Van Nuys at Night

Since we already broke rule #1. Don't Live in Van Nuys, I thought I may as well break rule #2. Don't Be Outside in Van Nuys Past Dusk Wearing All Black (Even Your Hat) Carrying a Camera with No Lights on Your Bike.
The whole San Fernando valley is surprisingly dark at night, considering the sizeable population. Major streets run in perfect symmetry, cutting the valley into a perfect grid and are well lit, but the moment you turn off onto a street with houses, it turns pitch black. This is a typical street in Van Nuys at night. Look at that picture of nothing, amazing I know.


This is an intersection I cross regularly on my bike. Every morning it makes my day to see 37 shopping carts strewn about the grass by the bus stop. Apparently this issue has been brought to the attention of the civic gods of Van Nuys, and there's a hotline floating out there somewhere that you can call to get shopping carts picked up within 24 hours. I'm thinking of calling it and reporting these particular offending carts, recording my voice during the conversation, then buying an auto-dialer, then programming it to dial in at 6 am every morning so that when I ride by on my bike at 8 I quit blacking out and falling off from flashbacks of pushing carts for K-Mart in Brandon when I was 15. The people who do this need to be held responsible. But I digress. Often.

Around the corner we emerge upon another great Van Nuys institution: The Spearmint Rhino. If you've had a rough day at the office and consider yourself a gentlemen of higher social and moral standing, you will not stoop to the level of the other 17 strip clubs in Van Nuys, you will head straight to the Rhino. The parking lot looks suspiciously like the one in front of a Calabasas strip mall. That's weird. This must be the type place where hot babes are just dancing to pay their way through college. Since 1993. Must be med students.

If Winnipeg taught my anything, it's that businesses in any industry with the word "adult" in it is situated in a predominantly industrial part of town, and here it is no different. With auto mechanics, warehouses, and the like stretching out from the epicenter that is our second floor apartment, you never knows what you will stumble across in your wanderings through the industrial wasteland. Behold a graveyard of K-Mart K's.

With that, as if ordained by the stars, we return to the subject of K-Mart for the second time in one post: surely a sign of profound writing. And speaking of the profound, Here in Van Nuys has been added to my (horribly outdated and untended) blogroll because he keeps me in the know, Van Nuys style. I stole an orange from his tree when he wasn't looking. Thanks Andrew.