I have never felt less safe living in a city than I have living in Los Angeles.

Now, before we queue up Tupac’s “To Live and Die In LA,” this is not because I’ve lived in dangerous areas. My first year out here, I lived in a lovely little beach community called Redondo Beach. Judging by its tanned and juiced-up residents, I’m assuming that the two biggest crimes there were fistfights over which protein is the best and the occasional date rape. Now I live in an area called Westwood, close to UCLA, where the most exciting (and dangerous) thing in just about ever happened only a few weeks ago: Michael Jackson being rushed to UCLA Medical Center, about a mile from my apartment.

Compare this to where I’ve lived previously. I grew up in South Philly. I purposely left out “the mean, hard streets of” before “South Philly,” but it’s not exactly the safest place in America; I remember bringing a former lady home and to my neighborhood and she said, “My god, people don’t grow up like this – this is like a movie!”, I assume referring to the urbanity of the place (she grew up in the deep ‘burbs of not-a-real-city). I went to high school in North Philly, one of the most dangerous parts of America’s sixth-largest city and possibly in all of America. While I went to college in the suburbs of Boston, I studied abroad in London and lived in a sketchy area of Camden Town, where three of my friends’ dorm rooms were broken into and one was robbed at knifepoint. Finally, I lived in a bunch of areas of NYC, but walking home at almost 5am through the desolate, eerie streets of Chinatown (always drunk, usually with pizza, sometimes with my iPod on) was probably not the safest bet (not to mention that I was offered drugs by teenagers on bikes over two dozen times post-4am while living there, for whatever that’s worth).

And yet I never, ever once felt threatened or unsafe in these circumstances, which, though not Iraq-dangerous, where far more sketchy than the palm tree-lined streets and luxury car-filled garages of my LA ‘hoods. However, there are four reasons for my feelings of safety (or lack thereof) in LA (from least scary to most scary):

1) Suburban homes have various points of entry. Everywhere I’ve lived previously, there have been limited points of entry into my home. Growing up, there was the front door, the back door, and a tiny window that even a midget couldn’t pass through. Every place I’ve lived after that had had only my front door and windows that would require various degrees of flexibility and agility to get through. So pretty much unless you’re kicking down the front door or Spiderman, you ain’t getting in.

Compare this with my most recent residence, in Redondo Beach. I could have (and did, when locked out) hip-checked the locked front door and gotten in. We had a yard with sliding glass doors that one good thrust upward could knock off the track and allow for easy entry. There were large front windows into the living room, auspiciously (for murderers) hidden behind large trees. I was able on one occasion to pull myself onto the roof, which was flat and lead the way to the two large windows and into the two bedrooms (and remember, I’m about 210 pounds and have to take breaks when tying my shoes, as I run out of breath).

All this didn’t necessarily keep me up at night, but combined with the total quiet and near-complete darkness of the area (two things that are hard to come by in Manhattan), it was on my mind (usually after I had beat off and no longer had any desire to think about sex and needed something to fill the space in my head before sleep).

2) All (or most of) the really spectacular murders happen in the suburbs. Think about the crimes that happen in the city: muggings, rapes, carjackings, a drug-related murder or two. I don’t think that my drug use/possession paints a target on my back, I never owned a car while living in a city, and at this point, I don’t want to say that I’d welcome a raping, but, you know, if the chemistry’s right, who can really say for sure? As for muggings, I’m not the type of guy to resist someone who pulls a gun or knife on me. You want my wallet? Fine. I’ve likely got less than $40 in there, don’t carry credit cards, and have only a few hondos in the checking account. I also have a girlfriend upstairs, if you’re interested, but please, I have so much left to do on this earth.

Whereas what type of crimes happen in the suburbs? Abductions of women and children that end in sad discoveries in wooded areas, while people being interviewed say, “That kinda thing just doesn’t happen around here.” Murders involving weird shit like blood-drinking, crucifixes, people being put on display, and, if they’re really good, poop. Crazy shit that people in cities don’t think of because they’re too jacked up drugs and need to get that money to get high, not like your suburban murderers who maintain a normal family life and 9-to-5 job but step out after midnight once every few months to put on a Werewolf costume and kill a waitress leaving her shift at Chili’s.

3) I am terrified by the west coast homeless and most Mexicans. There’s a big difference between the homeless of the northeast part of the country and the homeless of the west coast, particularly Southern California. You feel bad for the homeless in the Northeast – it’s 90 degrees sometimes, it’s below freezing other times; then it’s raining half the time or snowing or sleeting or whatever. So it’s almost as though the Northeast homeless recognize this pity and play upon it – I’m homeless, please help, the weather’s terrible and I need a bed and a sandwich.

But when you think about it, is it really that bad to be homeless in Southern California? I mean, it’s 75 and sunny year-round, you can hang out by the beach all day, you get a great tan, you can buy about three tacos for $1, etc. I don’t mean to be (completely) glib here, but these elements have established much more of what appears to be a homeless culture here in LA. And unlike the “Brother, can you spare a dime?” homeless of the Northeast, the homeless of SoCal seem, many times (to me, at least), to be having a ball – all hanging out with each other, carrying on, partying, singing and drinking. There’s no meekness and much more aggressiveness. However, the homeless of both locations still have that “nothing to lose” mentality. Aggressive partying homeless with nothing to lose…um, no thanks.

