The ’82 Blade Runner movie got everything right about Los Angeles except for the flying cars. 

Megacorp sky-high towers that look down upon the working poor? Check. Rampant homelessness? Check. Militarized police that beat and execute people in the street? Check. Toxic air and poison rain? Checkety check check check. Hell, after wildfires became a regular “Season”, even the orange sky part came true.

There are sprawling homeless encampments. Tent cities. They line the streets, the freeways, the overpasses. There are even whole blocks; Communities Of The Unhoused. Folks just trying to survive. They are Artists. Teachers. Fast Food Workers. Yeah that’s right, many of them work. Many even have more than one job. 

Working families.

Children.

The minimum wage here in Los Angeles is $15 per hour. That might sound real good if you’re stuck in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, or you were born before 1970, but when the average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in LA is upwards of $1800 a month, $15 an hour don’t cut it. Nowhere close.

Grandparents.

Pets.

And that’s just rent, by the way. Then you got health insurance, dental insurance, car insurance. You gotta have a car in LA. Odds are that, if you are fortunate enough to be housed, you live at least 5 miles away from your $15 an hour job. Your first one, I mean. Other one is across town, maybe 10 miles if you’re lucky. 

Public transportation? That was killed dead in the 1940’s before you or I ever got here; a lucrative deal between Henry "I Love Fascists" Ford and The Big City. It’s why there are so many cars. And dealerships.

Phone bill, internet bill. Gotta have a phone. Most places only accept cashless now. The homeless folks all have phones. Poverty and Tech mashed together. Just like Blade Runner ‘82.

Utilities. That’s a big one. Literally. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is your only option. And, like any unregulated monopoly, they charge through the fuckin’ nose. Average LADWP bill will set you back $150 a month for a 1 bedroom apartment.

Groceries. Do you enjoy clean food, friend? By clean, I mean without poisons and chemicals? First off, you’re shit outta luck because you’re in the United States of Capitalism, and second, Whole Foods is as close as you’ll get. That’s if you can afford to shop there, of course. Hard to do on $30 an hour, much less $15. Don’t worry though, there’s no shortage of options. Gelson’s. Actually that’s more expensive than Whole Foods. More of an “upscale” community thing. You know who we mean. Let me try again. Von’s. Middle of the road pricing, owned by the Von der Ahe family until they sold it to Household Finance Corporation which is owned by HSBC Bank who then sold it to Albertson’s which in turn is owned by several investment firms, primarily Cerbrus Capital Management. Yeah see that’s the thing, there are a million brands to choose from in Los Angeles but they’re all fronts now, owned by the MegaCorps, just like the city set facades built on the movie studio backlots. Yes, even the Dollar Store. Don’t worry though, they all constantly adjust the pricing of their goods and services algorithmically with AI, even while you sleep, based on the freshest customer datasets. This is done in the interest of consumer freedom of course, ensuring that each customer pays the price that is tailored specifically for their lifestyle.

Oh yeah, what about quality of life type stuff? You know, going out to dinner, or the movies, or-

Anyway so if you miss enough payments and can't borrow money and run out of favors and [EXTRAPOLATE] you end up homeless. But not community-less. You will fall into a whole network.

An invisible society with its own rules and services. 

And each and every month the cops roll in and tear it all apart, like clockwork.

It’s called “clearing”. Here’s how it works: Once a homeless community has built itself up enough to function it’s declared a nuisance. An eyesore. A danger. Being homeless is illegal, after all. So the Boys In Blue get the call and raid the community, descending like the cosplay paramilitary operation wet dream that they are. They systematically strip the community of their property; stealing anything that they themselves want, and making it a point to destroy the rest. In front of them. Often, they laugh while doing it. Complain and you get arrested and fined. Look at the cops the wrong way and you get arrested and fined. Resist and you get beaten and arrested and fined and zero'd and then fined again for littering. Don’t worry though, CalTrans is there too, to clean it all up. All that "garbage" that was once the meager possessions of a hardworking community. And once everyone has been "processed",  the pigs peal out, and CalTrans heads towards the dump, and the space that once held a vibrant community is left empty again, save for a few broken bits of glass and metal, some bloodstains, and the loudest silence you’ve ever heard in your life.

Not long after that, the saddest and most badass thing happens, simultaneously.

The survivors come back.

And they start to rebuild.

A Christian church on Sunset Blvd holds a free bbq for practitioners and the local community every Sunday. It’s got white marble steps and faux-roman columns out front, but that doesn’t stop them from rolling out the bbq and feeding all the people that line up. What did stop them was when homeless folks started joining that line. Church put up an iron fence and gate around its white marble steps and faux-roman columns. "Food for local community members only" says the sign. I guess if you’re homeless you’re not a community member. I wonder what Jesus would have to say about that. 

