Hollywood Homeless Registry - Day 3
After Karaoke for Tristan last night, I came home and watched TV since I only had a couple hours until I had to get up for our last day of the Homeless Registry. This was the roughest morning out of them all, not just because I had gone out last night and didn't get any sleep. First, it was sprinkling/on the verge of raining so it was moist out and probably meant that the folks on the street took longer to get situated and sleeping than usual, so they were really grumpy when we tried to wake them up. Secondly, we had gone back to all the people who had previously told us they didn't want to do it when we first met them, but that they might do it later. Apparently, they were most likely just saying that to get us to leave them alone, and didn't actually expect that we would be coming back and waking them up again. In all, we only got three surveys done this morning.
A lady that I had talked to on Monday named Stanley had said the other day that she didn't want to do the survey because she had already taken it downtown. She specifically remembered the name of the person from Common Ground who had done her survey, and I told her that person was helping out with our Hollywood survey so I would talk to her about it. I had actually met Stanley before when I had done outreach with PATH and I remembered her because she has a long, complicated, nonsensical story that she tells each time I have seen her. Anyway, I came back out and found her this morning and at first she was nice, but quickly became hostile when I pressed her to do the survey with me. She then proceeded to tell me, among other things, that she is a Native American from Switzerland, that she already has a house, that I was not really trying to help her, that I'm part of a government cover-up, and that she has to declare war in order to leave the state of California because she is a hostage of former governor Grey Davis. She got so upset that she woke up some of the other people who were sleeping on the sidewalk (the side benefit being that one of them was so exasperated that he decided to take the survey since he was awake anyway) and she got louder and louder. Finally I called the girls from Common Ground so that they could come talk to her, but they didn't have any more luck than I did and Stanley got up and walked away in the end.
We also went back to see Lewis but he still didn't want to do the survey; Courtney from PATH told me she would go back and talk to him later as he didn't want to talk to us so early in the morning.
After we finished and did our debriefing, it was kind of sad to realize that our team was all done and that we wouldn't be hanging out on the streets of Hollywood talking to homeless people at 4 in the morning again. I thanked everyone and told them I couldn't have asked for a better team; hopefully we can stay in touch as I've added them on Facebook.
At work I listened to a CD by The Lilac Time which I had borrowed from Marc last night. It's mellow and a little folksy; I really like it. I remember seeing their first album reviewed in Rolling Stone back when I was a kid but as they didn't get radio or MTV airplay, I never got a chance to check them out - oh, those days before the internet!
I managed to get another $1,000 donation for my team so I went and picked it up after work, this time it was from Hollywood Vaults on Seward. David, the owner, asked me specifically about a homeless guy who sleeps in an alley behind Highland Avenue. I said that was out of the boundaries of the area we were surveying, but promised to see if I could get the PATH team to go try to survey him, and then I called Courtney to ask her if they could do that.
I had intended to clean the house, do laundry, and cook dinner but I was so tired when I got home that all I wanted to do was lay on the couch. I asked Dylan if he would mind ordering pizza, and he did! So, we finally watched the last two episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race since we were behind. Somehow we had both managed to avoid hearing who won. I was actually really happy with the winner, Tyra - the 'other' Tyra! At first, I hated her on the show and thought she was a major bitch. But there was no denying that she looked amazing on pretty much every challenge. As the season went on, I grew to like her more and more so I was really happy she won, although I would have been happy with any of the final three winning.
After that we watched Modern Family, and then I worked some on my album. I finally finished another song, "Recurring Dreams (Nightmare Symbols)" [see previous blog entry].
Then we watched Southpark and Ugly Americans before going to bed.
Hello 2010, goodbye junk!
NEW YEARS RESOLUTION LOG ENTRY 116
"Reach The Beach" by The Fixx, cassette tape. I really don't know much about this tape, I bought it for cheap sometime in LA and I'm not sure if I ever got around to listening to it. "Red Skies at Night" is one of my favorite songs, but I'm not sure if it's even on this album or not.
A lady that I had talked to on Monday named Stanley had said the other day that she didn't want to do the survey because she had already taken it downtown. She specifically remembered the name of the person from Common Ground who had done her survey, and I told her that person was helping out with our Hollywood survey so I would talk to her about it. I had actually met Stanley before when I had done outreach with PATH and I remembered her because she has a long, complicated, nonsensical story that she tells each time I have seen her. Anyway, I came back out and found her this morning and at first she was nice, but quickly became hostile when I pressed her to do the survey with me. She then proceeded to tell me, among other things, that she is a Native American from Switzerland, that she already has a house, that I was not really trying to help her, that I'm part of a government cover-up, and that she has to declare war in order to leave the state of California because she is a hostage of former governor Grey Davis. She got so upset that she woke up some of the other people who were sleeping on the sidewalk (the side benefit being that one of them was so exasperated that he decided to take the survey since he was awake anyway) and she got louder and louder. Finally I called the girls from Common Ground so that they could come talk to her, but they didn't have any more luck than I did and Stanley got up and walked away in the end.
We also went back to see Lewis but he still didn't want to do the survey; Courtney from PATH told me she would go back and talk to him later as he didn't want to talk to us so early in the morning.
After we finished and did our debriefing, it was kind of sad to realize that our team was all done and that we wouldn't be hanging out on the streets of Hollywood talking to homeless people at 4 in the morning again. I thanked everyone and told them I couldn't have asked for a better team; hopefully we can stay in touch as I've added them on Facebook.
At work I listened to a CD by The Lilac Time which I had borrowed from Marc last night. It's mellow and a little folksy; I really like it. I remember seeing their first album reviewed in Rolling Stone back when I was a kid but as they didn't get radio or MTV airplay, I never got a chance to check them out - oh, those days before the internet!
I managed to get another $1,000 donation for my team so I went and picked it up after work, this time it was from Hollywood Vaults on Seward. David, the owner, asked me specifically about a homeless guy who sleeps in an alley behind Highland Avenue. I said that was out of the boundaries of the area we were surveying, but promised to see if I could get the PATH team to go try to survey him, and then I called Courtney to ask her if they could do that.
I had intended to clean the house, do laundry, and cook dinner but I was so tired when I got home that all I wanted to do was lay on the couch. I asked Dylan if he would mind ordering pizza, and he did! So, we finally watched the last two episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race since we were behind. Somehow we had both managed to avoid hearing who won. I was actually really happy with the winner, Tyra - the 'other' Tyra! At first, I hated her on the show and thought she was a major bitch. But there was no denying that she looked amazing on pretty much every challenge. As the season went on, I grew to like her more and more so I was really happy she won, although I would have been happy with any of the final three winning.
After that we watched Modern Family, and then I worked some on my album. I finally finished another song, "Recurring Dreams (Nightmare Symbols)" [see previous blog entry].
Then we watched Southpark and Ugly Americans before going to bed.
Hello 2010, goodbye junk!
NEW YEARS RESOLUTION LOG ENTRY 116
"Reach The Beach" by The Fixx, cassette tape. I really don't know much about this tape, I bought it for cheap sometime in LA and I'm not sure if I ever got around to listening to it. "Red Skies at Night" is one of my favorite songs, but I'm not sure if it's even on this album or not.
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