May 25

Feeding 100-200 Folks Every Night at Salvation Army Food Kitchen

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Getting Trader Joe’s Food Donation to the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition in Hollywood – Uncle Paulie Has Been Delivering Truck Loads for 5 Years

Joe, Head Chef, and Uncle Paulie at the Salvation Army Kitchen

For the last 5 years Gypsy Cool’s Uncle Paulie has been taking van loads of food to the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition operating out of the Salvation Army Kitchen in Hollywood.  They feed up to 200 people every night Monday through Friday.  On weekends they are back at the corner of Romain and Sycamore in Hollywood around 5pm serving dinner.. Paulie makes the long trek from the West Valley at least once a week to deliver much-needed food to Hollywood’s Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition at the Salvation Army.  “Being retired I love helping to feed people who are hungry and need food.  We also distribute food directly almost every night of the week, and help many other groups grappling with the suffering of seniors, homeless folks, students, and other poor folks who need some extra help and love,” said Paulie.  The volunteer delivery crew, including Uncle Paulie, Bob, Wendy, Chuck, Chris, Julie, Judith,  John, Judy, Kathleen and others, are all from the charity Earth Harmony Foundation.

Boxes of food donation from Trader Joe’s in Sherman Oaks.

Volunteers sort through the donations from Trader Joe’s Market in Sherman Oaks.  Chef Joe will use this food with other donations and some purchased food to make enough meals to feed 100 to 200 folks per night.  A great crew of volunteers help to sort, prepare, cook, and serve the meals.  Help is always needed, show up in the afternoon to the Salvation Army on Hollywood Blvd. (near Gower).  For more information, call Sheri at 213-703-9513.

Nov 09

Free Dinner in Hollywood

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Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition

Salvation Army

 

Dinner is Served Monday –  Friday

at 6:30 -7:30pm at 5941 Hollywood Blvd.  This is a nice indoor facility, a sit down dinner.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Saturday and Sunday

Dinner served on the corner of Sycamore & Romaine, 6:30-7:30

1 Block South of Santa Monica Blvd and 1 Block East of La Brea

Instructions

Get in the line that forms.  It gets dark early so bring a flashlight.  There are no tables or chairs allowed, per the City of Los Angeles, who always has plenty of cops around to watch your every move.  You will have to sit on a curb or sidewalk to eat.  Clean up after yourself and pick up your trash.  Bring some wet wipes with you in your back pack.  If you ride your bike, watch it closely.  You can park on La Brea I think after 7pm,  but watch all the parking signs, many of the side streets have no parking after 6pm without a permit.

 

 

 

Nov 09

Remembering New York’s Hero Squatter, Creator of the Garden of Eden, Adam Purple

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Adam Purple Created Magnificent Garden in the Rubble of a Decayed City.  Despite a Court Order, NY Tore it Up for Greedy Developers.  It  was Providing Free Food for Thousands

Adam Purple’s Garden of Eden

In the crazy history of New York City, this story is one that stands out:  it proves that politicians have no class and are only interested in their own greed.  It started in 1975, with Adam and his wife Eve were living in a run down Lower East Side apartment.  Purple was the Superintendent of the old buildinng he was in, and the owner soon disappeared, leaving Adam and others as “squatters”.  Purple saw that a space had been created behind his building when another building was demolished, and he decided to create a garden to grow food for the neighborhood.

Adam Purple

Purple planted the garden as concentric circles, with a yin/yang in the center.  This configuration allowed the garden to grow as more buildings were razed in a frenzy of so-called Urban Renewal.  The garden grew and grew, with over 40 trees and many kinds of vegatables.  It soon became famous as thousands of folks visited the garden, many getting much needed food.

From Wikipedia:  The process of clearing the lot took some time since the couple would only use hand tools. Modern machinery was considered “counter-revolutionary.” He would haul manure from the horse-drawn carriages around Central Park and created a highly fertile topsoil. The garden was ready to be planted in the spring of 1975. The garden was designed around concentric circles with a yin-yang symbol in the center. As buildings were torn down on either side, Purple would add new rings to the garden, allowing it to grow.[4] By the end, it was 15,000 square feet featuring a wide range of produce, including corn, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, asparagus, black raspberries, strawberries, and 45 trees including eight black walnuts. He regularly bicycled to Central Park to collect horse manure to use as fertilizer.

For about 10 years the garden was a tourist spot and also attracted volunteers to help grow food for poor folks,  The City had other ideas, however, and wanted the land for development.  They refused to include the garden in their plans, and on January 6, 1985 tore it down.

