Slowing Down

Well, I’m back again. Its been a while since I told you about outreach here in the L.A. area. A lot went on in the last couple of months (like trips to Nepal with my dad) that have slowed down my involvement with outreach – but I’m back at it now.
It has been pretty slow lately, the last time I was in Compton (two or three weeks ago) it was really strange. There were not many girls out (but lots of cops) and the girls I did run into were not real talkative. Even D**** who is usually real friendly with me and we tend to have good conversations was pretty standoffish.
So, last night it was Laurie, Daryl and myself. We met at 2am at the office to build bags. We stopped at the 7-11 first to get some of that blueberry coffee though – I am really starting to love that stuff! When we were there we saw a couple of cops and asked them about the activity they’ve seen in Hollywood lately. They said its been pretty dead and directed us to the transvestite area (but told us we’d find girls there…not so). Then we headed to the office and made up some lovely valentines bags.
We headed off and spent some time driving up and down the strip trying to feel out the situation in Hollywood. It was pretty dead so we headed to the Valley. When we first got there we saw S*** right away. When we pulled over to talk with her she was bolting as fast as she could to hide behind a large van. It seemed to us she was trying to get away from this large SUV that had started to pull down the road, but when we talked with her she told us she was running from the cops (we didn’t see any anywhere close to there so I don’t know what she thought she had seen). She wasn’t really interested in talking much but thanked us for the bag and assured us she prayed each night before heading out to the street and she would be careful. We drove around for a while longer but it was pretty dead so we headed back to Hollywood.
We drove around there for a while longer and still didn’t see anyone so we deiced to call it a night. On our way back to the office we passed another girl on a street corner that was all hopped up on something. She was not doing well. She fell off the sidewalk onto the street as we drove past and then just started stumbling down the middle of the street as she tried to flag down different cars. We made the loop a couple of times to try and meet up with her and then talk with her but she was so far gone and stumbling in every direction we knew nothing we said to her would be remembered.
So things have been pretty low-key or dead around here as of late. That doesn’t mean things are getting better, it just means the pimps are moving the girls around. I am sure they’ve been taking lots of them to Vegas. They can also use other means (newspapers, pamphlets, telephone) to get the girls out. Laurie says this is not completely unusual for this time of year. Between November and February each year it tends to slow down because things can get really charged during political elections so the cops tend to really crack down even more.
So, we’ll see. We’ll just keep getting out there.