Travel Photography > Desert Southwest > Los Angeles River

Los Angeles was initially called El Pueblo de Nuestro Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río Porciúncula - The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Porciuncula Los Angeles River. Back then, the Portuguese were attracted to its whaling, the Spanish to its bountiful land, and the East Coasters to the unspoiled beauty of its mountain woods.

The first wanderings along the apocalyptic storm-drains of Los Angeles was just a kind of weird side-trip. But time went on, and I found myself on weekday nights taking my equipment into the underbelly to photograph; somehow getting deeper each time into an LA I hardly knew. It dawned on me one day that the entire Los Angeles River was like a spinal cord; running down the middle of Los Angeles, and the whole thing could be traveled. I needed a guide for LA, somebody who knew the back streets.

Alvin Camarillo's Huntington Park apartment has shelves of books. Russian history, Tolstoy. Norman Mailer. The History of the Occult. His only picture is a painting of a Moorish vessel attacking a Spanish frigate. He is an early riser, the sort, who, when I knock on his door at eight in the morning has already been shuffling about, ready to leave. Alvin is perceptive, and having lived his entire life in Los Angeles, knows the streets better than anyone I know. I cannot travel in my own city without him.

We took to the highways on a typically gray Los Angeles morning, into Long Beach, underneath a bridge, and over the concrete barricades, hauling Sonora the whole time, and dumping her into the greenish water of the Los Angeles River, just between Compton and Long Beach, where the channel is deep enough for easy passage.

I took her down toward the Los Angeles Harbor, where the Los Angeles River flows into the ocean. For a city where few animals live, the bird-life on the river is amazing. Somewhat sick-looking cranes and blue herons. A Black Crowned Night Heron, with its piercing red eyes was steadfast on a half-sunken shopping cart, either unafraid of me, or too sick to fly away.

Alvin took the opposite direction, paddling upriver towards the marshy cross-section of Long Beach and Compton. As he disappeared out of sight, a man walking along the embankment asked if I had any spare change. No, I told him. I asked him what his problem was.
"You see," he said, "I was a drug addict for 10 years. Now I have been sober for six months, but last night I went back. So I am thinking about my life right now."
I told him to concentrate hard, to think about what he did, and to develop an active lifestyle. I told him that sports and exercise was an antidote for cravings. After all, I said, the Los Angeles River is right here in your backyard.

Alvin and I continued along the river, to the border between Compton and Watts, for lunch. We pulled into the wrong parking lot, and were surrounded by faces peering in our car. One knocked on my windshield.
He said, "Lookin' for da beach?"
"What's that?"
"Lookin' for da beach?"
"No, we're going for chicken and waffles."
"Be carefoo over deah, man."
"Why? What do you mean?"
"Be carefoo da chicken. I don't know how live dey are."
I told the man that we had just been paddling the Los Angeles River, and thus the kayak.
"Oh, rea'y? Hey, uh, nex' time you needa come get us before we go to church, and 'en, you know, do dat and go church with us afterward."
"Perfect," I said.
"Awright, man," he said,, and gave me this sort of fist-pounding handshake I wasn't familiar with.

We pulled into Compton's Chicken & Waffles, a barebones cafeteria, with a jazzman and his saxophone, and posters of black men and women attired in the ornate kingswear and queenswear of Ancient Egypt. The chicken and waffles was good; better than Roscoe's, and friendly service too, not to mention live music before noon on a Sunday.

Outside the cafeteria, a Rastafari was selling oils and incense sticks. I asked him, "Is this thing about going back to Ethiopia still around?" Ethiopia, of course, is the promised land in Rastafari religion; the exodus of the black man from Babylon - America, Jamaica, England.

"It's not so much going back to Ethiopia," he said. "His Imperial Majes'y Haile Selassie gave us a city in Ethiopia called Shashemene, and this city is open to citizenship for any Rasta. Oh, you know, Ethiopia, they not doing so well right now." He paused and said, "These, uh, but we're doing a lot and things like that. You see they're all farmers ovah deah."
"Right."
"And mos' of them have come there from Jamaica and Englan'. There are five I know of from America."
"Only five people?"
"Only five that I know of. There's some American Rasta deah."

I told him that I wanted to visit Ethiopia.

"It's a spiritoo visit, man. Yah, right now things is really tough there right now. AIDS is killin' lots of people, hunger an' all. Just destroys the beauty of it. But you know, America's helpin'. See, we realize that we can do more for Ethiopia and Shashemene, So I'd rather be helpin' dem out, for Rasta from here in LA."
I told him that things would turn around.
"Yeah, you know the first month the both of us would prob'y die. There are a lot of reasons why the migration just isn't possible now."

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