los angeles

Future Former L.A. Resident

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Story 50 of 52

By M. Snarky

Our written plan to exit from Van Nuys (gentrified in 2007 as Lake Balboa), located in the San Fernando Valley, a suburb north of Los Angeles proper, stemmed from an encounter with a person I dubbed Dirtman.

In and of itself, taking the effort to write out an exit plan makes it a serious affair by default. It makes it tangible. It makes it actionable. It moves it from a nebulous idea to reality.

How we met Dirtman was something out of a dark comedy. You see, my wife Kim and I walk with our Aussie-Doodle dog named Sydney almost every night around our neighborhood. We arguably know it better than any of our neighbors. I wrote about Walking in My Neighborhood in detail in July of 2024. It hasn’t changed much.

We know which houses have the dogs that start barking a block away, and which houses have the dogs that start barking when you are two doors down, and which houses have the lying-in-wait assassins that postpone barking until you are directly in front of them before they release their fury…and subsequently makes you release your adrenaline. These furry fuckers are almost exclusively the mean little dog breeds. I recently wrote about my firsthand experience with Mean Little Dogs too. You can hear some of these dogs continue to bark long after you are gone and onto the next block…or two.

On a recent July evening as we were walking our usual three-mile route around the neighborhood, we turned the corner into the second cul-de-sac south of our house and this is where we first encountered Dirtman. There he was, standing on top of a large pile of dirt that was dumped in the street, stomping his feet on it, and raising a huge cloud of dust. Apparently, this dirt was originally to be used for someone’s backyard landscaping project, but since it was on a public street, Dirtman appropriated it and then proceeded to flatten it out in his apparent rage against dirt.

Next, Dirtman took off his backpack and his heavy canvas jacket­­—which was already completely out of place for a hot July evening—and then he started dragging the jacket back and forth through the loose dirt very deliberately (as if he were dredging a piece of chicken through a pan of flour), and then he threw the jacket down and started throwing huge handfuls of dirt all over the entire garment. Dirtman then proceeded to carefully pick up his jacket by the collar and gently shake the dirt off—emulating the character Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip the entire time—and then he folded it up carefully and angrily threw it back down on the pile of dirt again. Then he proceeded to roll his body around in the dirt pile like he was a human steamroller, or as if he were practicing the Stop, Drop, and Roll fire safety technique that he learned in elementary school, assuming of course that he did attend an elementary school of some sort.

He didn’t say one single word, but he did sneeze uncontrollably a few times. By now, his perspiration was turning the layer of dirt that was stuck to his face, neck, and arms into a thin layer of dark mud, looking like something you’d get in a fancy day spa for $500. Maybe he was just trying to channel an Aboriginal man living in the outback.

It was next to impossible to tell how old he was with the coating of dirt and mud, but I would guess he was thirty-something. His dark eyes had a glazed, wild look in them indicating that he was probably very high on something, and I did my best not to make direct eye contact as we passed him at a distance. I once read in some psychology article somewhere that direct eye contact with a person who is having an obvious mental breakdown can trigger a violent reaction. This no-direct-eye-contact technique comes in handy here in the suburbs of Los Angeles where the crazies now rule the streets.

As we walked past Dirtman, I noticed that the gate at the end of the street that leads to the infernally busy Balboa Blvd was wide open. The only thing missing was a flashing neon sign that said, “Open.” This was unusual because everyone who lives on any of the six cul-de-sacs that dead-end at Balboa know to keep the gates closed and locked to prevent the encroaching homeless population from entering the neighborhood, or at least offer a minor deterrent for the lazy ones. I believed keeping the gates locked was common knowledge around here, but someone apparently didn’t get the memo. It was probably a preoccupied teenager staring at the screen of their smartphone.

As I walked past the gate, I closed it and made sure that it locked. Kim said (in the sweetest, most sarcastic voice one could ever hear), “Great; now he’s trapped in our neighborhood.” It made me chuckle at first, but in the next moment I realized my folly: By not knowing the true state of mind of this Dirtman fellow, closing that gate may have seemed to him like I was locking him in and now my mind was racing with all sorts of wild what-if scenarios of nasty in-your-face verbal altercations and unrelenting physical violence. Then I remembered that I had my pepper spray with me and felt a sense of relief, but I kept him in the corner of my eye anyway.

As we turned the corner out of the cul-de-sac to continue our walk, Kim uttered the words that no husband ever wants to hear: “I don’t feel safe in our neighborhood anymore.” This sent a chill down my spine. We have lived in this neighborhood for 26-years. This statement meant—in no uncertain terms—that we were going to need to start planning our exit NOW. Our hand was forced not by a job change, or by a bad economic situation, nor by any other internal, familial, or personal issues; it was forced by externalities that we have no control over.

Granted, this homeless population has been slowly yet perpetually closing in from all of the major boulevards and streets around our neighborhood: Roscoe Blvd to the north, Saticoy Street to the south, Balboa Blvd to the east, and Louise Ave to the west. We found ourselves living on an island surrounded by a sea of homelessness and lawlessness.

