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William ShawTHE RAIN What Los Angeles lacks in grand monument, it makes up for in symbol. It does metaphors of the last days of Sodom so well. The 90s in particular were good for apocalyptic imagery here; fires, riots and earthquakes. The second storm of the El Niño season breaks around 11am. Tarmac laid on desert soil can’t begin to absorb the inches of water that falls. The torrent quickly overwhelms the storm drains. I’m driving slowly down the fat avenue of La Brea. The road slopes gently downwards from the Hollywood Hills and the rushing water quickly reaches a foot in depth on either side of me. It’s trash collection day too. All the plastic garbage cans placed on the sidewalk earlier this morning are swept away. They drift down to the junctions, forming barricades of blue and black plastic, blocking the intersections with floating trash bags. Yippee. South of Santa Monica Boulevard the drains are so full a manhole cover has popped like a champagne cork and a four-foot column of water is jetting out of the middle of the road. ...the first time he remembers seeing his father, Herman was eighteen... Los Angeles blue-skied cool vanishes. Everything is different. In the week I’d listened to an AM station. It said that in last weekend’s storm there were six thousand traffic accidents in the greater LA area. Six thousand. I laughed.The legions of homeless are suddenly more conspicuous: the shopping carts they push are now covered in brightly coloured plastic in an effort to keep their worldly goods dry. The tired figures pushing them are wrapped up likewise too, in capes or plastic trash-can liners, strapped at the waist. Pedestrians run from one storefront shelter to the next. I turn west and drive carefully to La Cienega, then south. There, standing on the corner by the Shell gas station at the junction with Pico, dressed in black and yellow overalls, spinning a black umbrella in a circle around him in a wide arc like he’s Gene Kelly himself in the downpour is Herman. Herman is 24, dreams of being a hip hop star, and lives alone in a one-room apartment in the area known locally as The Jungle, east of La Brea and Coliseum. The Jungle. It gained the name in the 1980s because it’s both verdant and dangerous. Not so long ago it was a middle-class area, nice apartment blocks clustering round swimming pools and palm trees. Since the 80s it’s become a centre for gang warfare, the local Black P Stone Bloods attempting to defend it against the Rollin’ 30s and Rollin’ 40s Crips and, more recently, the dominant Latino 18th Street Gang. Of course the LAPD aren’t allowed to call it The Jungle any more; they have to say Lower Baldwin Hills. Herman has nothing to do with the gangs that rule the territory around his scruffy apartment block. He’s a polite, gangly youth who wears dark blue denim who sees it as his duty to chase away the crack smokers who hassle his elderly neighbours. I’ve seen him doing it. “Don’t even give them a quarter. Don’t even give them a cent,” he orders the old man living next to him. “Don’t even give them a quarter of a cent,” he says, shooing away a shuffle-footed woman in a gray and black leopardskin print blouse. Herman’s life is enough of a struggle without the crack addicts. He’s one of the Crenshaw Hustlers. The Crenshaw Hustlers are a group of street sellers who pound the local sidewalks selling any goods they can buy cheap and sell at a profit. There are no jobs around here: instead the Hustlers make small change on the streets, standing alongside the Nation Of Islam evangelists who hail the cars as they slow and pass on. Usually Herman hangs out at Crenshaw and Stocker with the rest of them selling Krazy Kut t-shirts he’s shredded patiently with a razor, or bubblegum-flavoured scent. El Niño, however, brings new opportunities and in the spirit of American entrepreneurship, Herman grasps them. I park up. Herman spies me and waves. “I made three hundred dollars already today,” he smiles happily. It’s a fortune. “Run out of umbrellas once.” Magnanimously, he offers me one at cost: five dollars. He lets the people who work at the Shell station and at the Bank Of America have them at the same reduced price. That way no one moves him on. He’s been saving for the plane fare to Florida. In one day he’s earned enough to take him there. His father keeps telling Herman he should move out to live with him and help him with his landscaping business The streets are safer out there. But Herman isn’t sure he wants to go. He keeps a photo of his father in the mess of his room back at the apartment, an old black-and-white three-by-five of a young man in a military uniform, about to go to Vietman. He doesn’t really know his father. His father never really came home. The first time he remembers seeing him, Herman was eighteen. But it seems now he’s interested in building bridges. Or maybe just getting some cheap labour. All the same. Herman feels obligated to visit the man he hardly knows. The rain comes on down. “You heard a weather forecast?” he asks. “More rain this afternoon,” I say. “Another big storm coming through on Tuesday.” “Wooo,” he grins. Then: “Maybe I’ll stay in town a few more days.”  William Shaw's last book was Superhero For Hire. The photo is by "dearsomeone".1:29 PM - 16/6/2006 - post comment
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