Things have actually gotten worse since then.  Although there has been a huge increase in the homeless population, the various States, Counties, and Cities across the land have tried to criminalize folks for being homeless.  We have seen the brutality of this all around us.  A barber in Ohio arrested for giving haircuts to homeless folks for free in a park, Food Banks and church groups being threatened with arrest for feeding the poor, the gestapo-like raids in San Diego recently, called “Encampment Sweeps”, where police seal off the streets where homeless folks are sleeping and then bring in garbage trucks and take all the belongings, tents, food and bicycles from the poor souls and throw them into the waiting refuse trucks to be hauled to the dump.  They take the backpacks and personal items containing ID and medications, anything they can get their hands on, to throw away.  We’ve seen this before in old film footage from the 1930s and 1940s of the Nazi Stormtroopers descending on Jewish areas in Germany.  I guess San Diego is a time-traveled sister city to the Berlin, or Warsaw of the last century. Maybe the final solution will be coming for the homeless, just like the Jews, forced Labor Camps and then extermination.  Don’t think it can’t happen.  In Columbia, as reported here earlier, homeless were rounded up and sent out of town into a concentration camp to live, with police guarding the road so they couldn’t sneak back into town.  We are only a few steps away from the activities in the Third Reich.

Purple died on September 14, 2015, from a heart attack, aged 84, while bicycling across the Williamsburg Bridge.  His Garden of Eden had died some thirty years before. But he showed us that big things can be accomplished, a little at time.  Getting land in or near big cities is not easy these days, so we have to look for alternative situations.

There’s a lot of really great stuff about Adam Purple, a world-travelling philosopher, trying to stop nuclear war, seeking truth, trying to get his book published, and starting the Garden of Eden in New York.  Check out the links and video about him:

Check out this wonderful story, Adam Purple and his Guerilla Garden of Eden by Derick Dirmaier at the website Narritive.ly

Wonderful illustration of Adam Purple by artist Sam von Mayrhauser on the same website.

Adam Purple by Sam von Mayrhauser

 

Sep 14

Music Madness: Gun-toting Diva Shoots Destitute Derelict

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Singer Shoots Homeless Guitarist After Waking Him at 3am

Nashville:  Evidently Partying in her White SUV at 3am, blasting loud music, and spewing fumes from her Porsche, Katie Quackenbush woke up a poor homeless man who was trying to sleep on the sidewalk.  The 54 year old man, Gerald “Doug” Melton yelled at the woman in the Porsche to be quiet, which led to a shouting match, and then Quackenbush jumped out of her SUV and allegedly shot Melton twice. She then fled the scene, leaving Melton bleeding on the sidewalk.  He is in critical condition in hospital.  The Diva Quackenbush is in jail for attempted murder.  Here’s the official press release from the City of Nashville about the incident, which is dated 9-11-2017.

Official Press Release

Woman Charged with Attempted Murder in Shooting of Homeless Man

September 11, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Midtown Hills Precinct detectives tonight charged Katie Quackenbush, 26, with attempted murder for the August 26th shooting of a homeless man outside 901 19th Avenue South near Music Row.

The victim, Gerald Melton, 54, was critically wounded and remains hospitalized at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The investigation, which is being led by Detective Anthony Chandler, shows that Melton was trying to sleep on the sidewalk at 3 a.m. when he became disturbed by exhaust fumes and loud music coming from a Porsche SUV.  Melton said he asked the driver of the Porsche, alleged to have been Quackenbush, to move the vehicle.  An argument ensued, with both parties yelling at each other.  Melton said he walked back to where he was attempting to sleep.  Quackenbush is alleged to have gotten out of the Porsche armed and, as the argument continued, fired two shots at Melton.  He suffered a critical abdominal wound.  He said the shooter got back into the Porsche and fled.

Bond for Quackenbush, of 45th Avenue North, is set at $25,000.

The Clash of Rich and Poor in Nashville

What is interesting is that Crooner Quackenbush and her friend drove away and did not report the incident or call an ambulance for Melton, who she shot in the stomach.  The incident took place at 3am on Saturday August 26, and it was not until Monday September 4th that an attorney for Quackenbush called the police to fess up to who it was that shot the homeless man. Maybe it took her a week to line up an attorney.

The homeless man can be seen in a youtube video, playing a love song on his guitar and singing.  He evidently has been down on his luck in his musical career, and forced into homelessness and sleeping on cardboard on a famous Music Row street in Nashville, where he dreamed of making it as a singer.

 

Meanwhile, Quackenbush comes from a well-to-do family.  Her father is a big attorney in Amarillo, Texas, and is giving interviews about his daughter’s innocence, painting her as a victim.  Click here to read the story in the Washington Post..