L. A.'s MacArthur Park Is Melting In the Dark....

[Pink Freud]

...but that sure as hell ain't sweet green icing flowing down. What a complete hellhole. Even worse than Richard Harris's tortured braying. Jimmy Webb....we long for what MacArthur Park used to be.

If you ever watched the brilliant F/X series "The Shield", you saw how the once-beautiful park, where Langer's Deli across the street still holds forth after 77 years --- but is considering moving out --- is Ground Zero for the Rampart District's worst drug and homeless offenders. In the delightful comedy "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" an adorable Michelle Monaghan, in her mini-Santa suit, delicately traverses the dangerous park at night.

When I lived there I checked it out one day just out of curiosity, and the moment I came out of the subway station across the street I was surrounded by knockoff vendors and their fences, hookers, people laying on the sidewalk....just the worst of human slime. I did manage to walk across the park just to finally see it firsthand, and really wanted to finally dine at Langer's, but I called the latter off...I couldn't wait to get back to the subway station and outta there.

I seriously wondered why the fire department, who shows us numerous times weekly to revive collapsed fentanyl users, even bothers. Would the world really be any worse off if they let them die on their own?

Here's Steve Lopez's ("The Soloist") partial account of what a popular fast-food operator right across the street goes through every day just to open the business; the pictures are heartbreaking if you google "LA Times, Yoshinoya, MacArthur Park":

Surrounded by violence, drug dealing and overdoses, workers at this L.A. restaurant struggle to hang on

By Steve Lopez

In one sense, the Yoshinoya Japanese Kitchen across the street from MacArthur Park couldn’t be in a better location. Thousands of potential customers stream by each day on foot, headed to and from work, home, shopping, school and the Metro station. In another sense, it couldn’t be in a worse location. The fentanyl epidemic is often literally at its doorstep, along with the same raft of public safety issues that prompted the exasperated owner of nearby Langer’s Delicatessen to tell me in August that he was thinking of shutting down after 77 years in business.

Yoshinoya manager Hortencia Garcia told me that when she gets to the restaurant each morning at the corner or Wilshire and Alvarado, there’s often work to do before the food prep begins. “We have to move all of these people and remove all the trash that’s left behind,” Garcia said. Security guard Gabriel Sanchez, meanwhile, said he routinely shoos away people selling or using drugs in front of the restaurant or in its parking lot, and he carries Narcan in his pocket to revive overdose victims. Altercations are part of the job, too.

“I’ve had knives pulled on me, I’ve had people try to stab me with a screwdriver, and just the other day I got hit with a wooden bat,” Sanchez said.
Garcia lamented the fact that the fast-food establishment’s name has become attached to the notorious alley that runs behind restaurant property and draws a shockingly brazen level of drug activity day and night. “Yoshinoya alley,” Garcia said................

........The scene in that alley doesn’t look quite real. It’s like the set of a movie about the darkest corner of hell. I’ve seen several dozen people gathered there at once under the haze of fentanyl smoke, bodies and faces ravaged, and I’ve wondered each time why there isn’t a massive relief effort under way — like you might see in an emergency response to a natural disaster.........

.........Gang activity and the trafficking of stolen goods have plagued the MacArthur Park area for decades, including when Garcia raised her five children in the neighborhood. But she doesn’t recall as much homelessness or open drug use back then, and “there were consequences” for illicit behavior. “Now everybody does whatever they want” and nothing is done about it, she said. Early on the evening of Oct. 9, a middle-aged man overdosed on the sidewalk in front of Yoshinoya.

I was working on a column about L.A. Fire Department’s Station 11 — one of the busiest in the nation, partly because of overdose calls — and watched as paramedics pushed naloxone, an opioid overdose drug, through an IV line and revived him. Garcia said he keeps doses in his pocket, in the trunk of his car, and behind the counter at the restaurant in case a customer pays with cash that has traces of fentanyl on it.......

......Garcia said she’s been with Yoshinoya for 10 years and was assigned to the Alvarado franchise about two years ago. She said she told management a fence was needed to keep people from loitering on the property. She said an iron gate, about eight feet high, was installed at a cost of about $45,000 and sidewalk vendors had to be pushed closer to the curb to clear a path in front of the restaurant. A fortress was needed inside the restaurant, as well. A glass partition was installed to separate kitchen staff from customers.

“I feel bad for the residents — for the ladies that walk their kids,” said customer Daniel Leyva. “Have you seen that alley? That’s crazy.”

Just a few years ago the songwriter Jimmy Webb held a concert in MacArthur Park, saving his most popular song, of course, for last, late in the evening as the thugs and dealers moved in.

[Ed Fraser]

This is a St. Louis forum. Not L.A. Nobody cares.

[Pink Freud]

This is a St. Louis forum. Not L.A. Nobody cares.

Nobody cares about you, either, but you still post.