7th October. 4:30 pm

One wanderer wore an oversized hoodie that hung low and wide over her sleight frame. I couldn’t see much of her face. Just a wild grin at the centre of a gargantuan swirl of flouro pink plastic. The shimmering wig swung above her head and dipped low over the grubby stains of the hoodie.

LA seems to have more than its fair share of tatty eccentric folks. Is my radar honed? Am I just looking for people who seem mad? I think many of the people I’m seeing in LA are homeless. There’re supposed to be 90,000 of them in this city. That’s about the population of Jersey. It’s also the same number of small US manufacturing businesses predicted to gurgle into liquidation by the end of this year.

Waiting in at Union station, with its high ceilings and frescoed floors, a newspaper reports that California is now considered the first ‘failed state’ of the USA. The Governator is being slammed in the polls to the extent of making Bush look popular - no mean feat.

Newspapers rarely make me feel good. But something about this article tickles my good spot. I have a sneaking feeling that spot is my Australian-made tall-poppy cutter. Fairly pitiful, yes, but suddenly I feel benevolent every time I spend my money here in the city. ‘Take my money you poor buggers! Australia is doing swimmingly by contrast. Another burrito Jerry!’

But sadly, even though it’s the bankers and politicians going pink in the papers they’re not the ones bearing the brunt of this meltdown. One article shows thousands of working-class people lining up at a football stadium. Not there for a game, they receive free medical check from a roaming crew of voluntary health workers. Stadium health checks. I wonder if anyone scalped for a front row seat. The elderly couple interviewed waited hours in the sun before they were even seen. Their daughter complained that they’d worked their whole lives for the prosperity of this State and now they couldn’t even afford a checkup.

People seem worried here. Even my first burrito maker (bless) lamented that he was deprived of his tax return this year. Instead he received an IOU from the Californian government! He also told me fearfully about a ‘tent city’ somewhere in LA, with hundreds of cheap silver dome tents lined up in rows. It’s not the jobless who live there either. It’s the working poor.

The Art Deco grandiosity of Union Station recalls a far more prosperous season in the Californian circus. The pink-haired hoody lady smiles and drifts along, slowly.

Sources:
Found newspapers
Chef in Little Mexico.