Price of living get so high, the rich and poor they starta’ cry –Bob Marley


By Douglas Eisenstark

It’s been 2 months now since I was evicted and the last two months have been totally not fun. I’ve put everything in storage, found another place in Culver City, had my car and computer stolen and last week had to move my office because of a rent hike.


I’m now driving 3 times as much (that’s me on Lincoln clogging the street) because I’ve lost my connection to the geography I made for myself over the last 15 years in Venice. I pictured myself as someday one of those old people in Lincoln Place, tottering to Ralphs, pushing the grocery cart back to my apartment. With Lincoln Place there were no fantasies of “escaping LA” to Portland, Austin, Santa Fe or back to Kansas. Those thoughts are back.

My friend Jay talks about how in Latin America dictators will go after the middle class first by attacking their economics. With no middle class dissent (other things to worry about) the dictatorship can proceed on unimpeded. I can’t speak for all my fellow Lincoln Place residents but I was/am a liberal/radical type and spent a fair amount of time and energy working on behalf of others. Angry, but at what was happening in the world to other people. The injustice to them made me feel that much more lucky. Lincoln Place is perhaps the first thing that has happened to Me and even with my relatively comfortable resources, if this eviction is some sort of oppression then it is a drag.

Last year I was studying in Beijing for a few weeks and the talk was on how to preserve the “hutongs” or old neighborhoods from development. In the basement of a huge shopping mall near my hotel and the center of town is a reconstruction of the hutong complete with many of the vendors and food sellers that had been displaced by the shopping center above it. Similarly, last year, I listened to a Santa Monica City Council meeting discussing how to create an “international food court” on the 3rd St. Promenade. Of course, there was an international food court there before the Promenade raised the rents on all of the small shops there.

Even in China there is a lot of romanticization about the hutongs. They are dirty, lacking 20th Century running water and toilets in many cases and, of course, as they become scarce they are being bought up by speculators and rehabilitated into costly low rise lofts (don’t get me started on Lofts!). Lincoln Place is/was our hutong, our neighborhood and someday, perhaps soon in their preserved state, they will be quite valuable. Hopefully, me and all my fellow evictees will be tottering around there with our antique Save Lincoln Place/Let’s Own IT! buttons while planning the next annual Tent City cook-out.

It’s been educational, some good things have happened, making friends with Laura, Paul, Sara and talking around Tent City fires with David, Carol and others. People have been very kind, my brother and sister in law, Lesley, Doris, Jay and others offering their houses, storing my paintings and plants, moving things, condolences. In the last two months, I’m afraid I haven’t been much help to my patients, family, students or friends. On the scale of things, the evictions aren’t the end of the world. I think the worst thing is to realize how hard it is to be kind and compassionate to others while something like this is happening to you.

Posted: Wed - March 1, 2006 at 03:21 PM          


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