Our Lady in the Hood

A cool organic pizza maker lives (and bakes) around the corner.

Prius owners gutted and remodeled a bank-owned house into a Rockridge-worthy brown shingle masterpiece.

A nice literary couple settled into the house formerly owned by the baddest of the bad boys.

Artsy people are moving into the hood, so I'm pretty sure we're getting gentrified.

But the flava's still here.

After all, we're smack in the middle of the Fruitvale Gang Injunction area.

And for even better protection, we've got Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe patrolling the area.

On December 12, the Mexican neighbors across the street unfurled this velvet banner for Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day. Red and green twinkle lights make her extra-fancy at night. Hope it never gets taken down.



My own beautiful virgen is on view at the top of the post. Ed, my dear friend who's no longer with us, got it long ago in L.A., and left it to me, along with a deluxe Cuisinart and a liking for long walks and twig tea. I'm not religious at all, but this picture's so gorgeous. I draped it in a string of red felt roses (birthday present last year) to mimic the miracle she's famous for.

Josefina, my next-door neighbor, keeps her large statue of Our Lady in a little cage, with ceramic siesta guards napping away (and of course, twinkle lights for extra magic).
My Puerto Rican neighbors next door don't care so much about La Virgen – but they do like frogs.
Around here, if you wanted to, you could dress up head to toe in La Virgen. And that tattoo's starting to look pretty good to me. Orale!

Psychics in the Hood
Tonight 3 psychics came to my house and healed it.
It all started a year ago, when I won a fierce bidding war on a Berkeley Psychic Institute gift certificate at my daughter's school's silent auction. It was a hotly contested item. I prevailed, and for $40, I had myself a psychic house healing.
It took me a year to use it, because, like tidying up before the cleaning person comes, I felt like I had to actually clean my house before it could be psychically healed. I kept putting the place in order, but it would get messy again before I could make that call. Or maybe I thought the psychic house healers would just KNOW to come to my door, and the moment simply hadn't arrived yet.
Finally, last week I found the home-made looking blue certificate in my desk drawer, picked up the phone and dialed. A woman's voice answered. "How can I help you?" she asked. I stopped myself from saying "Don't you already know?", and told her I wanted to redeem my house-healing certificate. In a matter-of-fact way, she said "please hold and I'll transfer you". To where? I expected to hear ghostly moans, or wails at the other end of the line.
Another very cheery, matter-of-fact voice came on the line. "Hello, Berkeley Psychic Institute, may I help you?" I told her I wanted to schedule a house healing. She sounded as though she was paging through a thick appointment book. "Let's see, usually they do those on Monday nights at 8. Will that work for you?" As a matter of fact, it would. So that was that, they were coming the next week.
So I went about my usual after-work routine. Made dinner, ate dinner, helped daughter with bath, read, cleaned up a little.
Then the doorbell rang and I answered it. Standing on my porch were three fairly ordinary looking women. Elaine, Jennifer, and Marisela. Dressed in denim, t-shirts, and sweatshirts. No flowing robes or turbans. I was vaguely disappointed. Marisela held a bible. I invited them in, and they asked if they should take their shoes off. I think from now on I'm going to ask everyone to take their shoes off.
They asked if I'd ever had a house healing before. Nope. Why do you want the healing? I told them the house's history. (When I moved in, the neighbors came over, one by one, and told me how happy they were I was living there. Apparently the last residents thought that "landscaping" meant home appliances in the front yard, pit bulls patrolling the roof. My house was formerly a crack den.) They asked if there were any rooms they couldn't go into. Nope. Then all 3 began moving through the house, hands in front of them like they were feeling for something invisible, as though they were blind.
They walked through every room. I sat and read. Then down to the basement. Then upstairs and down, cheerfully talking and giggling as they walked, arms outstretched in front of them.
"We're done!" said Maricela, who had emerged as the group's leader. "Time for the reading." They set up chairs and mine faced theirs. Feet on the ground, eyes open for me. Feet on the ground, eyes closed for them. Marisela stood behind Elaine and Jennifer. Then followed lots of talk about colors, layers, history (I'll save that for another time). They giggled and laughed and smiled the whole time. It was so merry. I thought they'd be very somber, but it was more like a ladie's tea party or sewing circle. Joana sat happily on the floor, drawing and interjecting comments every so often.
Then they said they were filling the house with golden balls of light, from the basement on up. Marisela pronounced the finish. "I call that a house healing," she said happily. And they gave me hugs and shook off all the psychic energy, put their clogs and sweatshirts back on, and said goodbyes as they left.
The house does feel different, cleaned of all the sad crackhead angst of the past. We'll see.

Pimp my Volvo

You know you live in the hood when even the ice cream truck has spinning tire rims.



The ice cream vendor who drives down my street also drives me nuts. He stops in front of my house while the 20 or so kids who live on the block line up to buy their 3rd or 4th sugar rush of the day.

While he's stopped, the maddening music chiming out from his truck does not. "Do your ears hang low? Do they wobble to and fro?" repeats and repeats till I'm ready to go out and yell at him like a crazy lady.

Maybe that's why he sits behind a steel mesh cage, with a little ice-cream-sized hole through which he takes money and passes treats.

Yesterday, I noticed his rims. They spun and gleamed in the sunshine. They weren't the really fancy ones. Still, this guy had taken the time and trouble to install spinning rims on his ice cream truck. Maybe he was hoping to beat out the competition with these rims. Maybe he was thinking that children in the hood would spurn a truck with non-pimped tires.

Or maybe, sadder still, he just wanted some really cool rims. For his ice cream truck.
Which I have come to understand, living here.

I was mesmerized the first time I saw a set of spinning rims. A Hummer was idling next to me at a light, and I looked over and saw that...even...though...the...car...was...stopped...it...still...looked...like...
it...was...MOVING!

I fell in love with those shiny spinner disk rims and then I started seeing them everywhere, because in my neighborhood they are the pinnacle of car fashion, along with hydraulic lifts, ear-splitting speakers and an awesome paint job in acid green or maybe purple.

I secretly started wondering what my white Volvo station wagon would look like if I put a set of flash rims on its sturdy Swedish frame. So far, I haven't. But if even the ice-cream guy has spinners, maybe it's time to pimp my Volvo.