4th of July Fears in Silver Lake.

I thought about those WW2 English movies today. What is the one about the married woman and the writer in an apartment being bombed, where he is killed, but when she prays he revives? And then she breaks up with him – her sacrifice for the miracle.

Anyway, minus the lovers, and the miracle , it’s like a war up here on Waverly. Of course, being on a cliff, every 4th of July we hear the bombs, firecrackers echoing across the Glendale valley, all day and night. That’s typical.

Most years it’s pretty fun, but not this year– It’s more of a warning.

Now we hide in our apartments as the Others, the men with no names or tags or proof or licenses? — The Taylor Equities workers — take over the whole courtyard and building. They blast and saw and chop holes in walls. Sure, mostly they look like clowns, pretending to work, just to annoy us. But clowns are scary, too.

They email us warnings and schedules and water turn-offs, and slap notices and warnings and threats on doors constantly, as if they want us to make a collage with them.  I always open my door with dread.

I never met this Fellow

Attended or alone

Without a tighter Breathing

And Zero at the Bone.

The fireworks are pretty this year, with not as much smog as usual, but then you remember tomorrow the trucks WILL come again, and …well, not take us away, just run over us. They take away tons and tons of waste from the apartments they gut and destroy: beautiful wood, like new built-in appliances,  simple lines and wide open rooms.  All gone. There are between 7 and 15 trucks here every day – maybe 20 workers. The workers stare at us and walk around like they own the courtyard…and steal our parking spaces and leave food wrappers and gross waste.

Over 4 months now. We are a war-torn village. Taylor Equities has literally destroyed our community of long-term residents, similar to the man in Santa Monica who drove his car deliberately right through the farmer’s market. (Psst. He did it, but got away with…murder.)

Probably another tenant will move tomorrow- more than 1/3 of the complex is empty now. Their moving trucks, added to the construction and harassment trucks,  squish in between them to take people away from here forever, never to be seen again.

Steven Taylor, you suck.