To live and die in downtown LA: Drug addicts, homelessness and hawks
LOS ANGELES -- One never knows what one might encounter in downtown Los Angeles.
"I'm going to cut your head off," threatened a man with a tangled beard and untied boots who swept past one day in a sudden gust. I walked on, turning back, watching him cross into the shadow of the Bradbury Building, his big coat blowing like a tattered flag.
But then came a moment of unexpected tenderness.
"I want to sing for you," said a woman as I headed toward her on the sidewalk.
I held out a dollar in hopes of hurrying along.
"I want to earn it," she said.
She sang "Amazing Grace" in ripped clothes, her voice a hymn in the traffic. People rolled down windows and listened at the stoplight. No one wanted this rare thing abloom in the dusk to end.
"Now, give me $5," she said, laughing and holding out her hand to my applause.
When I moved a decade ago, there were fewer high rises, less gleam. I had just returned from living for years in Rome, Berlin and as a foreign correspondent and wanted a city that felt at once international and at home, a place of endless languages and an unfinished skyline.
