To Live and Die in L.A

Last weekend my girlfriend and I went on a somewhat impulsive trip to California. The plan was to see her family in Santa Barbara for Friday through Sunday, and then visit my old Towson friends in Los Angeles Monday, and fly back Tuesday.

Our plane touched down late Friday night, close to midnight. By the time we went to the car rental place, it was close to 12:30am. We get in our newish Mazda and head down the road. For the sake of convenience we got GPS for the car. Amanda was in charge of the GPS and I was driving. When we got to the first stop light, I glance at the little car in the GPS machine and noticed it was still driving down its imaginary road. Hmmm.

I drive a little farther, and then start seeing familiar street signs (familiar for all the wrong reasons): Crenshaw, Florance, Normandy. Yes, I'm in Watts, one of America's less fortunate and infamous neighborhoods. The GPS keeps slurting out directions, but when I hear "turn off the ramp here on your right," I know we're completely lost, we're in a goddamn hood nowhere near any ramp.

I had been up since 6:30 that morning, it's 1am now, and I have an hour and a half drive to Santa Barbara ahead of me. I do not have time to be lost in Inglewood ("always up to no good," according to my outspoken family physician, Dr. Dre). Amanda and I start to panic...

I pull up to a restaurant and a homeless man approaches the car explaining, "Just because I'm homeless doesn't mean I don't know where I'm at. You're lost." Keep driving, Matthew.

I drove into the parking lot of a gas station to ask for directions. No less than eight hoods are standing together outside of the station. I can't leave Amanda in the car. I don't want to get out of the car. On the other streets covered in trash thrown about, stray pit bulls eating whatever they could find, shitty cars with dark tinted windows.

Finally we approached a McDonald's drive through window. A kind lady approaches the window, a window complete with jail cell-like metal bars protecting her while she works. You can fit a large drink between the bars, but well, I just hadn't seen that before. The first thing she tells us is "You're lost." She told us what turns to make to get us back to LAX.

On the way back to the airport I tell Amanda to turn off the GPS and then turn it back on. She did and voila, it finally showed us on streets we were actually driving down. I was expecting the GPS to tell us, "Why are you here? Please leave the neighborhood immediately."