March 13, 2006

March 13, 2006

Slaves and Salvation

I work in Redondo Beach. Beach communities are always a little exclusive, but beach communities in the Los Angeles area tend to be really exclusive. Don't get me wrong...anybody can come down to Redondo Beach and work, shop, or play, but the high rents and the heavy "hands-on" presence of law enforcement insure that by the time night falls, the cities of Hermosa, Redondo and Manhattan Beach are almost exclusively inhabited by young professionals, upper middle class families, retirees who invested well, and a couple of rich kids burning through their trust funds like no tomorrow. There are a few surfers and college students who pile into apartments, and manage to make ends meet just to live down here but they don't stand out much because the last thing you want to be identified as around here is poor.

If you ask most of these people about living in this beach enclave they will tell you that they feel very blessed. I don't know how many young engineers I have met from Purdue and Michigan and M.I.T. who cannot get over the fact that they can play beach volleyball in the dead of winter. But when I look a little closer I see through the facade. I see people trapped by the insulated community they call home. Their identity is so intertwined in where they live that the thought of moving east or south where they might actually be able to afford to buy a home rather then pay the huge rent down here makes them shutter. Oh sure, many own their homes, but even most of these folks are struggling with mortgages that are so massive that they will be working for a long time to pay that puppy off...and what will be their reward at the end of thirty years of mortgage payments? Huge property taxes eating into their life savings. Of course they can always sell that huge liability cum treasure chest they call home, but as I said before, it's tough to admit that you can't keep up with the Joneses and high tail it out of the beach. And let's not forget that these very people who love it here are often scared of their own shadows (too dark i guess), and they just feel like a target walking and driving around in the majority of LA that is multi-cultural and diverse.

I strangely feel at home working here in the beach community. I don't live here, but I feel like more then anyone else down here, I belong...why? Well the beach is all about relaxing, living in the moment, and freedom. But the price of living down here for most is tension, constant worry and the shackles of indentured servitude that these lawyers, engineers, accountants, and investment bankers call careers. I on the other hand work alongside these folks, but I live well within my means and an early retirement looks very possible if I choose to do so. And nothing makes you feel more laid back then realizing that you don't have to struggle with a burden. I guess I am a beach bum with a job.

I have a big presentation tomorrow and it dawned on me that I needed to pick up something from a beauty supply to help me get my hair looking somewhat conservative for the customers. Well you know its hard to fine wave caps, murrays and dax at the Rite-Aid in a city so lily white as Redondo Beach, so I headed east to the other side of the rail road tracks. I drove east toward Hawthorne into Gardena. (Next stop if I keep driving east? "city-city-city-city of Compton-home of NWA and a lot more good people then you might think). It's amazing what a difference a few miles can make. Gardena is a long way from the beach economically. Is that a check cashing establishment I see? How can a place stay in business by just cashing checks anyway? Hey look its a billboard for a strip club. And another and another. Liquor store after liquor store and more fried chicken and '$1 a scoop' Chinese restaurants then you can shake a stick at. (side note: just how much do you have to have of something before you are overwhelmed with fear and wonder at the gargantuan mass before you are unable to shake a stick at it?).

But somehow i feel even more comfortable here in this neighborhood that ain't quite the 'hood where the majority of the people i encounter don't speak english as well as they do some other language. I would have to say this area is almost exclusively light blue collar & small business owners, with an almost perfect ratio (1:1:1) of asians, latinos, and blacks. This place depresses me in some senses. but it invigorates me in other ways. I found it disturbing that there is a store specializing in hip hop clothing (you remember that form of music that was born when kids with no money for instruments got creative with two turntables and a microphone) where all the jeans cost $70 dollars and are emblazoned with somebody's corporate ass trademark in full view. I found it disturbing that there are four "gentlemen's clubs" (there is something princely about the swaggering wannabe thugs and players who i saw out front, but gentlemen is hardly the right word) in walking distance from that hip hop store. Also in walking distance are two local casinos (one casino is owned and operated by Larry Flynt and appropriately named Hustler Casino...gotta get the brand name out there right? Now I wonder if the casinos helps sell porn or if the porn helps attract patrons to the casino or is it a mixture of both).

The people in these communities aren't living below or even close to the poverty line so they do have some discretionary income, but how sad that there is so much of it being shoved across poker tables and and carefully slipped into g-strings. I am always surprised by the cars i see wheeling around in Gardena: Yukons, Expeditions, Lexuses (or is that Lexi?). How do these folks do it I wonder? Afterall, I make twice what teachers make and the thought of covering the note on a $40,000 vehicle makes me cringe. I make pretty good money, but i see no need to trade in my saturn that i bought in college as it still runs well after six years.

I guess what makes me so at home in Gardena is that just this kind of phenomenon: people with new luxury cars driving to Popeye's for a 1.99 two piece of nitrates with some chicken underneath all that batter. Kids dressed head to toe in name brand clothing but bored to tears as there is no money for piano lessons, little league, etc. I guess it is a little sick to revel in all of this, but i can't help it. It makes me feel liberated. Because when I look around I see people who are slaves...slaves to their own insecurity, slaves to their own lack of identity, slaves to their vices, and slaves to their own inability to define success on their own terms. And I am lucky to not be one of them. I have my own vices too I guess, but acceptance is the first step so I try to be vigilant about not slipping into the prison cell that vices so often lead to...

And it dawns on me...I live in the 'hood...Damn near the ghetto. Technically, South motherfuggin Central and that is where I really am at home. Well actually I live in a little place call Lemeirt Park that is really just ghetto adjacent. Its safer then you think, especially if you don't walk around with fear in your eyes or try to demonstrate the excessive wealth you don't have. Live modestly and be kind towards your neighbors, and this place will hold you down like mom's lap. No lie. To know you can go anywhere, in any car, in any clothes and know/embrace who you are and laugh at the ignorance of those who cannot see the regal nature of the person that you are...that is real freedom right there.

I am not done on my journey of liberation. On the contrary, it has only just begun but i am so excited about the fact that I am on my path. It's ironic, but I am almost certain that somewhere in some prison cell there lies a man who has tasted more freedom then you or I have ever known. In the face of losing everything he has been stripped of the shackles of the American Free-Dumb we all use to mentally enslave ourselves. I guess the best things in life are free...but it wasn't until just now that i realized that the best people are too.

-dred