Koreatown in Los Angeles has its scary moments. A few weeks ago Nicole and I awoke to four gunshots at about 10:30 pm. We ran to the windows but didn't see anything. A week or so later, just as I had hopped on my scooter and rode around the corner there were five more. Luckily, no one was injured in any of these shootings. From what we can gather from the streetside gossip there's a rival gang that keeps coming into our part of the neighborhood that is apparently controlled by another gang.
I don't see drug deals or anything going on in the streets or alleys so I'm not exactly sure why the gangs are fighting over a shitty piece of the city. Just to claim it as their own? It's beyond me. I think they fight just to fight. Good thing they've got terrible aim and I'm on the 4th floor.
Even though the neighborhood avoided gang war casualties it didn't escape casualty free. A few days ago we came home to see the coroner's van and three police cars parked in front of the building across the street (which is managed by the same company that manages ours and also owns another building on the street). We asked around but no one knew anything and we just assumed the gang violence had taken a life and everyone was too scared to talk. I even asked the property manager Azar and he said he didn't know anything but relayed to me that he had recently been promoted to corporate and he wouldn't be managing these three buildings anymore.
Then today, as Nicole was walking Oni, she ran into a very talkative woman who lives in the building across the street who seems to know everything about what's going down in the neighborhood. She told Nicole that the new property manager (Azar's replacement) had gone inside the elevator shaft (without shutting anything down) to see if he could determine why it wasn't working when someone on one of the upper floors hit the button, the elevator turned on and it crushed him. What a terrible tragedy. What's worse is that the management company didn't tell anyone what happened (nor did they shut down the elevator) leaving everyone to find out through word of mouth.
Koreatown has more good days than bad but since the bullets started flying Nicole and I have started looking for a new place to live. Hopefully this will all make for some riveting story to tell our children some day and we can get out of here before something really awful happens.
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