If only there were some way to check. 

The first thing you should know about cleaning out a restaurant grease trap with your bare hands is that you shouldn’t. The second thing is, if you DO have to do it, at least make sure you’ve got some grease-cutting soap around before you start. 

I’m scrubbing my hands for the umpteenth time with a half-used bar of Dial  in The Industrial Sink in the back, next to the piles of dishes waiting for me, when The Boss saunters past and pours himself a drink from the bar. He doesn’t mention the brand new ankle monitor, but we all see it.

“We’re down a driver” Shooter pants, straining to flip about 150 pounds of fresh, sticky pizza dough out of The Mixer. 

“You’re gonna have to do the deliveries today kid” He tells me, before screaming with rage and thrashing with The Mixer in storeroom closet they keep it in.

I’m used to it; Shooter is prone to fits of mania; maniacal laughter one moment, rage and paranoia the next. He talks to the flys. 

Oh yeah, they’re not up to code. Never. What they are up to is one step ahead of the Health Inspector. 

It goes like this. You’re slogging through another shift, making minimum wage and shitty pizza, when all of a sudden the phone rings. It’s either The Boss, Shooter, or The Boss’s Wife, but the message is always the same no matter the messenger.

“We just got the tip, the Health Inspector is coming today” They’ll whisperscream into the receiver of a payphone somewhere.

That’s your cue, you and whoever else from the rotating cast of fuckups and down-and-outs is working that day.

There’s Lon, a soft-spoken guy who stands slightly hunched in a way that suggests Life kicked the shit out of him and he never walked right since. He’s got real sad eyes and goes through smokes end-to-end, one after another, although he’ll always bum you one. His car is endlessly overheating, so often that he’ll pull up out back in-between deliveries in a plume of steam and exhaust while I bring him out more water for the radiator. 

There’s Big Tim, a virulent racist, sexist, misogynist and homophobe who heaves the pizza dough up into the air like he’s competing in a shot-put tournament. When he catches it you can hear the dough go splat against his huge, sweaty, musky, hairy forearms.

There’s Osama, or at least that’s what everyone calls him. He’s from The Middle East, you see. A highly skilled cook, he’ll work faster and harder than anyone, including me. He’s got a sincere laugh and always insists that I set aside the raw gizzards from the frozen chickens that I’m tasked with sawing in half for BBQ orders; he takes them, does some kind of magic with spices, olive oil  and the microwave and wolfs them down. He never directly answers questions about his past, no matter how trivial.

Finally there’s Mick, a five foot nothing Irish woman about ten years older than me who drinks like a fish and wishes her boyfriend wasn’t a shithead. She can sling the pies in and out of the industrial oven with surgical precision and has the burn scars to prove it.

Once The Call comes in, we all must spring into action. Flies are unfairly assassinated in cold blood, rats are chased away. Anything with an expiration date gets tossed, odds are it expired before any of us started. The stacks of dishes in the back from three days ago are thrown in the Industrial Sink, hidden behind the flour bags, or get a temporary vacation in The Garbage Dumpster out back. All the forever-malfunctioning appliances get triage; The Industrial Oven gets its months of soot scraped off, The Freezer That Doesn’t Freeze gets its coolant leak duct taped, The One Toilet gets unclogged and bleached, and The Grease Trap gets cleaned for the first time since the last time. 

After all that, the Health Inspector usually eats his free slice, drinks his free Diet Coke, gives the place a fresh “C” certificate and fucks off. We then modify his ruling with the “A” from the One True Certificate, the one from way back when the place first opened.

This time it’s different though; no way The Boss is wearing an ankle monitor for a Health Code violation.

I’m too young to legally drive, but I already know how. Lon is out, which means I’m on delivery, which means I’m driving Osama’s car; he’s the only other person working, and he’s gotta stay to make the orders. His car is an ancient, beat-to-shit land yacht of some obscure variety that stalls if you put it in first gear. That means it’ll croak at every stoplight unless you let it idle and then crack the drivers’ side door, pushing with your left foot until you get enough momentum to drop it into second. We are not known for our delivery time.

I don’t care. I’m too young. This is all romantic to me. I drive with one hand, smoking with the other, radio cranked through the one busted speaker. The summer wind is in my hair and I smell like marinara sauce.

Years later I learn that the place was a money laundering front for an illegal grow-farm up in Mendocino.