The Companionship of a Neighborhood as the Institutions Grow Together.

 

The man at the back of the parking lot was looking at the vandalized two story structure with a kind of pizzled frustration. Everything inside of the security fence: the vast parking lot, the boarded-window church, and the abandoned two story building looked as if it stood toe-to-the-line between demolition or possible rehab. Surely the metals had been stripped from the larger building, glass windows had already been broken and some of the stained glass squares from the auditorium had been swapped out for a thicker, fully opaque window covering that would still invite a bit of light but without the flourish of color or the refracting angles that may come from class.

My pilgrimage had led me here, and before I set out I couldn't have imaged this dereliction, based on my studies of the road-cameras on google maps, but the journey here had prepared me well. After days of the hypnotic starts stop of 12 lane traffic on the 5, the 405, the 110, only the briefest glimpses of palm trees, neighborhoods, malls, warehouses, office buildings -- suddenly my sattelite navigation had hurtled me down a rough four lane Heavy Haul Route. My compact rental was struggling to avoid being mauled by semi trucks, oil rigs, giant industrial machinery. The painted lines demarcating lanes had been chewed and erased by the potholes random patches of blacktop and the craters I was dodging seemed an equal danger to the crowding trucks. Massive stacks of shipping containers piled high for miles, sickening scents of tar made me roll up my windows. Oil refineries, fields of electirc generators,water treatment plants detours and unmarked entry ramps turned me around into a salvage yard and finally an exit ramp before I ended up driving into the Port of Los Angeles (according to a faded sign). One block later, I had wandered past a massive storage facility and here was the Baptist Church, with some competing sense of use and abandonement.

The man turned and looked at me as I drove through the open gate. His strides in my direction looked aggressive and I was torn between racing away or using my my polite, non-threatening honesty to ask a few questions and having the chance to explore the site. I rolled down my window and gave it my best shot.

"You need to get out of her right now before I call the police." I nodded in agreement. I would go. But I had to know:

"Are you affiliated with the church?"

"Yeah." He spat, "And if you wanna come to church, come on Sunday."

I nodded and fled. I chose to sit in the McDonalds next door which was a gathering place for un-homed, parents picking up kids from the high school kitty corner, retired folks who chatted over coffee.

The angle of this picture merged these two institution, the fading Baptist Church, and the multipurpose gathering place of the McDonalds in a way that felt poignant and unexpected.