Hispanic Fanatic

The lawn mower went for twenty bucks…

Because of our recent cross-country excursion, my wife and I needed to get rid of every item that had no bearing on our new life (eg, we don’t need a snow shovel in a Los Angeles apartment) or that wasn’t absolutely vital or that didn’t bring us enormous quantities of joy. So a couple of weeks before we left, we held our first moving sale.

The end table went for ten dollars…

It was liberating to dispose of so much junk that had cluttered our lives. And the cash was nice, although when we figured out how many hours we poured into the effort, we figure that we made minimum wage. Perhaps it’s a question for the “Freakonomics” guys: Does anyone actually make decent money having a garage sale?

My neighbor carted off the entertainment center…

In any case, the biggest surprise of the weekend was the makeup of our customers. I had assumed that most of the people who frequented rummage sales were old women eager to interact with strangers or suburban guys looking for good deals on power tools or middle-class people who think it’s fun to haggle. Indeed, many of those types of people showed up.

The Asian tea set went to a pre-adolescent boy who was either shopping for his mother or is gay…

However, among the first people to saunter onto our lawn that warm Saturday morning was a quiet Latino who milled about for a moment before asking how much the microwave oven was. It was clear that his English was fledgling, so I had to call upon my piss-poor Spanish to make the sale. He seemed delighted at the everything-must-go price.

Minutes later, a car pulled up, and several men spilled out. They were clearly trabadorjes, and they spoke excitedly about the power vac and the ladder and the box of bungee cords. To pay for their acres of items, they presented me with a crisp hundred-dollar bill. Obviously, they had just been paid, in cash under the table, and our moving sale was their Home Depot and Target and Tiffany’s. They culminated the transaction by buying one of my guitars, which I assumed would offer them some entertainment in their shared tiny apartment.

My ex-boss took the fake Christmas tree…

Throughout the day, more of my Hispanic brethren showed up. Latinas looking for costume jewelry and little girls enamored with baubles for a quarter and burly men who bought three t-shirts for a dollar – they poured over our discards eagerly. All seemed thrilled with our approach to pricing.

And I don’t know whether I was happy that we could help people who were obviously short on cash, or saddened that whole families of Hispanics had to resort to yard sales to fulfill basic needs.

The pooper scooper went for a buck…

My wife and I didn’t have the sale as a backdoor to charity. But that’s what it felt like at times. And the recipients were people who looked like me, but who were still trying to figure out how to achieve the privileged position of getting rid of all this junk rather than buying it.

The last things to go were a pair of folding chairs that a middle-aged Latino lugged to his car. After that, the sun began to set, and my wife and I carted the rejects inside, where they would sit until we donated them to someone who really needed them.

So I’ve arrived at my new place in Los Angeles. As such, I hope to get back to regular blog updates soon, although for the time being, my top priority will be digging us out of the heap of boxes that overwhelm our home.

The whirlwind experience of finding an apartment featured myriad phone calls and frantic acceleration through the streets of LA, with the always pleasant task of flying across the country thrown in there for bonus stress points.

I had gone so long between airplane trips that I had forgotten how fun it is to be “randomly” selected for an extra pat-down by the TSA. Perhaps I should have explained that I’m Hispanic and not (as they clearly assumed) Middle Eastern. But this would have implied that I agree with right-wing zealots that there’s something inherently wrong about being Middle Eastern. And in any case, it wouldn’t have made a difference to those on perpetual watch for the next Mohamed Atta. I do think it was a bit excessive, however, to wand me while I was buckled in my seat on the airplane. But I was assured that this is standard procedure.

In any case, my wife and I are happy with our new home. Because we live in a neighborhood in which I spent little time during my first stint in LA, I did some research online to discover what I’m getting into. I found out that some famous past residents of my new hood include Anais Nin, Tom Waits, and Kiefer Sutherland – all of whom I’m sure had nicer digs than our humble abode.

But something disturbed me when I performed my due diligence. According to reputable online sources, the neighborhood in which I now live has a high percentage of Latinos. Even more alarming, it is also home to, as one source put it, “numerous creative types.”

I’m at a loss at how I got into this situation. I mean, surrounded by both Latinos and “creative types”… surely those two demographics will be the death of America.

How will I survive with my values intact?

I am hitting to road to California this week, so the computer is getting packed up. This means that it may be a little while before my next post. Trust that it’s coming, however.

In the meantime, here’s a picture that my good friend, the infamous Nichole, sent to me. Maybe it’s Photoshopped, but I’d like to think that it’s authentic. It should keep you entertained until I get back.

As we know, President Obama has announced that immigration reform will have to take its place in line behind a sputtering economy and a faltering war.

At the risk of showing off, or lapsing into complete egomania, I will now quote myself. Months ago, I wrote that, in the near future “not much will come of the new president’s apparently sincere desire to make this country a better place for immigrants. There simply isn’t the bandwidth.”

I would like to think that this means that I am smarter, or at the very least, display psychic abilities. In truth, it just means that I made an educated lucky guess, or I’m just more cynical than other commentators.

But let’s not beat up on the president too much over his reprioritization. He still has three years in which to help right-wingers morph into irrational fear mongers with bulging carotid arteries who lash out at anyone who disagrees with them. Of course, when immigration reform happens, it will make the healthcare melee look like a junior high debate.

Once more, here’s a short post to keep you up to date while I pack furiously for my move to California.

My friends at TC Daily (which carries my posts) had an interesting article about the continuing healthcare crisis among Latinos.

We all know that Hispanics are far more likely to get diabetes. But genetic predispositions are only part of the story. According to the article, Latinos have less access to healthcare in general (and certainly less than the old white people losing their minds about the “socialized medicine” boogeyman). As such, we’re looking at a major public-health disaster down the line.

Granted, the article is more about immigrants than Hispanics in general (and as we all know, the groups are not synonymous). However, its conclusion, which is that “society will have a high price to pay if access to medical and behavioral health care isn’t provided to immigrants regardless of their resident status,” is timely… and more than a little scary.