Street takeovers, street gang graffiti, deadly assaults on public transportation, homeless encampments, wildfires started by people living in homeless encampments, robberies, burglaries, RVs in various states of decay parked on the streets, abandoned cars, piles of trash, fires, squatters, open drug deals and open drug use in the middle of the day, and people sleeping on the sidewalks have been pervasive for years, but it has mostly stayed in the periphery of our neighborhood. I’m sorry to say that we had become mostly desensitized to it because you see it everywhere, every single day!

The city and county of Los Angeles are abject failures on so many levels that it truly was only a matter of time before we would be forced to leave in order to preserve what waning sanity, patience, and hope that we have left. Mind you, this is not a trivial decision. I was born in Los Angeles, and I’ve lived here for most of my life. I met Kim (who was born in Burbank) and we got married and raised our children here. Our eldest son Travis died here. It makes me so sad that this formerly fantastic city—a city of the world—is now entirely crestfallen and has become so incredibly untenable that it repels its own native sons and daughters.

Los Angeles has completely lost its soul and there is zero sense of community anymore. It is now mostly populated by cliques who are only looking out for themselves. The harsh reality is that tribalism rules the day here as the corrupt cabal in city hall continues to circle the drain.

What was once a shining city on a hill, Los Angeles is now an imploding, burning city poised at the gates of hell. The City of Angels has completely ceased to exist—nowadays it more closely resembles Gotham City.

The reasons most people moved into the Valley in the first place was that it was not like living in Los Angeles: The Valley was less congested with traffic and less crowded, it was cleaner, it had better schools, it had newer malls, it was suburbia on steroids for all of the right reasons. But now the Valley has simply become an extension of Los Angeles for all of the wrong reasons, and it is hard to tell the difference between the two anymore.

Fortunately, our little 73-year-old post war tract house sold quickly, and we close escrow soon. We bought a place in another county as far away from Los Angeles as our jobs and careers would allow. I hope the new neighbors will forgive us for being from L.A. On second thought, maybe we should downplay that little fact

Best of luck with the 2028 Olympics, Los Angeles, but I’m sure that the city will put on a lovely façade as only phony Tinseltown can do, and then it will be back to business as usual: broke, broken, corrupt, dysfunctional, and crime ridden. I wonder where they’ll hide all of the homeless people and their derelict RVs and travel trailers for the television coverage of the games. Maybe the city will give them an EBT card and directions to Slab City.

Perhaps Dirtman was simply a metaphor for this insane, dirty, scummy, out of control city.

Vaya con Dios, Los Angeles.

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

It’s Everybody’s Fault

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Story 40 of 52

By M. Snarky

Another controversy and another peaceful protest that morphed into a riot in Los Angeles which looks remarkably similar to a Dodgers World Series championship celebration. Some things will never change.

This time, it’s about federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the sanctuary city of Los Angeles within the sanctuary state of California enforcing federal immigration law, the media narrative of which is labeled as “ICE Raids.”  When the citizens of L.A. got news of this, the peaceful protests began. Not soon afterward, the wolves amongst the peaceful protesters started vandalizing public and private property and then they started flying foreign flags and started burning American flags amongst many other things and then they started looting businesses and hurting people. This is the point at which the protesters completely lost my support for their cause, however noble it may have been.

President Trump, in his usual fascist bullying manner deployed the National Guard to support ICE allegedly without notifying Mayor Karen Bass or Governor Gavin Newsom. Mayor Bass blames Trump for the rioting yet resists cooperating with ICE. Governor Newsom blames Trump for the rioting yet resists cooperating with ICE. And then in Governor Newsom’s perpetual effort to both appear on national television and not let a crisis go to waste (right out of the Rahm Emanual playbook), thumbs his nose at Trump and promises to sue but does nothing to actually deescalate the violence. The idiocy of this is breathtaking.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” Well, here we are. Great job everyone.

For the record, I completely reject Trump dispatching military resources to my city – this is not 1930’s fascist Germany or Italy. People are going to get hurt and killed, and this blood will be on the hands of Trump, Newsom, and Bass, the trifecta of disastrous political leadership.

That being said, I don’t see this immigration issue as black-and-white at all; I see this as the culmination of failure of leadership at the federal, state, and city government levels for decades which has brought this city to another boiling point. The only black-and-white that I can discern from all of this chaos is that you have the open border advocates (typically Democrats) on the one side, and you have the law-and-order advocates (typically Republicans) on the other side, and on this illegal immigration issue, the two of these are mutually exclusive.

I am a U.S. citizen that was born right here in Los Angeles. I’m also a migrant every time I travel internationally, and not only do I have to prove who I am with my U.S. government issued passport, I also have to fill out a visa form, letting the foreign government know whether I’m there for business or leisure, where I’m going to, and where and for how long will I be staying. Sometimes they also want to know what my profession is and my annual income, whether I’m married or single, and so on and so forth. My face is scanned. My thumbprint is taken. This is all in an effort to validate that I am who I say I am. In the background, I’m sure that my information is checked with INTERPOL and FBI databases to assure that I am not a terrorist threat, or a criminal, or a person of interest. Only after getting clearance, will I be allowed into their country. Fair enough.

