, I just wanted to cross where I was, then get back home as fast as I could.
Now, I've lived along the Sunset Boulevard corridor off and on since about 1967 and there’s always a point, no matter how much traffic, when the cars are stopped at red lights on both sides of you, just for a moment, and you can get across the street in the middle of the block. I've been doing this traffic sensing technique on L.A. streets since I was a teenager. It’s one of the few things I can do in my neighborhood where I end up feeling like I'm in my own hometown.
So today I'm going to do it, cross in the middle of the block. I wait, see red lights to my right and left, no traffic approaching, and I walk out into the intersection.
I make it halfway across Sunset and a man in a little blue sedan pulls out of a parking lot on the other side of the street. He practically aims at me as I'm crossing. Instead of slowing down, he lifts his left hand and points his fingers at me, saying shame shame shame on you for crossing in the middle of the block.
He looks like an Armenian, like most the people in my neighborhood, living on benefits that my government will give them but will not give me.
I keep walking right up to the little blue car as it passes and I SLAM my arm on his window, hard, hollering:
“You're supposed to stop, it’s the law in California, you stop for pedestrians, you Idiot!” SLAM. I shouted in a voice like some kind of animal.
In the split second it all happened I saw his mouth pop open and his eyes bugged out. He sped up and scooted away and I stood in the street hollering after him, letting out all the hate I've had inside me the last five years I've lived in this ghetto slum part of the city.
I even dug in my pockets for something heavy I could throw at the blue car. Wished I could have broken the damn car window," I said under my breath and I was all the way up to my building again before I stopped clenching my fists. I ran up the stairs and back inside my apartment in the back of the building, where I always hide, where no windows look out into the street.
And I started packing.
*
UPDATE 9.19.2010: Just realized I took pictures of the "Menacing Guy" this morning while uploading my camera. When I got across the street, I doubled back, followed him, and tried to catch a picture. 
He saw me taking his picture and crossed the street.
Is he looking at me?
Yes he is. But then by the time he got across the street...
...He forgot why he came over, so went back across Sunset and walked away...
And I'm getting out of L.A.
