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Click Pic to Watch Jack in Pasadena
Jack is disabled. He makes ends meet by spending his days on the streets of Pasadena asking people to put spare change in his cup. He likes to think he gives something back to the streets that give to him. Over time, he has developed a personal philosophy about what he does and how to deal with the challenges of everyday life.
Here are three videos - all posted as separate entries for those viewing through Ant and other RSS mediums.
They show the build-up of my day walking around South Central and the Crenshaw District.
All in all Autumn and I walked for nine hours in a huge circle. When we began our day, we commented to each other how much we were enjoying being in South Central and how we didn't really feel any of the trepidation whilst we were there that people had had about those neighborhoods when they heard I was going to walk there. It's been an issue since beginning this project of how to separate the reputation of a neighborhood from it's reality and how the two influence each other.
Then we walked down this street and met these firemen and had this conversation that put me on edge. (Watch the vid. It's some outtakes from Autumns' B Roll. The beginning I left in just coz I liked it but then you'll see me talking to the fireman.)
How do I balance between what I'm feeling about where I'm at (i.e. fine) with the stories people are telling me about the place while I'm in it? And which is truer, my feeling or their story? How can I trust that the motives of a person telling me their scary stories are pure motives? Or that what's true for them is true for me? This was what kept on coming up throughout the day.
Click Pic to Watch the Firemen in South Central
A little while later, we ran into these DWP guys. They also gave us free, ice-cold water from their truck - the day was very hot.
This is the conversation I had with one of the DWP guys:
Click Pic to Watch DWP Guys in South Central
And then, I guess, this was the climax of the day.
It's taken ages to fix the sound on this one. It looks awful because of what I had to do to trick FCP into raising the sound levels. Please excuse how messy it is and just focus on the content!
Click Pic to Watch Black Power in Crenshaw
Still working on the rest of the S.Central and Crenshaw vids. I'm trying to put more up later tonight.
Click Pic to Watch These Kids in South Central
Here is a miscellaneous minute that Autumn shot of some kids in South Central.
I didn't edit it at all - just swiped it from her tape. I like it though.
In case it's not obvious, the hand signals they're making are gang signs. It brings up an ongoing theme of that day - about how dangerous the place really might be or if people were just enjoying trying to scare me based on the obvious folklore of fear that surrounds those neighborhoods.
Because they were kids, it's easy to think they were just having fun fooling around and showing off. But that guy on the bike with the hat you see me talking to in the video - he was in the middle of telling me that I had to watch out for kids that age because they were most likely to be in gangs and had the least to lose when committing crimes because their young age makes them relatively unpunishable.
That guy also told me I was in a particularly bad neighborhood of South Central. That he's more than once caught paedophiles on that block. That a girl recently got caught in the cross-fire of gang shootings and died just half a block away.
I have a friend who lived in South Central for five years. He told me that this stretch of South Central was a pretty good one to go to and that it is, in his experience, safe.
I'm pretty sure these kids turned a switch on my DV cam that turned the mic off and hence my sound issues. I guess I was an easy target.
I felt stupid sometimes. Naive. Being there, walking around with the stroller-rig. No matter what is truth or fiction about the place, I felt the density of the social politics that surround it. I felt naive because in the innocence of my project I might have been unaware of how strong barriers to connecting and seeing what's real can be - no matter what your intentions. And that it can be simplistic to think they can be transcended so easily.
Click Pic to Watch Mimi in Crenshaw
This is the first of a few vids from my day in Crenshaw, South Central and surround.
As I said, I had mic issues which is why it's taken me so long to post anything and why I'm still working on the other vids from that day. All my sound is at half level and I have to fix it before I can post. Not long now though before they'll be up.
Last week I went to Pasadena, South Pasadena and Alhambra.
Those vids are in the queue behind the S.Central/Crenshaw ones... :)
...Are all on their way. I went to those places last week and have lots of video.
In England we have something we call Sod's Law - it's a bit like Murphy's Law except that it has a much stronger air of bitterness to it. Well, the day I went to South Central and Crenshaw, and got some of my favourite stuff yet, the mic broke (again - but after it had been fixed and working fine for ages) but I didn't realise till I got home because it seemed fine when I was out there. So, I'm busy trying to play with the sound so that I can post some footage. Be patient and keep checking in. I'll post it a.s.a.p. .
Meanwhile, here is a pic Autumn Rooney took of me walking in Crenshaw District. Autumn came with me to take some pics and extra video. She was a boon.
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