As for Mexicans, I have to say, I love them. Love their food, love that they work hard, love that when a Mexican girl is hot, she is really, really hot. But I’m afraid of them mostly because they’re so little but so strong – like fire plugs with really bad taste in music, these 5′1″ guys who could beat you up with one hand behind their backs, then in three hours could dump your body in Tijuana and have your teeth sold off to the local school children to use as dice. God bless ‘em.

4) I experienced my first murder here. A month or two after I moved to LA, I was at the office, wrapping up the day. It was 6:30pm, and the smart move would have been to do another 20-30 minutes of work, let the traffic pass, and then zip home. However, I was beat that day and just wanted out, so I decided I’d fight the last of the rush-hour traffic and leave right then and there.

When I got home from work a little over an hour later, I got a building-wide email saying that there was an “incident” in the garage across the street and that those walking to their cars should be escorted by security. Whatever, I thought. I work in Century City, LA’s kinda-Financial District, and I assumed that a mugging had taken place. I put the blackberry down and didn’t think about it again.

The next morning, I drove as usual to the office, got there, turned my computer on, and opened my blinds to take in the view. My office is over 20 stories up and looks down at the parking garage across the street in which the previous night’s “incident” took place. But when I looked at the garage, it didn’t look like a mugging had taken place.

There was a significant amount of what appeared to be blood on one of the rails of the parking lot, and about a half-dozen crime scene technicians were swarming around an area where a car would have been parked. I walked out of the office and asked my co-worker what the hell had happened in the garage, and, wouldn’t you know it, a woman had been murdered. That’s a real “incident” right there.

I learned that the woman had had her throat slashed by an assailant, who fled in an SUV. This was very spooky to me, but what was even more spooky was that the attack had occurred at 6:36pm – about six minutes after I’d left the office for the day. More spooky: some of my co-workers had actually heard her screaming (they were even interviewed on the news about this). All this means that because of the location of the blood – which I could clearly see from my window – had I been in the office just a few minutes later, I would have actually watched a person get murdered.

Wowza.

(Seriously, wowza.)

They eventually caught the guy. And it turned out to be a murder-for-hire, not some crazy person going around slashing throats in the parking garages of Century City. Which is a good thing. But still…a liilllllll bit creepy.

******

As I mentioned yesterday, since my return from two weeks on the east coast, I have been sleeping like a goddamn baby. Last night was no exception. I started falling asleep on the couch around 9:30pm, woke up maybe an hour later, got up and shut off the TV and the lights, got into bed and was fast and soundly back asleep in no time.

An indeterminate amount of time later, I was shocked out of my deep sleep by the incredibly loud noise of a helicopter that sounded like it was preparing to land on my roof. It was, without exaggeration, the most jarring thing I’ve ever heard – for a moment, I honestly thought the helicopter was about to crash into my apartment. I quickly looked out the window and thought I saw the chopper’s spotlight pouring over the outside of my building. I jumped out of bed, and as I did so, I heard what sounded like a small dog letting out a single, high-pitched yap or a woman’s shriek abruptly cut short.

Now again, I was basically in a coma, jolted back to life by this helicopter. Helicopters in LA neighborhoods are not an uncommon scene; “ghetto birds,” they are affectionately referred to, and it usually means that some sort of high-speed pursuit suspect is out and running or some robbery has been interrupted. But when I woke up, I was in full “it’s go time” mode. Still half-asleep, the helicopter above made it sound like a war movie was going up, so I grabbed this back massager thingee that sat next to my bed and, shirtless and in only boxers, bounded out of my bedroom door into the darkness of my living room, thinking, in my half-conscious state, that there was very likely an intruder in my living room and that I was going to fuck him up something proper (whether or not I was yelling can not be confirmed nor disconfirmed at this time).

I burst into the living room and turned the light on, but no one was there. The helicopter was still circling overhead, not quite as loudly, but still very much nearby. Half-naked with the massager, I checked all the closets, in the process growing more awake. What the hell was going on? I wondered. There had to be a bad guy loose in the neighborhood – what about that spotlight? And what about the dog barking or woman shrieking? I heard that, for sure. Right?

Now fully awake, I put on the 11pm news, but it was about 11:45pm and it had just ended, so no dice. I looked at a few LA news websites, but nothing about “Suspect Loose in Westwood.” What the hell? The helicopter was still going strong – again, not nearly as close, but still there – so what’s causing all this?

Well, through Twitter and some other sources, I eventually figured it all out: Harry Fucking Potter was causing all of this. Apparently, there was a midnight showing of the movie at some famous theater in Westwood, just up the street from me, and people were lined up for blocks and blocks (and likely dressed up like the goddamn characters) and the helicopter was a news chopper, not an LAPD chopper, looking to get some footage. What the fuck.

The spotlight that I thought I saw could have been the light from a neighbor’s window (since I never saw the spotlight again). The dog-yelp/woman-shriek was likely just a dog yelping. The helicopter just happened to, at that moment, position itself direct outside my window, rousing me from my deep sleep. All over Harry Fucking Potter.

I was so jacked up that I was tempted to take my half-naked self and back massager out to the streets to exact some vengeance on the nerds – I was certain that it was going to be difficult to fall back asleep now, after all this adrenaline. But, true to form, when I lay back down, I was asleep in no time. And I was rewarded with another blissful night of sleep.

But man, Harry Potter. Scared the shit out of me. Fucking LA.