Heart Attack Dogs

Yummy. I love LA Weekly. They tell me things I've never known about my favorite city. They broke the news about Skid Row Staph (at least they broke it to me). And today, I read about those yummy yummy downtown dogs. It's illegal to grill hot dogs. Which is a surprise to me, because every time I'm in Downtown, they're still grilling them, and they never fail to tempt me. They're like The Sirens for my olfactory. And there's this conflict- Legal versus Illegal. The Legals are abiding by the regulations set by the County Health Department, and the Illegals are still makin' them. Guess who gets more business? Boring boiled/steamed or juicy/greasy grilled? Yah. That's the dilemma. It's especially a problem for the Legals because they are registered with the Health Department, so when they get cited, they go to jail. The officials are never going to get the Illegals, because they run away quickly. Sucks. So this is what is said about the Illegals:

"I've seen cockroaches just pour out of the bottom," he says. "I've seen meat sitting out in the sun for hours. We've seen hot-dog carts where the owner has a little bottle where he urinates, because he doesn't want to leave his cart. And he stores the bottle alongside his food."

Nasty or what? I would still eat them. But I just hope that I don't eat a cockroach egg. Ughh.

And then the LA Times' Homicide Report online. It was a year-long assignment that tracked all of the County's homicide. There are about a thousand, but only 10% or so get Times coverage. One of the questions the journalist raised, what determines who gets covered? And she said this was only possible because of the unlimited space that the Internet allowed. Most those who were getting killed off lived on the fringe of society, underground--they had multiple aliases, were illegal, or lived a life of crime. That most of these people are so invisible, a reader responded on Homocide Report, something like "It's almost as if they are disposable." Most of them are black or Hispanic, which then brought another reader to complain that it is bolstering the stereotypes against blacks and Hispanics. But it's nice--I guess more bittersweet--that these people get some kind of attention, some kind of an identity, some kind of a story. It definitely doesn't do any justice, but at least the departed are given a life after living in the shadow. It gives these people a history in the land of forgotten and neglected history. But this is a two-edged sword though; most of them, I would say, go unreported because people won't give any sympathy to criminals that died. The public will be more inclined to say, "God willed it," or something to justify it and imply that they deserved it. I said it, but it's not an opinion coming out of my mouth. It's a harsh reality.

But seriously. Legalize those dogs! We have greater problems to worry about than preventing people from making good hot dogs. Right?