Got up early to visit my favorite overpass and saw this gang tag and the arrows saying “This Means You.” Although I’m not generally superstitious, I’m convinced that my death, however it occurs, will be somehow ironic. And getting killed by street gangsters, the bane of so many conservatives who would rather do the job, definitely counted. The tag had appeared overnight, and I couldn’t help thinking it was in response to yesterday’s sign. The arrows pointing to every conceivable entrance to the overpass particularly had me worried. It was early morning, under a steely grey sky, and everything instantly turned ominous, as if in a film. The guy washing his car two houses down kept his rag moving back and forth, but his eyes were definitely on me. The trash in the gutter, cracks in the sidewalk, the bars and concertina wire… everything took on a sinister bent. The director in my head started playing the introduction to Mozart’s requiem and I decided to just get the hell out of there.
That’s one of the great things about freewayblogging: if something seems sketchy I can just split. It’s not like anyone’s going to dock my pay. As I drove around I did feel like a bit of a coward though, and decided the best thing would be to drive to the north side of the overpass, throw the signs, bungees and duct tape through the bars there, then drive back and enter empty-handed. Wearing my safety vest I’d be just another highway worker, hardly an enemy and hopefully not worth the bullets. The plan worked, and for the next four days at least the admonition “Worst Ancestors Ever” graced the Santa Monica Freeway between La Brea and Crenshaw in both directions at 320,000 cars per day. Knock off 90 or 100K for nighttime and you’ve still got some pretty impressive numbers for a dime’s worth of cardboard and paint. Okay… and a buck or two for the bungees.
After four days though I began to feel guilty towards my audience and bought a can of spray paint, adding an explanatory “We Are The” to the backs of the opposite facing signs to make for a somewhat sloppy but more comprehensible “We Are The Worst Ancestors Ever” tableau. Someone, presumably the poor soul trying to sell their house, had painted over the tag, but the vague sense of menace remained.
Due to a bizarre mixture of personal and political circumstances I now live for getting people to paint signs and put them in places where they’ll be seen. And if I’ve learned anything from Hollywood it’s that people like me do eventually get what we want, but unfortunately it’s usually on our deathbeds. As I stood on the overpass, tagging the backs of my own signs and waiting for the bullet, I heard the music swell (the Lacrimosa, this time,) and watched the montage of y’all putting up signs across the nation as the camera cut back to my hospital bed and fading, beatific smile…
Obviously that bullet never came, and my subsequent sign posting around LA’s freeways also went on uneventfully, as shown below. Though not nearly so dramatic as the fantasy above, these signs did have their own frisson of drama and ever-so-slight danger… each a brief but exciting little ninja-mission adding, for whatever reason, some necessary spice to my life.
I’ve tried to sell you on the numbers, the economy, the political necessity, the ease and the fun, so to that I’d now like to add the sheer quixotic romance of freewayblogging… and how, to paraphrase Ralph Ellison, our humanity is won by continuing to play the game in the face of such overwhelming odds.
(Cut to Credits, Cue: The Impossible Dream)