I did another one of those Midnight Ridazz-style rides last night. This was much smaller, only about 25 people. We started from SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) over on 3rd street and rode down to USC. I met a bunch of new people, including one woman who’s a artist and art teacher. During one of our breaks she said, “I hear you write science fiction?” and I said, “Yeah.” Then she was like, “Have you ever read George R. R. Martin?” Actually, as a matter of fact, I have. We spent the next half hour or so riding and comparing notes on China Mieville, Tim Powers, Roger Zelazny, etc., interrupted only by the occasional sharp corner or police vehicle yelling at us to disperse. Then she and her friends were going to break off and go to a bar, but I needed to stay with the main group so I could retrieve my car. She wanted to give me her email, so I stopped, and as she searched for pen and paper I watched the flickering lights of the main group recede into the distance. Finally I got her email, said bye, and took off after the group, but they’d vanished. It was after midnight, and I was alone in downtown L.A. with only a vague idea of where I was. Not good.
Another straggler came up behind me on his bike. He said, slurring slightly, “Fucking where’d they go?” and I said, “I’m not sure.” He got out his directions, stared at them, and was like, “Okay.” I said, “You know where you’re going?” and he was like, “Yeah, man. Fuck.” So I followed him. He was kinda weaving all over the place, through alleys and in front of buses, hooting and hollering at random homeless people, who subsequently become irate, and singing to himself. I thought at first he was crazy, but quickly realized that he was just very, very intoxicated. He had an entire backpack full of cans of Budweiser, and was chugging and discarding them as he rode, despite which I was still pedaling as fast as I could just to keep him in sight. (Found out later his job is bicycle messenger. And that he was behind me because he’d stopped to get more beer.) I wasn’t positive this was an improvement over being alone, but he seemed pretty sure of where he was going, so I followed, but man he took us down some sketchy streets. I swear that downtown is busier at night than during the day — except that at night everyone on the street is homeless, a hooker, a dealer, a junkie, or some combination thereof. The sidewalks are so crammed with homeless that it looks like they’re lining up to try out for American Idol. I mean, there are whole neighborhoods of them. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. We did finally make it back to where we’d started. I hung out at a nearby party for a while, met a few more people, then came home.
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