ethnographic

Now, D and I don’t eat much meat, but when a dancing cow gives you 20% off antibiotic-free angus prime (and poses coyly for a photo!), it’s just too strange to say no.

Nijiya market on Sawtelle; the 29th of every month is Meat Day. For real.

Woah, pro-cyclodestrian* signage in WeHo!

(It’s nice when the rights of pedestrians and cyclists are affirmed and the rules of sharing contested space are made explicit—especially since knowing where you can and can’t legally ride on the sidewalk for safety and sanity’s sake in LA County is really complicated.)

*cyclodestrian: (n.) 1) The hybrid category of persons who locomote under their own power, either solely by foot (pedestrian) or aided by two wheels (cyclist). (See: Rare and Endangered Creatures in Southern California.) 2) A second class citizen in LA, given the city’s lacking infrastructure, signage, and policies supporting transportation modes other than the automobile.

I got to thinking more about the abandoned shopping cart phenomenon.

In contrast to shopping carts standing idle, I’ve noticed that there aren’t a great deal of curb finds out here—D and I scored a file cabinet and some frames  curbside when someone moved out down the block from us, but the average garbage day is not the delirious dumpster diving dream that it is in New York—people just don’t leave stuff on the curb that often. Instead, this is a major thrift store town: there are 60 Goodwill stores between LA and Riverside counties alone, not to mention the numerous Out-of-the-Closet, National Council of Jewish Women-LA, and other various independent thrift stores dotting the landscape.

So, what gives? Why the explosion of thrift stores and the utter desolation of the sidewalk marketplace, with no goods curbside and shopping carts left idle for weeks?

I puzzled over how a city comes to be a thrift store town versus a curbside town for an embarrassingly long time before it hit me: cars, stupid.

People are not, by and large, on the sidewalks noticing abandoned shopping carts, and those few that are on sidewalks never have to worry about there being enough shopping carts to go around. So why bother hording a shopping cart? And, indeed, why leave a few things on the curb when your car has enabled the accumulation of so much unwieldy stuff that you could get a serious tax break if you drove—once more, in your car—down to the local goodwill instead? (Never mind the fact that there’s probably at least three in walking distance; you’ve clearly got too much to carry, let’s be honest.)

So what do these seemingly unrelated photos have in common? It doesn’t seem like such a stretch to trace the contemporary abandoned shopping cart phenomenon all the way back to the sweeping freeway visions of Robert Moses that turned LA into a city built for cars instead of people, and back further to the oil prospecting frenzy that made cars and freeways a possibility, and farther still to the mentality that sent whole families trekking out west in search, moving, moving, moving towards something better, something different, something disconnected from the ties of the past.

I think it’s pretty wild that ideas become spaces become patterns that shape behavior and create ‘normal.’ Pioneer begets abandoned shopping cart; fascinating.

It’s funny how sometimes you recognize a place only in returning to it. Ah yes, this is how the water tastes here, this is how my skin feels in this place. This is how the air feels, this is what it is to be warm, these are the colors when you fly towards the sunset and step out into a place that is familiar but is not home.

12. Regarding #10 and the curious disjunction between a person’s relative sanity and respectability and the respective visual cues they project: similarly, young, hip-looking, well-dressed persons with new shoes do not wander aimlessly with bags of smelly clothes in the city; nor do such seemingly put-together persons engage in audible conversations with the people in their head on the bus and then switch gears entirely and engage in conversations with the very real persons sitting next to or behind them. Here, apparently, all bets are off. Crazy people who look like sane people may try to talk to you. Watch out.

12b. I have come to certain understandings about when it is and is not okay to permeate a stranger’s bubble and engage them in conversation. These circumstances include but are not limited to:

a. begging their pardon to pass them in a narrow or crowded space

b. engaging in knowing eye-brow raises in response to an unusual public occurrence

c. asking hopelessly confused tourists if they need assistance or offering alternate transit routes to those caught unawares by service changes

These rules, being rather particular to New York and its subway, are clearly unfamiliar to Angelinos, and they cannot be blamed for this.

However, you will note the distinct lack of reference to or implication of engaging strangers in idle, unsolicited, and possibly unwanted conversation as a condoned activity in this list. This is because this does not happen in New York. There is, in fact, an unspoken understanding, parallel to the above list, that includes quite emphatically NOT engaging strangers in idle, unsolicited and possibly unwanted conversation. This is not a matter of unfriendliness, or zenophobia; quite the contrary. It is what makes subway commutes bearable, even pleasant; it allows for safe people-watching; it is, in fact, the foundation of the beautiful, cherished contradiction of New York life: public anonymity. The unfamiliarity of Angelinos to this rule (and the context that birthed it) makes me feel incredibly, incredibly vulnerable in public spaces.

I may need to start wearing a sign. Or maybe a monkey mask.