(I’m having trouble making this show up normally, so here’s the downloadable link).
Start: Home
End: Compton (lol.)
The house I currently live in is in a gated neighborhood on a golf course, kind of isolated a rough looking area on the outside. If you go one cardinal direction a few miles, it’s the wealthy Manhattan Beach area, and if you go the opposite direction it’s Compton. The exercise started kinda like how I normally behave, where I leave and come back before I leave the neighborhood x10 because I realize I forgot any or several of the following: my wallet, driver’s license, phone, purse, backpack, charger, lip balm.
The direction starts off towards Gardena, which I’m always excited about because I love the amazing Japanese and Korean restaurants in the area. But we quickly went the wrong way through a residential area. This area I’ve been in several times, and seems like neat and polished rows of houses with families. There’s a neighborhood watch sign, with lawn decor like flamingos, plastic cars, and palm trees/Californian shrubbery.
I pass by a park and pretty quickly get to an area with a church, a beauty salon, and a nail salon. Signs of a rougher neighborhood start appearing – no credit check businesses, cracked roads/pavements, lots of run-down auto shops, barred windows on both residential houses and business, a hemodialysis center, speedy cash, and a fried seafood place.
My initial reaction was being scared because of all the stories I’d heard about Compton over the years. Ironically, I started to feel at home and think fondly back to my time as a student. I hail from Atlanta, and at one point in time during school had to live on the corner of Ghetto and Crack (deep in Home Park in Atlanta, if you were curious). People were regularly robbed with guns (several times with AK47s), machetes, knives, whatever. At that time I had nightmares not being stabbed or shot but losing my laptop and not being able to turn in my homework, and when I was going to get my next paycheck so I could stay a few months ahead in rent. I fondly thought back to my pink pepper spray (the little flame on the bottom right represents that), and on the bottom left I say “I’ll be ok, I think”, the phrase that I’d repeat to myself every night I went home after dark in that neighborhood. As with these neighborhoods, keep your head down and be aware of your surroundings. You’ll be ok.