It’s a slight inconvenience, but not insanely difficult. I have no idea what actually happens to someone who is red flagged other than they are taken to a secure area, but it is probably very inconvenient and very likely to include incarceration and deportation, and maybe a strip search and a body cavity check and a beating or two, none of which I want to experience.

But here at the southern border of the U.S. we are not so vigorous as out international counterparts, and this is where things really start falling apart with our immigration policy and law enforcement, and I think that there is plenty of blame to go around.

I believe that the federal government is complicit (dare I say derelict?) when they elected to not vigorously enforce existing federal immigration laws at the porous southern border for decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

The state of California is complicit in its effort to ignore federal immigration laws by allowing undocumented migrants to work in the state without proper federal authority or approval, essentially ignoring appropriate lawful identification and immigrant status verification.

The Los Angeles City Council are complicit in their sanctuary city policy prohibiting city resources from being used to assist federal immigration enforcement. Was this actually approved by the voters in the city, or is this just a flex?

The California Democratic party is complicit for allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and for providing public services at the expense of the state taxpayers like in-state tuition discounts for universities, Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) coverage, financial aid like Cash Assistance for Program for Immigrants (CAPI), food and nutrition assistance like California Food Assistance Program (CFAP), and not requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. This, I think, smacks of pandering to a group of vulnerable people for a voting bloc that will keep Democrats in power. These programs and services also make the state of California a magnet for illegal immigration.

The Republican party is complicit due to their “pro-business” platform (which really isn’t) and wanting cheap labor for their business constituency, so they turn a blind eye to the illegal immigration issue, allowing undocumented migrants to work in the U.S. without proper identification or authority, again, taking advantage of a group of vulnerable people.

The corruptible Mexican government is complicit for not enforcing international immigration law but being that remittances from the U.S. are a significant part of the Mexican economy (around 4%, or $64.75B), they have zero incentive to do so. By the way, this money is not spent stateside stimulating local economies; it is exported U.S. dollars. They are complicit for allowing the drug cartels to cross the U.S. border virtually unabated, providing access for them to sell their deadly drugs inside the U.S. Moreover, having an economy that is so terrible that its poorest citizens choose to leave for better opportunities in the U.S. speaks volumes about Mexico’s domestic economic problems that have been ongoing for generations.

The undocumented immigrants are complicit themselves in that many of them have been here in the U.S. for decades and either let their visitor or work visa expire or crossed the border illegally yet have not applied for a visa renewal or citizenship or a green card or amnesty. To me, this means that they want to remain a foreign national and have no desire to become a legal U.S. citizen or obtain legal permanent U.S. residency – which is fine – but that does not give them a pass to not have their legal documents in order. I’m not going to buy the media narrative that this is because they are afraid of deportation, or that they are poor, or illiterate, or ignorant – it’s paperwork, not rocket science. There are also plenty of free or low-cost public resources available to help them navigate the process, so there really aren’t any excuses not to do it, which begs the question; why haven’t they already done so?

The media are also complicit in changing the language of the narrative from “illegal alien” (a common term used in law) to “undocumented alien” then to “undocumented migrants” or “undocumented immigrants” and then to just using “immigrants” or “migrants,” intentionally blurring the line between legal and illegal status and conflating the significant differences between them and also downplaying the possibility of any criminals crossing the border into the U.S. illegally which may be a low number, like maybe, I don’t know, let’s say a few cartel members here or a few street gang members there or a few murderers and rapists trickling in across the border here and there, but it is definitely not zero. But the fact that we don’t really know this information should enrage Americans of all stripes.

My understanding is that if someone crosses the border of a sovereign country without going through the proper customs checkpoints and processes, they are violating the law. This is known as an illegal entry. If they are a foreigner, they are considered an alien (a term from the 14th century), ergo, illegal alien, the specific term of which has been around for about 100 years. It seems harsh and maybe sounds a little bit dehumanizing, but maybe it should be because they are actually breaking the law! Is breaking the law not a crime? It appears that it depends upon whom you ask.

Twisting a longstanding term like illegal alien into something more generic and friendly sounding like migrant is a serious dereliction of journalistic duty because there is a gulf of distinction between them. It’s like calling trespassing some squishy euphemism like unintentional intrusion. Would anyone call rape overly passionate hyper-sexual activity, or call murder sudden cessation of biological activity? No! Rape is rape, and murder is murder, and everyone knows what these words mean, both of which are heinous, serious crimes, but they are factually crimes. Trespassing is also a crime and so is illegal entry. But when facts are politically unpopular and get in the way of advancing a political narrative, the language is changed by the various factions in power to distract from the truth.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” and John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” In essence, facts are truth. Truth has meaning. Truth has weight. Truth cannot be altered. Truth actually matters.

