It sometimes is good to have friends. A couple of years back I was doing some paperwork in my ranfla down by one of my favorite places to access the LA river (EC has to know this one) when something caught my eye:
Little neatly carved steps cut out of the clay earth that would easily be skipped by most. Actually I skipped it for years, as I had been coming down here for decades and never noticed one of the places that makes LA so great. So I got out of my carucha to investigate, because as many an Eastsider will tell ya: the river makes for good stories, even the most boring river moments are never dull. As I walked over to the stairs I noticed a peculiar sign:
This is the edited sign that is more public-friendly. The original one I first saw read “don’t piss, shit in bamboo fucken crackhead assholes, no rocks here,” or something to that effect. By this time I was enamored, the socio-barrio-urbanophile meter in me was registering off the charts, which has never let me down.