Nights in the Alley

I went to a conference presentation once about alleys. The scholar argued that alleys in this culture are places where we hide our dirty secrets or things we don't want to confront, like trash, the homeless, the drug problem. With alleys, we can forget these exist. People don't hang out in alleys too often, unless it is to take advantage of the fact that they will not be seen or bothered. I have walked quite a few alleys in Long Beach, and I find this not always to be true. Alleys can be places where people have gardens and be very well maintained. But it took living adjacent to one to really understand alley culture.


This is the alley behind our apartment. You see that window above the green trash bin on the second floor? That's my bedroom. A couple windows over is my kitchen. Here are just a few reasons why living above an alley sucks:

1) Trash
Ok, the trash should be like 5 reasons, really. It smells, first of all. Not too appetizing to eat dinner over the wafting smell of rotting trash. Especially if people leave the lid up, which as you can see in the photo, happens all the time.

This is also a problem when there are flies, which, as you may know, absolutely looove trash. They spend their off hours in my house. This summer we had quite the fly infestation. I bought a bunch of nasty fly treatments that alternately stunk up my house or made it sticky. None of which, worked. What does work? Swatting. Gotta love when the first idea stands the test of time.

People dig through the trash. Sometimes it is the homeless or very poor that come digging, other times it's junkies looking for stuff to sell. I know this because once I got rid of a bunch of our expired pills and this resulted in super excited squeals from a very erratic couple. Anyway, you can't really rummage quietly at 5 in the morning. I feel very conflicted about my emotions when this occurs. The city tries to ignore its homeless problem. It's clear that even families come digging together. All of this makes me sad and angry about the situation these people are in. And yet my first response is "Seriously? It's 5 in the effing morning." After 8am people are less likely to feel bad about making noise, so they come with radios (like this morning for instance, a morning after which I had 4 7&7s and passed out at 10:30pm). Or they chat. Like I said, conflicted.

Oh and the trash truck! Have you ever been within four feet of a trash truck? It's pretty loud. You can hear them around the corner and down the block. What if the city felt that the best time to collect trash on Saturday morning was 9am? Right next to your head. For like 10 minutes.

You also get to hear all of your neighbors problems, because on the way to dump trash, they like to talk. Like the mom downstairs who asks her 9 year old to help take the trash out while she's on the cell phone. He, not surprisingly, spills the trash all over the concrete. I get to hear the delightful response "Are you fucking stupid? How the hell did you do that?" Did I mention that he is autistic? It was already horrible, but that's kind of the cherry on top, no? This leads me to the other reason an alley sucks to live behind:

2) People feel like they can be loud in an alley

Once I heard a couple having a break-up fight. They left the apartment they live in to have it in my alley. Among other grievances, the gal was annoyed that her guy was so clingy that he "follows [her] into the bathroom when [she] takes a piss." Ah, young love.

You can see by the photo that people park in the alley. You get to hear cars revving up and driving off in the morning, which is really no biggie unless the car is ancient or they ride a motorcycle. But the true problem lies in the late-night drunken 22 year olds.

Last night was Thursday night, which if you didn't know, is like, totally the new Friday! So at 2am, a car load of younguns decides to park in the alley and play their stereo super loud while they are all exiting their car. And they weren't even playing anything cool. Fucking Metallica- from the Black album or later, my guess. Our downstairs neighbor (who should really contribute to my blog today, because they have it so much worse!) told them to shut up, which garnered this lovely response, "It's not even late, it's only 2 in the morning," from Loud Girl, and a sarcastic mocking "Nyuuh" from random frat dude. Neighbor responded with "It's late and we work tomorrow." At this point, it seems the designated (i.e. least drunk) driver stepped in and told Loud Girl to "shut the fuck up" after which the stereo turned off and she said "Sorry. Sorry for all the noise."

This is maybe the second Thursday in a row that this has happened. It's also happened a few times on the weekend, which is a bit more forgivable. There are three cars in the picture above. One of them is probably the car in question, because I took it before 10am, which is still 2am drunky pass out time, for sure. I mean, I, a seasoned veteran, got up at 8 and I don't even work today, but these youngsters clearly don't work today and would not wake up otherwise. Which car do you think it could be? The sleek little ride right across from my bedroom window? The sedate sedan behind the purple bins? The giant red Hummer parked in front of the sign that says "Parking for Hummers Only"? The gal who owns that car fits the age range and is known to be loud, but the sleek number is closest and parked a bit haphazardly. It would help to know. I mean, I can't dump a gallon of housepaint on the wrong car, right?

Obviously I knew we'd be living above trash and over an alley when we rented this place, so I understand if you are saying "suck it up" right now. Our neighborhood is relatively safe, so I don't worry about my safety in the alley. That's good. But I am clearly getting old. I want my sleep at night. These damn kids and their damn car stereos.