But when truth becomes inconvenient and gets in the way of a political movement, truth must become the enemy. Truth must be entirely disregarded or distorted, dissected, parsed, and contorted into something that it isn’t. Through this process, truth becomes fiction, and an alternate definition (the untruth) is brought forward as a replacement. This is how illegal alien becomes immigrant. This is how the narrative is changed from someone who has factually entered the country illegally and violated the law (the truth) to someone who is just a poor, honest, hard-working person looking for a better life for their family (the replacement), which may have some truthiness to it, but it does not excuse the actual truth. My head truthfully hurts thinking about this.

I think our political leadership across the board need to grow up and deescalate the rhetoric and the finger pointing, and the name calling and take a step back and ask themselves this: How can we cooperatively reform this colossal failure of immigration policy in a fair, compassionate, humane manner? These politicians created this unbelievable quagmire and now it is time for them to clean it up.

 I have a few suggestions:

  • Discontinue the ICE raids. These appear to be too much like a Gestapo tactic. In political speech; bad optics.
  • Lock down the U.S. Mexico border. Might be hard, but it’s not impossible. Lots of other countries do it.
  • Allow for a temporary immigration law enforcement hiatus with a hard one-year deadline to allow undocumented immigrants already residing in the U.S. for more than one-year to file appropriate forms. This puts the onus of documentation on their shoulders while also giving them the opportunity to choose whether to stay or to leave.
  • Make it a felony for U.S. employers to knowingly hire undocumented workers. It’s not asking too much for job applicants to prove their immigration status if they want to work here.
  • Make it a felony to enter the U.S. illegally. Lots of other countries do this too.
  • Vigorously enforce immigration laws after the one-year hiatus expires. No more catch-and-release policies.

This, I think, will give undocumented immigrants the time and the space needed to get their legal affairs in order while also deterring illegal entry. If they intentionally choose not to do it, then the full force of the law should be applied to them. No more excuses.

These are not inhumane, unreasonable, or radical ideas, rather, I believe they are sensible and achievable.

Our spineless political leadership just needs to grow the backbone to do it.

Supporting links:

https://oag.ca.gov/immigrant/resources

Click to access 23-0243_misc_11-12-24.pdf

Click to access IssueBrief_Illegal-Alien-is-the-Correct-Term.pdf

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/punishment-for-illegally-entering-countries

https://www.cato.org/blog/illegal-alien-one-many-correct-legal-terms-illegal-immigrant

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/32621-facts-are-stubborn-things-and-whatever-may-be-our-wishes

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1745-everyone-is-entitled-to-his-own-opinion-but-not-to

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

Old Zoo Nights

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Story 38 of 52

By M. Snarky

One hot July night in 1976, we pulled up to the locked Griffith Park gate on Crystal Springs Drive near the Wilson & Harding golf course. It was after 10:00 PM. We were in Mark Flaata’s mom’s massive, dark green, fake wood paneled 1972 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon, the same car I wrote about here. Mark turned off the radio and we were given instructions to “Be quiet.” Actually, his instructions were to “Shut the hell up!” Just to the left side of the gate was an equestrian trail that was barely wide enough to allow the humongous station wagon to squeeze through. Mark turned off the lights and drove along the dirt equestrian trail slowly until we got past the ranger station, and then turned back onto Crystal Springs Drive, flicked the lights back on, and drove to the first parking lot near the merry-go-round. There were maybe a half-dozen other cars parked there too.

Although, from a purely technical legal standpoint, we were definitely trespassing into the park after hours, however, the cars that were already inside the park after hours could drive out of the south entrance at Crystal Springs Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard without being harassed by the park rangers. But, if the rangers caught you hiking or walking around inside the park after hours, they would warn you that you could be cited and strongly encourage you to leave RIGHT NOW, or they would radio in for law enforcement which meant the LAPD. I know this from personal experience. Back then the park rangers were not sworn peace officers and were unarmed, so they were basically LAPD-light.

For us, we just didn’t care whether or not we were technically trespassing with our single-minded purpose of going to the Old Zoo to get high and have some fun. Back in those days, the exuberance of our wasted youth was boundless, and we weren’t going to let any legal technicalities prevent us from achieving our mission.

The passengers were Mark Flaata and his girlfriend Eve Anton, Tom Armstrong, Van Cognata, and yours truly. We brought a couple joints of good weed – well, good weed for the era anyway – and two six packs of Bud tall boys in a brown paper bag that we had to pigeon for over at Circus Liquor at the corner of Burbank Boulevard and Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood (NoHo), famous for its landmark giant clown neon sign and popularized in movies like Blue Thunder and Clueless. I should explain that to pigeon for beer meant hanging around the parking lot of a liquor store where the store clerk couldn’t see you and asking guys that looked like they were old enough to buy beer to buy some Bud tall boys for us, which was about $2.50 back then. It was also a 50/50 proposition at best. I personally hated doing it, but even so, I did it anyway mostly because I liked drinking beer, but also to not get hazed by the guys if I didn’t do it.

