When, Exactly, Are We Going To Start Caring About Our Neighbors Again?

Venice, California is not mysterious to me, even though it’s 3,000 miles away. I lived down the street in Palms for a while back in the day, and I have relatives who live in Venice. Venice has gotten very much more upscale than it used to be, but it’s still like a lot of Los Angeles: Gated mansions connected by Skid Rows.

You could give every single person in this video a lecture, I suppose. No one does. I’ve seen the fellow that organizes these events, and he doesn’t pretend that nothing’s gone wrong to land so many people in this kind of trouble. He certainly asks blunt questions about drug use and so forth while he cuts hair. But he offers encouragement, and a sympathetic ear, not a diatribe. He tells the customers that he was just as bad off as they are, and got his life together, stopped doing drugs, got off the street, got married, and had some kids that he loves. He says that if he could do it, maybe you could do it too.

People’s lives, like a house, are not a destination. They’re a direction. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re ever going to reach equilibrium. You’re either getting better, or getting worse. There’s a vanishingly small plateau in the center of the bell curve of life. It’s nice to see people helping their neighbors to move ever so slowly in the right direction. Who knows? Maybe they’ll keep going.