All Creatures Here Below is a Midwestern tragedy that, scene by scene, grows incrementally more horrific. Tearing open the wounds of childhood trauma, the director, Collin Schiffli, and his writer, David Dastmalchian, immerse us in the desperate acts of a young runaway couple, then dare us to condemn them. [Read more…]
2.13
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
This mural is painted on the back of King Eddie’s Saloon on Los Angeles street, a Skid Row bar that has been open since 1906. The old bartender said Bukowski used to come in there, order one beer and nurse it all day while he wrote poetry on bar napkins. He wasn’t fond of Bukowski (third from the left). I believe that’s Tom Waits to his left. I don’t know who’s on the far right and left, or what anyone else’s relationship to the bar was either. I hear John Fante used to frequent there too, and the old speakeasy in the basement was mentioned in Ask The Dust, but under a different name. [Read more…]
2.6
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
“Live free” read the tattoos on his face. He and his travel companion are down from Spokane Washington and plan to travel to Arizona after spending a few days in Los Angeles. They told me they’ve been on the road for most of the last eight years. We spoke briefly of Kerouac and I told them I hoped they were keeping a journal of their travels. I’d love to read their story one day. [Read more…]
2.4
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
People just trying to stay dry out here. [Read more…]
2.3
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
It’s been over a year since I’ve seen Jerry. He said he was in the hospital for six months with some breathing problems. His deformation comes from surviving a shotgun blast to the face at point blank range. [Read more…]
1.28
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
Sharky, with his dog Buddy here, has been living on Skid Row consistently for the last three years with his wife. Together the couple has lived on and off Skid Row for many years, but normally for only three to four months at a time. Usually that’s all the time it takes for them to get back on their feet. This time, they say, it’s harder than ever to get into housing and find work. Sharky is a two striker, and because of his appearance, people won’t hire him. “I’ll shovel horse shit for eight hours a day, I don’t care. No one will hire me because of my record and the way I look.” He tells me the first time he came to Skid Row was with his Dad when he was thirteen. They came to score heroin together, and he himself used for many years. Sharky has been clean for awhile now and he and his wife were living in sober living facility, but it was putting a strain on their marriage. They decided they’d rather be happily married, even if it means living in a tent on the street, than continue to live in a sober house and have their marriage fall apart. [Read more…]
Head-Spinning Intrigue And Landmark Cinema In Zhang Yimou’s Shadow
After the limp 2017 film The Great Wall, the director Zhang Yimou was clearly looking to enact a return to form. With Shadow (2019), Zhang has done more than that: he’s created a martial-arts movie landmark, as strong in its performances as it is spectacularly novel in its violence. [Read more…]
1.24
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
Recently Boxer here was telling me about some dope going around Skid Row that had a flesh-eating effect. After shooting up he could feel his veins beginning to irritate and itch. All through the night there was an uncomfortable burning where the drug coursed through him. Finally his hands and legs began to swell until his skin split open into bloody wounds. He showed me the sores on his arms and legs that had formed over night. Some were several inches long and an inch or more wide. Boxer said it reminded him of the Krokodil drug epidemic that broke out in Russia a few years back, which was a drug that caused a flesh-eating virus that was fatal. If you haven’t heard of the drug Krokodil, look it up, but be warned it is very grotesque. I found Boxer the next day and his wounds had gotten worse. Walking around I began to notice the same kind of wounds on others, seemingly everywhere I looked. Hopefully this is the worst of it and not the beginning of a new epidemic to plague Skid Row. [Read more…]
1.23
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
He went blind in one eye after getting jumped and hit across the face with a bottle. A year later he had to get staples in his head after getting jumped again. I see him on and off around the same haunts. His dog (Beast) is a new addition. [Read more…]
1.22
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
Street hands. Only a person living on the streets who is constantly battered by the sun, can earn hands this beautiful. [Read more…]
Kristen Roupenian’s You Know You Want This: “Cat Person” and Other Stories
You Know You Want This: “Cat Person” and Other Stories
by Kristen Roupenian
Scout, 225 pp., $24.99
Courtesy of The New York Review of Books