We hopped out of the station wagon and slinked across the road over to the Lower Old Zoo Trail, hiked up the trail about three-quarters of a mile to the dilapidated chain link fence on the boundary of the Old Zoo property which was, um, open? Someone had used some wire cutters to cut a gap in the fence just wide enough for a teenager to squeeze through. I was like going through a portal because as soon as you descended down the hill on the other side of the fence, you began to see some of the old overgrown structures looming in the darkness and it felt like you were transported into some dystopian Planet of the Apes future. It was the coolest thing that I had ever seen.

The local story of the Old Zoo (est. 1912) was that when the new L.A. zoo was finished being built in 1966, they simply transferred the animals over from the old to the new and then abandoned it as it was, tucked away in a canyon near Bee Rock. It was already 65-years old when I first saw it.

We walked over to a partially burned concession stand, put the six packs on what remained of the old counter, and we all cracked one open and started chugging them down while Tom fired up a joint and passed it around. It seemed as if we were the only people left on the planet.

Before this first visit to The Old Zoo, a.k.a., The Bear Caves, it was already a local legend in NoHo. There were dark, disturbing stories of people disappearing, rape, murders, dismembered bodies in trash bags, ghost sightings, and people dropping too much acid and going stark raving mad. There were also lighter stories of young people going there just to meet up and party and have a good time wandering around the abandoned administration buildings, concession stands, animal barns, aviary, monkey cages, and bear caves. Obviously, we were in the latter group, but that did not prevent talk of the scary stories which started freaking Eve out a little bit, so much so that every little noise in the periphery made her jump which, naturally, made all of us guys laugh.

We eventually found our way over to the back access road for the bear cave entrances. At the entrances, there were a series of levers and pulleys and cables and sliding metal doors that were used to manage the animals, and surprisingly some of them still worked.

We descended down a couple of steep flights of concrete steps into what could only be described as a black hole. The first flight was to the dark main bear den on the left that reeked like piss. The second flight of steps went to the open viewing area out in front. For the moment, you could say that we were the ones that were on display, Adolescens Americanus, if you will. We drank the remaining beers that, by then, were barely below ambient temperature, and smoked the remaining joint.

We talked about all sorts of things, you know, the sorts of things that factually naïve yet miraculously all-knowing teenagers talk about, like how out-of-touch our parents were, books, movies, music, love, God, Jesus, the meaning of life, what we’ll do after graduation, who’ll go to college and who’ll go to trade school and who will get married first, how many children we wanted to have, where we wanted to live and work, and so on and so forth, all compressed into a lively ninety-minute or so ebb and flow conversation with completely inappropriate jokes being cracked all along the way because no topic was off-limits – not even God.

Suddenly, Tom shushed us with his index finger over his pursed lips and said in a low voice, “I hear something!” We collectively listened and heard a vehicle driving on the access road behind us. We immediately understood that it must be the park ranger and we went into Ranger Danger dead-silent mode. They stopped at the back entrance of the bear cave. We could hear some chatter coming over the ranger’s radio. They got out of their truck, flicked their bright flashlights on and pointed them down the steep steps with a sweeping motion and said, “The park is closed; come out of there NOW!” We were quiet as a mausoleum; you could have heard a pin drop. “We know you’re in there!” More hold-your-breath silence. After about a minute more, the flashlights turned off and the rangers got back in their truck, more radio chatter could be heard, and they slowly drove off. Time to go!

We slowly crept up the steps to the road and could see the taillights of the ranger pickup in the distance to our right. We went left and found our way back to the parking lot as fast as we possibly could. We were high and slightly tipsy and very paranoid about getting busted, so Mark wasted no time in getting us out of the park. It was around midnight. Van said, “Let’s drive down Hollywood Boulevard!” We turned west at  Los Feliz and drove past the magnificent homes to where Los Feliz turns south and becomes Western Avenue. We turned right onto Hollywood Boulevard and headed west again. This was a very different neighborhood. We saw bums sleeping in the doorways of the shops, hookers and John’s, drug dealers, drug addicts, and tourists, and rundown buildings in various stages of urban decay. Mark turned right at Highland Avenue, and we quietly drove back to the Valley through Cahuenga pass.

Over the following years, I would take my friends to party at the Old Zoo many more times with whatever party materials we could get our hands on. It was mostly weed and beer, sometimes tequila and limes, and occasionally some LSD to go tripping around the Old Zoo and watch the sun rise over Griffith Park. During that time period, the word got out about it, and it soon became crowded (like everything else in L.A.) and fires, trash, crime, gang activity, and graffiti took their collective toll, destroying all of the remaining buildings, leaving only the bear caves and various chain link and metal barred cages intact but all covered with the various rival L.A. street gang tags, and some stupid token suburban white boy tags like, “Greg Was Here,” or, “I Love Laurie.”

