(2015)

It was 1992 and I was the last guy out of my office building before the mob descended. Another two or three minutes and I would have spent the weekend up on the roof. I turned left onto Wilshire. The guy I’d sent packing just before me turned right and two blocks down was engulfed by a mob who tried to drag him out of his car for looking Korean. There was a gunshot that startled the crowd and he floored it, knocking people over and running over a few feet and aside from a busted window and some baseball bat dents on the hood, he was OK. I knew none of this as I drove around like an idiot sight seeing a bit on my way home. I headed straight east since the pillars of smoke were in every other direction. So many fires and not a lot of cops. Mostly no cops at all. Downtown I passed all kinds of National Guard and slipped through the hills, home. We picked up a 12 pack, my brother Lex came by and we spent the night drinking beer and watching the city burn on the news. Next day there was a riot party in the Hollywood Hills somewhere that was a blast and we all drank and smoked and ate and told our scary stories then rushed home to beat the curfew. Hollywood by then was full of cops and soldiers. Armed civilians patrolled neighborhoods. Circuit City was cleaned out. A lot of gunshots in the distance and a pall of smoke blowing over Silver Lake and we breathed in the fumes of a thousand liquor stores now in liquor store heaven.