It has happened only twice in nearly seventy years: a short story appears in The New Yorker and goes viral, setting off an avalanche of responses. Some readers, fooled by its up-to-date style, misinterpret it as a piece of reportage. Others attack the author as a sadist or a misanthrope. And many more are simply confused about what it means. Is it an allegory for the suffering that women face under patriarchy? A screed that indicts contemporary society more generally? Or just a tale taken from everyday life in which something goes horribly wrong? [Read more…]
1.16
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
A wet and cold day in Skid Row. A man attempts to sleep with only a blanket to protect him from the rain. [Read more…]
1.14
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
Shorty here was getting ready for the rains when I ran into her this past weekend. She’s a strong-willed lesbian who is constantly berated and threatened because of her sexual orientation. I’ve posted about her before and her struggles with being a gay woman living on the streets of Skid Row. Even while speaking with her, we had to move down the road a ways to avoid confrontation mounting from a man who let us know he didn’t like her because she is gay. Shorty didn’t let it bring her down. She told me, she may not like him and others like him for their views, but she doesn’t hate them. At the end of the day it’s all about One Love. Then she pointed to the sky, referencing to her higher belief, and I snapped this photo of her. It’s always a pleasure to speak with Shorty when I run into her. [Read more…]
1.11
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
Everyone reacts differently when you put a camera in their face. She goes by the name Beautiful, he goes by Lo. Our conversation was a little incoherent, but they were gracious enough to let me take some photos of them. [Read more…]
1.9
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
He goes by the name “City.” He just served a year and a half in jail and upon his release came right back to the streets and started using heroin again. City has struggled with his addiction for the last 10 years. He told me: “I grew up in a normal suburban home with a good family. I just got into some crazy shit.” [Read more…]
1.7
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
I was shooting photos on the corner of Stanford and 5th when Durrell Penny here, made it clear he didn’t like my being there. I could feel things might get aggressive, but luckily I’ve been coming around long enough for others on the block to let him know my intentions are good. Many residents of Skid Row don’t want their picture taken for all sorts of reasons, and I respect that. I hung out and talked with him a while and by the end of our conversation he asked me to take his photo and leave it with this quote: “What would a penny from heaven, do on earth?” – Durrell Penny [Read more…]
1.6
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
I met Maria near an area of Skid Row known as Cuban corner, because it’s where most of the Cubans congregate. She’s been off the streets for a few years now, after spending a year in jail at the age of 58. It was her first time in jail she tells me, and that’s where she finally decided to turn her life around. She had a bad drinking problem that led her to have other problems and finally landed her in jail. She pointed to a tent in the same spot where she used to pitch her own tent for many years. Now she lives with her sister in another part of LA, but she comes to Skid Row to pray for those who are still here and whatever else she can do to give back to the neighborhood. She left me with these parting words: “Happiness is here in all of us, we just have to peel back the layers of guilt, shame, and pain and allow ourselves to have it, regardless of what we’ve done or been through.” Maria is a beautiful person, inward and out, and it radiated out of her when I was around her. You could just feel it in her presence. [Read more…]
1.4
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
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Suitcase Joe is a Los Angeles photographer who lives anonymously in our amongst. His Instagram page is an important document of our times. @suitcase_joe
12.22
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
Figueroa Slim. Originally from Oklahoma, he tells me he was living there back when The Oklahoma City bombings happened in 1995. Slim has lived in a handful of places since, with the past 10 years spent living in Skid Row, talking and dressing slick. He’s trying to raise ten thousand dollars to clear up some fines he owes and he’s ready to be put in the movies and get paid. [Read more…]
12.21
That Evening Sun is a photo-journal of life, love and interminable lasting on LA’s Skid Row
by Suitcase Joe
Margaret here has struggled with her addiction to crack cocaine. She tells me she entered into one of the Midnight Mission programs to help her get clean, but she still lives on the street. [Read more…]