Now renamed Old Zoo Picnic Area, the city cleared out the overgrown trees and shrubs, cleaned up the trash, back-filled the bear cave pit area in front, and welded the metal doors either open or closed, providing limited access to our old familiar haunt, you know, all in the name of public safety.

Nowadays, the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride takes over the Old Zoo area in the fall, hinting at the haunted notoriety of the past.

More Information:

Hadley Meares from PBS SoCal wrote a good article about it here.

Wikipedia link to Griffith Park Zoo is here.

Los Angeles Haunted Hayride is here.

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

L.A. Drivers: You Suck!

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Story 4 of 52

By M. Snarky

I was born at L.A. County General Hospital and have lived around the Los Angeles area for almost my entire life, mostly in the San Fernando Valley. I took my written exam and driving test at the DMV office at the corner of Vanowen Street and Kester Avenue in Van Nuys when I turned eighteen way back in 1979. In other words, most of my driving experience is in the greater Los Angeles area, so I’m writing about this from firsthand experience.

Granted, I was guilty of doing all of the dumbass things that young new driver’s do like speeding, burnouts, racing on Mulholland Drive, and pulling a Rockford or two. But I grew out of it quickly after getting too many citations. It also didn’t help that I didn’t go to court on a couple of them because I knew I was going to have to pay a fine and didn’t have any money. Getting arrested for an FTA (failure to appear) after getting pulled over for another driving violation is not the way to impress your girlfriend passenger. After that, I decided that I’d rather keep my hard-earned money in my pocket as opposed to writing fat checks to the government for ridiculously high fines for moving violations.

Maybe I’m being foolish here, but it is assumed that everyone driving a car or riding a motorcycle in L.A. also possesses a valid California Class C driver’s license or a California M1 motorcycle license which means that they read and studied the CA Driver’s Handbook and passed both the written exam and the driving test or motorcycle skills test. This implies that they know what the actual rules of the road are. But alas, being a regular driver, walker, and cyclist here in L.A., I feel that my life is in constant danger because there are so many terrible, inattentive, discourteous, a-holes in cars and on motorcycles. You know who you are.

I’ve also spent countless hours being stuck in traffic so thick on the I-405 on the west side of Los Angeles, that I could walk to LAX over the roofs of the cars faster than driving to it. Ironically, slow, thick traffic like this does not discourage L.A. drivers from being incredibly rude, reckless, and absolutely dangerous even at snail’s pace speeds.

An Implied Mutual Trust Blown to Smithereens

The vehicle code was developed to make people aware of the law and what their personal responsibilities are as a driver or motorcyclist. So, it is assumed that if I have a driver’s license and you have a driver’s license that were both issued by the same state, we mutually know what the rules of the road are within that state and therefore there is a baked in default level of implied mutual trust in the system. For example, I trust that you know that it is illegal to run through a red stop light and you trust that I know the exact same thing. You cannot claim ignorance about this sort of thing because it is part and parcel of the driver’s handbook. The roads are much safer this way, right? Right! But here in L.A., I see drivers and motorcyclists constantly running red lights, and regularly speeding to do it – especially the left-hand arrow turns. This blatant disregard of the law obliterates the implied mutual trust, is extremely dangerous, and can have fatal consequences. Knock it off.

Lack of Turn Signals

These are used to inform other drivers around you of your intention of changing lanes or turning right or turning left. They have been mandatory on cars since 1967, so unless you’re driving a classic car that requires hand signals, your car has them. Turn signals are really easy to use too: You stick out a finger on your left hand and move the little lever sticking out of the steering column up to indicate a right-hand turn or move the little lever down to indicate a left-hand turn. So simple. As a fellow driver, I appreciate knowing which direction you are intending to go so that I can anticipate any directional changes that I may need to make or any braking that I may need to apply to prevent a collision with your presumably cherished Tesla, you know, all in the name of safety.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of you either find turn signals too difficult to operate, or aren’t aware of how they actually work, or entirely forgot about California Vehicle Code 22108, which requires all drivers to signal at least 100 feet prior to making a turn or changing lanes. Or maybe it’s really because you just don’t care about being a safe, courteous, and mindful driver and would rather live your life as a rude, selfish, asinine jerk who doesn’t mind it when people flip you the bird. Please, be nice and use the lever thingy. Thank you.

Incessant Speeding

Prima facie speed limit signs be damned – I’ll drive as fast as I f-ing want! This appears to be the default attitude of many L.A. drivers and motorcyclists. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m thinking that this is because so many people here in L.A. have their heads up their rectum and can’t see the road signs. Or maybe they watched too many Fast and Furious movies and forgot that they were fiction. My experience is that if the posted speed limit is 45-MPH, everyone is driving 55-MPH…or faster. But there are always those drivers that must go faster than everyone else even when everyone else is already blatantly speeding. These are the drivers that are always involved in those horrific crashes that are covered on the local television news. People get hurt or killed because of them. Private and public property are damaged or destroyed because of them. Sometimes the speeding driver gets killed too which is maybe Darwinism at work and I’m actually okay with that because it’s better that they are off the road anyway. Please slow down for the sake of everyone around you – the life you save may be your own.

