My Neighbourhood and Other Animals

So the first thing you need to understand is that I live in South Central LA. I feel like it is "techincally" South Central because I am only just south of the #10 freeway (it lulls me to sleep at night), but nonetheless, sketchiness abounds in the blocks around my lopsided old green and white house.

I spend a lot of time in my room, because 1) I just moved here and don't really have much of a life beyond school, 2) I have a lot of reading to do and 3) I like my room. It's so freaking hot here that all available windows are always open, in my house and everyone else's (except, of course, for those lucky bastards with a/c) and this results in a lot of interesting ambient noise.

As I write this, I can hear the latino hip hop (heavy on the bass) of a passing car, distant children screaming at the tops of their lungs, overhead jets, car alarms, and the freeway.

Maybe it's just because I'm taking a brilliant class in film sound from Tom Holman, but I feel the need to list and categorize the ambient noise of my neighbourhood.

First up are the dogs. When I have the back door open and the windows in my room, the noise comes in in stereo. Across the street live three little hilarious dogs and two big scary dogs. The three little dogs hold frequent, frantic conferences that involve running in circles and propping their stumpy little legs up on the chain link to bark at nothing. Sometimes all five dogs get going at once, but that usually means that the neighbourhood kids are dancing around on the other side of the fence, taunting them.

The kids. This street is all about kids riding double on bikes, kids on horrifically small and loud mini motorcycles, kids running up and down and across and all over the street and screaming, all the time, screaming. Very possibly there is a non-stop tag game going on here.

The kids, of course, draw the ice cream and candy trucks, of which there are three that make constant rounds, each singing a tinny tune more pedophilic than the last (one actually starts its tune with hyper happy cartoon voice that says "hello!")

But it's a happy place. For the past two Saturday nights there have been big happy loud house parties that involve some kind of Spanish polka and dance music. Last night I heard the unmistakeable strains of "Achy Breaky Heart" in Spanish and last week the house across the street (not the one with the dogs, next door, right beside the one that was on fire two weeks ago) had some song playing that sampled the X-files theme song. This, with the frequent car alarms, backfiring engines, and helicopters overhead at midnight, makes for aural landscape that makes me feel truly part of the district, even when I don't want to be.

Oh, and someone down the block got a rooster last week.