Weird Places I've Lived

I didn't actually live here, but this was a trailer in the neighborhood where a couple did live. It caught fire recently and the couple had to be hospitalized for their burns. An ex-wife and I and child moved into an a small upstairs duplex apartment behind a small house in the middle of Oakwood because we were tired of trying to survive over by the beach with the armed robberies in our apartment building and the weirdo that set fire to an entire block of dumpsters in the alley behind the apartment building.

http://www.streetgangs.com/topics/1994/012794venice.html

Here's some background on our wonderful neighborhood. I looked for a picture of the real neighborhood but didn't really see anything that looked like it should. I had about six years there I guess. The first year was fights and then she left and took everything (cause I let her) I roamed the neighborhood and found old furniture and stripped it down and refinished it. I bought stuff from Thrift stores. I lived out of an ice chest for a long long time. The guy that owned the property had jumped a Polish Freighter in NYC and was working his way up in the American world. He and his wife lived in the front house with two dobermans. We were the only white people in a six block area. I can remember coming home late one night and watching a pack of wild gang boys chasing a girl across a park nearby. I stayed to make sure she got away. I'm not sure what I could've done if they had caught her. The hanger-arounders wanted to know if I could help them get jobs, mostly cause I wore a tie to work every morning. I had no car- walked over to Venice Blvd and took the bus to downtown  to work every morning.  There was a almost a murder monthly there.

Imagine the trailer with a couple of palm trees behind it and that's Oakwood. 

Had a beanbag chair. Finally had enough money to buy a car or a computer. I bought the computer.

Hosted a large group of intellectuals there for a presentation on Proust.

Friends came and went from the place. The neighborhood scared some women, didn't scare others.

Came home in a friend's car one lunch time and found gardeners at work on the yard. I chatted with them, got what I came for out of my apartment and left. Returned that evening to find that they were robbing all of us. A butcher knife was laying on my kitchen counter. One of them must have been in the apartment when I came and went. I didn't have much to steal and I guess I helped to scare them off.

Imagine two palm trees behind the trailer and that's Oakwood.