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Health & Fitness

Patch Blog: L.A. Riots--Going Home

I see a post-it on the screen of the computer on my desk:  "Go protect your home, they're rioting, martial law imminent."

I return to my Century City office after an all-morning meeting.  There is no one there but I see a post-it on the screen of the computer on my desk:  "Go protect your home, they're rioting, martial law imminent."

I look out the floor-to-ceiling window, south toward Olympic Boulevard.   I see smoke.  Then I look down 19 floors at the street.  Century Park East has bumper-to-bumper traffic moving at less than walking speed.  From parking caverns panicked knowledge workers encased in steel and plastic disgorge into the gridlock. I wonder how confident the workers feel their carapaces will spare them an imaginable torture. The overall directional drift is north-whiteish towards the 405 but only because traffic in the south-darkish downtown direction is virtually at a standstill.

I need to go in that non-moving direction, towards the smoke.   I decide to wait until I can drive at speeds faster than a rioter can run.   I  turn on the radio.   According to NPR the 10 travels freely.  Small wonder.  Like everyone else I have visions of freeway snipers.   Still, it's good I can get NPR, theyre wondering what Daryl Gates is thinking. Finally I see a slight improvement in the traffic below.  I hurry to my car.   The gas gauge is near empty.  I fight my way to Olympic and turn east to drive into apocalypse.

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The tension of lawlessness palpably hangs over our erratic and jumpy traffic.  I notice an unusual number of beat-up old cars for that neighborhood.  An African-American youth leans out his window to ask me where Maple street is.  He doesn't drag me out of my car to beat me up when I say I don't know.  Still, I decide not to get gas yet.

I turn north on La Cienega.  On my left I pass the Beverly Center which according to the radio is already secured against would-be looters and arsonists.   Its side walks are indeed only lightly populated.  I see fewer cars.  I think of the 1984 Olympics.

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I turn east at Beverly and almost run over a small band of a darker shade of pale teenagers cavorting menacingly with newsstands, street signs and signals.  Looking in my rearview mirror I wonder if I would've stopped had I hit one.   The few cars on Beverly huddle together in small fleets of solidarity as they dart from signal to signal.  Starting around Fairfax the north side of the street is littered by broken glass, busted iron gates, and mountains of cardboard and paper trash.  The damage density reaches a local peak near La Brea.  The air is now surely unhealthful.  The yellow-gray sky casts an eerie eclipse-like light.   Scattered post-looting gawkers dot the sidewalks.

I hit another peak of destruction around Western.  Now I see actual looters.  I stop for the red light at Normandy.   I rarely smoke when driving but wtf... I open the window to toss out the match. The heat from a fiery PayLess shoe store on my left blasts against my face.  I run the signal.   I haven't seen a single cop since I left work.

Up ahead towards Vermont looks like a war zone.  I turn left on New Hampshire and using the Highway Patrol complex as cover, I circle back to Beverly and Vermont.  Highway Patrollers are not to be seen.  I turn east on Beverly. Just before Virgil, in front of a ransacked flower store, a dazed Latino leans on a shopping cart.  A bouquet of flowers hangs limply from his hand.  Next door looters are jumping out windows of a car-parts store.  I'm getting close to home, the looting and arson isn't letting up, and Ive seen no law enforcement. 

I cross Virgil. The mayhem stops.   All is calm.  I remember I need gas.  I drive by to see my house not burning, then coast down the hill. There's already a line at the pump by the Mayfair.

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