Image via Wikipediaby James Jarvis
from Offline Journal of The Damned
a story of homelessness in Los Angeles 7/22/99
Staying in the Centinella Motel, room number 5 again, which puts me dead center in the 11-room motel. Only 11 rooms in the whole place: this is not the Four Seasons of Inglewood.
One single bare bulb in the middle of the cracked, chipped ceiling lights the room, sort of. The ceiling is missing about 6 feet of plaster over the bed. No phone. A TV that works on the low stations: 2, 4, and 7 but is whacked out on 9, 11, and 13.
The room has 4 pieces of furniture: the bed, a chair, TV and something that might have been a nightstand in a previous life. The carpet smells like cat piss, an odor I've grown accustomed to. There IS a toilet and a shower, which is more important than the creaky, bug-ridden bed. Tonight I crash. Tomorrow morning I shower. And at 11 o'clock checkout time, I hit the streets again. This is the life I've chosen.
Tags: Inglewood, Centinella, Centinella Motel, firetrap motels, flophouses, homelessness, bad motels, crack motel
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