Stop Signs & Limit Lines

Stop. This is a word that we learn at a very early age. I won’t bore you with the multitude of dictionary definitions of the word itself, but everyone knows what stop actually means…that is, with the exception of L.A. drivers of course. I certainly do know that there is no other way to interpret the word stop: You either stop or you don’t. The lack of the stopping at the limit line is exceptionally dangerous for walkers and cyclists. For the sake of public safety, just take a few seconds to stop like you’re required to do. Thanks in advance.

Limit lines – also referred to as stop lines – are not optional. Per California Code, Vehicle Code – VEH § 22450:

(a) The driver of any vehicle approaching a stop sign at the entrance to, or within, an intersection shall stop at a limit line, if marked, otherwise before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection.

Legally speaking, the word shall is an imperative command, usually indicating that certain actions are mandatory, and not permissive. Seems crystal clear to me. Then again, California invented the California Roll. I’m not writing about sushi here; I’m writing about a rolling “stop” when a driver does not come to a complete stop at a stop sign and rolls right through, so there’s that. As a regular walker in my neighborhood, why do I have to keep my head on a swivel to avoid getting run over in a crosswalk because nobody actually stops to save like 2-seconds of their time? Maybe they should keep in mind that a car is a deadly weapon, and they might hurt or kill someone by disregarding the law. Delivery drivers are the worst offenders of this – I’m talking to you DHL, Amazon, UPS, FedEX, DoorDash, UberEats and PostMates drivers. Try paying attention to the goddamn law for a change!

Mobile Phones & Other Electronic Distractions

The bane of all banes. Texting, Instagramming, Facebooking, watching cat videos, TV shows, full-length movies, and likely some pornography while driving a 2-ton vehicle is ludicrous. Eyes should be on the road in front of you – not on the screen of you darling iOS or Android powered handheld device you’re clutching in your hand. Aside from being an illegal activity while operating a motor vehicle, the distraction level is akin to that of a naked person walking in front of you: For whatever human psychological reason, you just can’t take your eyes off of them, warts, and all.

It used to be that the radio was the primary distraction while driving followed perhaps by lighting a cigarette. Nowadays, the radio has been replaced by streaming music on your phone via Bluetooth and cigarettes have been replaced with vaporizers, of which I am never certain if what is being vaporized is actually a tobacco or a cannabis product. As far as I’m concerned, smoking cannabis while driving is no different than cracking open a beer and drinking it while driving – either way, you are driving under the influence which makes you a far more dangerous driver. This also makes me wonder about how many people are driving under the influence of pharmaceutical drugs which may explain much of the problem. Regardless, your responsibility as a driver of a motor vehicle is to be safe, not high, so try focusing on that, please.

Tailgating     

Why is tailgating even a thing? Unless you’re a NASCAR or F1 driver drafting the car in front of you to get an edge, there’s absolutely no point. Also, rear-end collisions are the most frequent type of car crash, so why would you want to increase the chances of crashing your presumably favorite, often expensive car into mine by decreasing the time to react? Also, I’m pretty sure that you don’t want to pay a $1,000 deductible so there is that little financial consideration. Tailgating is entirely reckless, extremely dangerous, and can easily be avoided; all you need to do is…back the hell off. Why not use the one car-length per 10-miles of speed rule or the 3-seconds behind the car in front of you rule? This is not a difficult thing to do. Try it!

If I’m stuck in thick traffic and can’t see the front license plate of your car in my rear-view mirror, you are maybe a little bit too close. If I can count the dead insects on your front grille, you are absolutely too close. But in L.A., this happens at 80-MPH. Being so close at that speed you might as well get in my car so we can use the carpool lane and save a little commute time. On the other hand, you may be the recipient of a random brake check which will evaluate your reflex time and put your bad little tailgating habit to the test and potentially give me the opportunity to call Larry H. Parker. Please be courteous and allow me and everyone else on the road some needed space. Thank you.

Car Clubs

Mulholland Drive, Pacific Coast Highway, Kanan Road, and Malibu Canyon are typical weekend car club takeovers where I live. It’s a collective circle jerk. They use the power of numbers to intimidate…and they know they’ll get away with it.

If you’re some poor soul driving along one of these roads and minding the speed limit and a Subaru WRX car club comes up behind you, you will get tailgated, flashing lights, and as-close-as-possible illegal passing over a double solid yellow line often on a curve. If you’re a cyclist, this is the most terrifying and dangerous situation that you can imagine. C’mon, people; you know that public roads are not for racing – how about maybe taking your car club to the track instead of endangering everyone else on the road? Cool it with the juvenile Ricky Road Racer attitude and stop pretending you are a professional race driver (you’re not even close) on public roads and take it to the track where you can really test your mettle while also keeping other motorists safe.

Motorcycle Clubs

These guys have a similar attitude to the car clubs with the takeovers and intimidation tactics but zip by at even higher speeds.

