Is It Safe Part 2

Pupusas or dancing girls? Options abound at and around the corner of Vermont and Washington. "Con queso," came my reply as Rocky and I veered southeast towards University Park and North University Park. That's right, North University Park is South of University Park, don't ask me why.


The City Living Realty offices sit at the crosshairs of Union, 24th, and Hoover. A current Volkswagen tv spot, showcases these marvelous Victorian Village facades. A sympathetic tow truck driver, opts not to abscond with an errantly parked Passat, and instead tows the objet du desir five feet forward, out a red zone.



Continuing East along 23rd, we increasingly share the sidewalk with USC students or at least student aged youth, skateboarding, biking, wearing backpacks, engaged with their i-things. This brick apartment building has been recently and encouragingly restored. Once, when it was filthy and boarded up, I saw film schoolers shooting a WWII love story against its facade.


I seldom travel further East than Figueroa, not because of what lies beyond--the 110 freeway, warehouse districts, underappreciated East Adams--solely on account of distance. Time to arc West, beginning North on Toberman.

Recently, a client sent me a link to a site titled LAlife.com/WestAdams. The site offers a safety score, the API scores for local schools, and house per square foot data.
The "West Adams" safety score, my prospective buyer bemoaned, was 0.5 on a scale of 0 to 10 (with 10 being best). Furthermore a thing called the LAlife crime index, which purported to measure violent crime, assigned a rating of 54 to the West Adams area, 200% higher than the LA County average. I was a bit taken aback, crestfallen really, and I considered any number of responses and sorry, partial refutations, anecdotal, statistical, the testimonials of others; until, I studied the LAlife site again. The "West Adams" borders were completely misidentified, all wrong, utterly wrong, thoroughly wrong, and included much higher crime areas, adjacent to Baldwin Village for example.

Isn't that just the problem with the world? People who know nothing, read things written by people who know little, and then everyone thinks they know a lot. I'm guilty of that.
At any rate, I'm still out there walking, nearly every night, thus far with only happy incident, greetings from neighbors, short, friendly exchanges with other passers-by, and occasionally a good taco.