DB: Don't Touch My Art

On the night of the full moon, or at least by my best judgment of its circular perfection, very early Saturday morning, hooligans attacked my car.

This car has been like a friend to me, and a friend to my friends. At one time I was even sharing the insurance bill with two or three other people so that we all could drive less and pay less for the “right” to drive. I first purchased this neat little four door 1989 Honda Civic from a youth pastor man in Federal Way for $400. It had just over 100,000 miles, and started overheating as soon as I drove it out of the parking lot. I decided it was just a hot little devil and took care to bring lots of water in the trunk whenever I drove out of the city limits. Countless trips to the grocery or (shame) ten blocks to work when it was raining, it was my winter transportation when it hurt to ride my bike. Sadly this winter, the car took a wrong turn south and began to loose its cool far more quickly. After spending $250 for a starter (it was my Christmas present from my girlfriend at the time), I was forced to negotiate once more with my mechanic, Niels (a large good-looking very honest German man).

Niels explained that my head was warped. “I could have told you THAT!”, I said proudly, “It happened in childhood.” He quickly informed me of the fact that engines have heads, and once they are warped, your $400 car is beyond its value to repair. So brought it home and parked it in my alley and the next morning found that I had rubbed the front passenger tire too sharply against the curb and caused it to go flat. So flat it sat, for about a month safe and sound with my fancy hat in the back window. Until…

Until the disappearance of the homeless, thats what. I live on what is commonly referred to as “Crack Alley”, and when I first moved in three years ago it was pretty much a three car wide drive though drugs/hookers store. I saw sex, violence, drug use, drug sales, human trafficking, extortion, money laundering, black mail, white male, you name it, all out of my kitchen window. Some nights I would watch from the window mesmerized by the display of wobbly debauchery. A fence was installed at the 13th street end of the alley in an attempt to prevent cars from escaping when the police appeared at either end. For the first three weeks after the fence was installed the alley was empty all night, save for the 30 min rush to the King Center Shelter every evening around 8 P.M. Then as the novelty wore off things steadily crawled back to normal and worse, until this last summer when in a massive climax and influx of wondering, staggering, drooling, stark raving, and some very nice people fell on the alley like a morning-after rainbow gathering. I began to fear for my life. Girls could not walk from the coffee shop to our door without being propositioned by several large men. I could not walk to my door without being intimidated by several not-so-homeless-not-so-poor looking thugs. At night I could not sleep for all the yelling and during the day I could not walk outside my home without stepping over someone who had overdosed on black tar heroin.

I’m not exaggerating, it was a miserable place to live. Watching people smoke crack and shoot up every day can get to you. Watching new people come into the alley, healthy but obviously beginning some hard times, and within a matter of weeks seeing drugs take hold of their souls…. People who knew your name can’t remember who you are. Faces that were bright are heavy and dark. Eyes progressively sink into skulls as anger tends to be the only emotion that is displayed outside of blasted-out-of-your-mind-high-gibberish. While I was conscious of how lucky I was to live so near such desolation, and yet be so entirely separated from it, the end of last summer was one of the darkest times in my recent life. Then suddenly the cops rained down on my alley like a calvary charging to the savage village. Multiple arrests were made every day, the thugs disappeared, and the drugs disappeared, the alley was quiet again save for the rush to the shelter at certain key times during the evening.

Once the alley had been emptied (kind of like your kitchen garbage) a condo began to spring up across the street and the smell of gentrify was mixed with the hammering of happy, clean little nails. And thats when the hooligans came. I imagine they pulled up in some sort of sporty hybrid, dunk off of P.B.R and sex hungry from the moon’s magic and the fact that they got dumped by their girlfriends. Seeing my poor defenseless little Honda with its gimp tire they took extreme pleasure in smashing the drivers window to get to my fancy hat. Then “CRASH, WHAM WHAM WHAM, I hear them laughing manically, but I’m too afraid to look. “SMASH WHAP CRASH”, there goes my windshield and my rear window. “POP! hisssssssssss”, out with the other front tire. I’m guessing combat knives and baseball bats, judging from the marks on the car. Horrified, I waited a while and came out of my house with a broom to sweep the glass under my car so no one else got a flat. Who are these monsters?

All of this happened on Friday night/Saturday morning. On Saturday day, I get a note from the cops on what remained of my windshield about how its illegal to repair your car on city property. REPAIR? Oh sorry officer, just doing a little work here on the whole look. YOU KNOW WHAT? I was repairing it. IT WAS ART YOU DOLTS! THIS WAS MY ART! Today is Monday and the car was gone when I got home. SOMEONE STOLE MY ART! MY HEAD WARPED CAR, GETS A FLAT TIRE, SITS LONELY, GETS BASHED, AND THEN IS CAR-NAPPED? All I can say is that this never would have happened if the homeless were still here. Three years went by and those good ole fellers respected my property like it was their own. Gentrification ruined my neighborhood watch! Ok, this summer was f*ing scary, but nothing ever got damaged except my fragile psyche.

One thing is for sure, the city is being diligent about keeping the trash out of this alley…even if it is art.

Banner Photo by Julie Rivera