There has been much discussion amongst my friends and coworkers about where I actually live. "Sort of Glassell Park, sort of Highland Park, kind of Mount Washington" etc. Nope. Turns out I live in Cypress Park, which is a phrase not uttered by white people, because it is their Voldemort.

Cypress Park is owned by the Avenues, a street gang with ties to the Sinaloa cartel. It has an 80% hispanic population, over half of which are Mexican nationals. Whites and Asians outnumber blacks because, apparently, the Avenues ain't too fond of the African American contingent so actively harass and persecute them. LA gang laws were revised in favor of totalitarianism back in '95 because a wayward family of white folx got lost on their way back from the park and a posse blocked their retreat with mattresses and garbage cans and then opened fire, wounding a 2-year-old boy and killing a 3-year-old girl. The neighborhood erupted in outrage because the LA Times featured the girl on the front page... and of course she was white, so of course nobody cares about the hispanic kids when they die. That was about eight blocks up. It's on my way to Super King, the Mexican/Armenian grocery that has fifteen kinds of Baklava but no popcorn.

A friend picked me up for lunch yesterday. Pointed out his girlfriend's uncle's house, which is a block away from me. The uncle has stopped replacing windows when they get shot out because they get shot out too often. On the plus side, they planted a nice little garden so... zucchini.

It's funny. My roommate deadbolts the laundry door, and deadbolts the house even when he's inside. But I've been invited to park my bike outside because, after all, the neighbor's bike has never been stolen. Oddly enough I'm more worried about property crime when I wander up into white people territory because the people around here don't really seem like the bike theft type. Them squidgy hipsters up in Echo Park, though... I guess we all have our forms of magical thinking.

I'm over 350 miles on the bike. Sunday the temperature around the bend through Universal City read 118 degrees. I brought a lot of water but still felt like shit; I was thankful to not be one of the homeless people passed out on the pavement in the shade like so many squirrels. They closed the 2 because it was on fire. Rode through drifting smoke, like something out of Falludjah. It was a good thing my ride was only 15 miles because if it had been 17 I would have been in trouble. I Lyfted Monday (temperatures were overall about 8 degrees hotter, and although nothing broke 118 the neighborhood around the studio spent about 6 hours over 115) and my ride home got lost because Waze doesn't know what the fuck to do when all the onramps are closed due to exploded transformers.

Ran into a coworker from The Horrible Show at Home Depot last week. He'd done the thing in Fiji that all my Facebook friends did, and was headed up to Seattle for The Real World. I was annoyed because here he is, working more than me, without realizing that I'm making a much better rate on a much better show. It also took me a little bit to come to grips with the fact that my job? I do it grudgingly. It's the thing I settled in while I do other things, and I have many other things. Nearly everyone I know is doing only this, and they have families to support.

And they have to live here all the time. The Home Depot with no earplugs? That's his local Home Depot. It's not his "I'm here for the next 12 weeks" Home Depot. He's got, like, a mortgage nearby.

The thought of it makes me feel hollow inside.

We submitted revised drawings on the birth center two weeks ago. The state authority said "yeah, this is no longer ADA compliant, actually, none of your doors are ADA compliant, you're going to have to tear them down and rebuild everything because who run Bartertown?" It took a week of wrangling for our contractor to take him by the lapels, shake him and point out that you don't need every fucking door to be ADA compliant, so we have to move one door.

Joke's on him. Because our electrical contractor is a slovenly shithead we hadn't had a chance to put up drywall yet anyway.

My daughter made me a picture frame. It's pink and covered in nuts and washers. Her daycare teacher helped her fill out a "I love my daddy because" madlib that, of course, is covered in garish magic marker. Among its highlights are the fact that I am 5 years old, that my daughter wishes to give me "a kind animal" and that she likes to go running with me.

And that I'm always telling her I love her.

We do things for our families. In the end, we hope they pay off. There will come a time when I do not live a block up from Avenida Assassinos and it will not be 118 degrees in the shade.

And those are the times I will spend with my kid.