Content Goes Here

I spent a big chunk of the 1980s and 1990s in the San Fernando Valley. I didn’t have a car at the time, so I had to hump it over the hill on the RTD from West L.A. to North Hollywood to my job, which was at Laurel and Victory. The transfer point was Van Nuys and Victory. Since I worked at a newspaper, I had to stay as late as possible, and I ended up taking the last bus back over the pass more often than not.

One night I was there at about midnight, waiting for the last #560 to Westwood. The bus stop was in front of a shoe store with the appealing name of “Shoes for Sale”, a discount outlet that sold athletic shoes to the local gang members.

One of these guys, a stereotypical hairnet-and-white-T-shirt Mexican gangbanger, was waiting with me for the bus. He was peering in the shoe store window as I listened to my Walkman. Finally I noticed that he was trying to get my attention. I took off the headphones.

“Hey man,” he said, “come check this out.”

I tried to ignore him. I didn’t want to get rolled at the bus stop; this had happened before and it wasn’t fun. And this guy was a tough character for sure.

“No really, you got to see this. C’mere, man. ” He had an urgency to his voice and was looking pretty genuine. I decided to take the risk and walk over to him.

Cholo guy pointed into the shoe store.

“That is fucked-up man. Check that shit OUT.”

He was right. The display window was full of rats. Happy, playful rats. They were rushing about playfighting, crashing into things, and gnawing at the shoes in an ecstacy of rodential play. There were at least five of them that I could see immediately, and undoubtedly many more.

“I ain’t never buyin’ no shoes there, man,” said Cholo Guy. “That is just wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right, that’s a lot of rats. Really a lot of rats. That is seriously messed up.” We were both quiet and bonded a bit while watching the verminous riot inside Shoes for Sale.

Then the bus arrived and we both boarded, glad to be saved by the RTD from the Kingdom of the Rats.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2003 at 1:51 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.