Generally speaking, the motorcycle clubs break out into two distinct groups: Imported and domestic.

The two groups have very different riding styles too. The import guys are always going as fast as possible, usually in single file, often sliding out and crashing when they push the envelope too far. One day while I was climbing Glendora Mountain Road (GMR) on my road bike with my wife and some friends, a guy on a Yamaha YZF was coming down much too fast and slid out across lanes on a hard right turn directly in front of us – almost taking out the front cyclists in our group – and hit the concrete K-Rail on the opposite side which stopped him from descending a hundred feet off a cliff edge which would likely have been fatal. His riding bros all stopped and blocked traffic going up and down GMR, including us cyclists which was completely unnecessary. Fortunately, the rider limped away, but his Yamaha was unrideable. SLOW THE HELL DOWN, BOYS!

And now we come to the Harley Bros, the most obnoxious motorcycle riding group of them all. Typically, these are a bunch of fattish middle-aged men with graying pedophile goatees clad in black leather vests with a club name on the back like Sofa King Phat, or Weasels on Wheels, wearing those stupid ugly black Nazi-light (or is it Darth Vader-light?) looking helmets, and riding side-by-side on a narrow two-lane road and making as much noise as possible with their garish BarcaLounger sized $50K V-twin noise making machines complete with cup holders for their skinny organic milk fair trade lattes or Bud Light beer cans. It’s a let’s pretend we’re one-percenters kind of thing, and these guys apparently really hate cyclists. I say this from personal experience.

Maybe the Harley Bros don’t know this, but per California Vehicle Code 2176 – effective since September 16, 2014 mind you:

California law requires at least three feet of clearance when passing a bicyclist on the road.  When three feet is not possible, the driver of the motor vehicle shall slow to a reasonable and prudent speed and pass only when doing so would not endanger the safety of the bicyclists, taking into account the size and speed of the motor vehicle and bicycle, traffic conditions, weather, visibility, and surface and width of roadway.  Failing to do so can incur a fine, regardless of a collision or not.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong to assume the Harley Bros can actually read or can approximate three feet of clearance. Bros, here’s a clue; it is approximately the distance from the center of your chest to your fingertips, give or take a little for the girth of the individual, who is often expanded due to how much beer the Harley Bro guzzled down that morning.

This law also seems crystal clear to me, but three feet of clearance is apparently lost on the Bros. I’ve been run off the road too many times. I’ve been intentionally passed within inches of a Harley handlebar striking the left-hand side of my road bike drop bars. The Harley Bro specialty is cracking their throttles wide-open (to a noise level definitely far above the CA legal maximum decibel level of 80dbA) when they are right next to you as they speed by, making you flinch by reflex while also making your ears ring. I would think that a cyclist would get a little bit more respect than that being that we are also on two wheels and don’t have any significant protection other than our helmets. Nope. We’re apparently intentional targets of the Bros.

Oh, and most of these drivers and motorcycle riders I’m referring to here are male. Guys: You can do better than this. Harley Bros: Knock it off with the land pirate cosplay caca del toro already and behave yourselves. Car club drivers: Take it to the track. Thanks a lot. Kisses!

A Special Mention Goes Out to the Arrogant Prius and Tesla Drivers

I’m just going to come right out and ask; why are you all a bunch of arrogant, self-righteous jerks? Driving one of these car models does not give you license to drive like an a-hole.

Aside from being guilty of all of the bad driving habits listed above, weaving in and out of lanes and cutting people off, passing cars from the right-hand turn lane, driving 65 in a 35, and driving in the HOV lane with a single passenger and no CAV (clean air vehicle) tags from the CA DMV on your bumper is how you raise the ire of the law-abiding drivers around you that are flipping you off.

You Prius drivers regularly going exactly 65-MPH in the fast lane while all of the other traffic is zipping around you at 75-MPH is an obvious sign that you are both a road hazard and possess zero situational awareness. Either move over to the slow lane with the cement trucks where you belong or get off the freeway and take the side streets. Or maybe just sell your super ugly car and get a bus pass and take public transportation instead.

I don’t know what’s going on with the Tesla drivers, but you are either driving 65-MPH like the idiotic Prius drivers or you’re driving 95-MPH like the boneheads in the car clubs. I don’t understand the reason for this, but you are dangerous either way. Why don’t you just go with the flow? I mean, with all of those fancy electronics and sensors and sonar and radar installed in your Tesla it can probably drive itself better than you can, so maybe try autopilot. On the other hand, one just has to be somewhat reasonable and possess a modicum of situational awareness to be a safe, courteous driver that doesn’t want to make fellow drivers angry or endanger anyone with their assortment of bad driving habits. Why don’t you give that courteous thing a try?

And no, Barney, you really are not special; you are just one the many sheeple living and driving in Los Angeles that think you are cool in your HEV, PHEV or flashy BEV car when you’re actually not.

Try something new: How about trying not to drive like an a-hole for a day or two or maybe even forever?

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