Seven Piles of Gold

Near Sunset Junction, Silver Lake/East Hollywood
(photo courtesy of Sarah Grant)

There are a few of us in the world who are very concerned with what's happening at the Offering Circle these days. Since I no longer live on Lexington near Virgil, I send out scouts to spy on the contents of the Circle. Sarah Grant, who often works on all her smarty-pants anthropology of food scholarly stuff at Intelligentsia, is one such ranger. Unfortunately there were no treats in the Circle the last time she went to check, but she did find this beauty: seven shiny piles of shit. There is so much shit in that neighborhood that I rarely photographed it, but I think this strip of shit-covered grass indeed deserves credit. There's so much shit that at the vanishing point of this scene I believe there is one barely visible tiny pile of shit, marking eternity as refuse.

For any Angelenos who want to check on the Offering Circle, please do and email photos to me at grossstuffinla@gmail.com. The Circle is on the north side of Lexington just west of Virgil in East Hollywood.

Pig 'N a Puddle

6th and Grant, Denver

This delicate saucisse was out for a stroll under the winter moonlight, rolling over fresh piles of soft, pristine snow, when it thought it saw from afar a hand to hold (it). As this salchichita approached the buzzing lights of the Blockbuster, it realized what it had seen was only an illusion of hope, of love. Before it could scream, it was grabbed by the glimmering teeth of a Golden Retriever and ripped apart. As it lay dying in an icy patch by the dumpster it thought back on its short but full life, and it regretted only one thing. "I have loved," it thought. "I have laughed. I have gazed upon the lights of a refrigerator, a freezer, and briefly, now, the moon. The only thing I regret is that I never had a chance to feel the cool water of the ocean on my intestine casing. I never learned to swim." Well, little buddy, you're swimming now. You're swimming now.

Poop-a-roni

West Wash Park, Denver

...the San Francisco treat! Except, this pile of gross isn't from San Francisco, it's from my very own kitchen here in Denver, Colorado. What started out as a tasty, if fattening, Japanese Javanese Curry (confused? see the photo below), ended as a pile of one of the grosser things I've left sitting on the table over night. And why are there so many pieces of silverware on the plate? I confound myself, sometimes.

Bangkok Condom Canal

Near Wat Borommaniwat, Bangkok

Here we have another special photo from Southeast Asia, this one from Luke Schmidt, scholar of Thai Buddhist temple murals. Bangkok is a great city. It really is. Some people give it a hard time, calling it the armpit of Thailand, saying you should leave Bangkok as quickly as possible on a north or southbound bus. These are probably the same people who hate L.A. because they've never gotten out of their cars to actually walk around in the perfect weather. They may also be the same people who live in Boulder and hate Denver. Or, they may be people who just hate the Gross. I understand. The Gross can be tiring, I'll admit it. One of the reasons I started this blog is to form a more peaceful relationship with the Gross. I was irritated at how disgusting human beings are, but instead of wallowing in my disgust, I embraced that part of human nature and now I write about it and photograph it. Digression! Sorry. Anyway. Condoms. So if you look closely at this photo you'll see lots of little rings floating in the canal. Yep. These are condoms. Lots and lots of condoms. Was it a Bangkok orgy? A disgruntled prostitute dumping out the contents of her purse? A creepy old American guy, doing creepy old American guy things?

Gross Stuff...In Southeast Asia

There are a million obviously gross things that one might come across in Southeast Asia. Milky shit rivers running wide and deep throughout Indonesian urban areas, a motorbike flattened crusty rat getting wedged between my flip flop and flesh in Saigon, fried pork for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Manila, and a veritable assortment of rotting produce everywhere. Yet some of the grossest things I’ve come across remind me that LA and Southeast Asia? Not so different after all! Case in point, I was walking down Le Thanh Ton St. in Saigon and passed a parked taxi driver fiddling around with something in his car. He then proceeded to exit the vehicle and carefully hang a fresh plastic bag full of urine on a telephone pole. There are plastic bottles full of taxi driver pee all over the city but this is the first plastic bag of pee I’ve seen. This happens in LA all the time I’m sure.




Gross stuff in Southeast Asia also manifests in the form of horrible translations and nascent health practices involving little flesh eating fish. Sometimes though, I can’t help but indulge in very curious gross habits and Singapore might be the cleanest place in the world to do this. I made an appointment with Dr. Fish the other day and let a pool full of miniature fishies eat all the dead skin off my feet and lower legs. At first I didn’t think it was so gross…but then I thought about what was actually occurring – i.e. hundreds of little fish full to the brim with hundreds of different dead skin cells from recent patrons.



Translations into English are also perfect fodder for gross stuff. For instance, I nearly gagged at the possibility of eating a bowl full of the “cream of funny man” at an ice cream parlor in Quy Nhon.



Please keep your children well clear of this “special” swimming pool in Toraja.



But even grosser is this “sandwich” made out of “meat” and “veggies.”




I’ll keep my “eyes” far, far away from your “salami bags,” thank you very much (guest post by Sarah G. Grant)

It has been WAY too long

Hi everybody! So, it's been many many months since my last post here on Gross Stuff in L.A., and well, I'm no longer in L.A. However, rather than start yet another blog with yet another URL, I'm going to leave this up and running, but the gross stuff you see may be from cities other than L.A. In fact, the first one I'm going to put up is a guest post from everyone's favorite foodie, Sarah Grant, from her most recent trip to Southeast Asia. Please tell your friends, enemies, and grandmothers about this blog; I promise you it's gonna take off.

Another mystery totally solved.

If you read back through past entries you will come across a large number of homemade finger bandages we found bloodied in the grass every morning. Guess what? They weren't finger bandages at all, but leg bandages for a tiny Chihuahua that a pudgy man lovingly carried through the neighborhood in the wee morning hours. It was kind of him to discard them on our street every day, and give us a mystery to make life fun.
(Guest post by Andrew)