Neighbors from hell: we got’um, and now that they have been served their eviction papers they have been up to more up more than the usual amount of trouble... super-glued door locks, foamed tail pipes, car windows shot out and loads of fireworks set off on the doorstep in the middle of the night.

Last night I was out in the parking lot and saw some thick smoke drifting down the alley that smelled like gun powder. I went over the fence and stepped into a stockpile of fireworks all tied together with a long, lit fuse. After stomping out the fuse and calling the cops we ended up 3 squad cars showing up. The cops took a look at the construction of fireworks and decided that none of them wanted to put any of that in the trunks of their cars.

So they cordoned off the alley and waited for the bomb squad to drive down from L.A.

The bomb squad travels with their own set of detectives (Major Crimes Division / Criminal Conspiracy Section is what it says on their cards) so at three in the morning they are in my studio taking a statement from me and the senior detective is looking at the piles of stuff on one of my tables - piles of camera gear, old computers and other photo equipment I was planning to get rid of on E-Bay. All of this is flanked by a man sized trunk, an inflatable pool duck, bags of professional clown balloons, a gas mask, and right in front of it all a collection of lock pics and disassembled and cut padlocks that I have been fooling around with. At that point it dawned on me that they are probably thinking they have stumbled upon a guy that makes his living breaking and entering. The detective reaches down to the table right where the pile of broken locks are and picks up the East German officers hat, and says, “where did you get this?” Turns out it caught his eye because he was stationed in Berlin after the war and used to run over into the Russian sector to buy crystal for his friends back home.

With any luck they will now be keeping me under 24 hour surveillance to see what I am up to and they will finally catch the fuckers that have been vandalizing the neighborhood.