Street Hustling in Los Angeles
In the early months of the pandemic I, Noah Allison, was waiting to order tacos al pastor from a truck at a gas station in my neighborhood when a tall, dark, muscular man approached me. He had a big smile and asked if I could spare a dollar for a champurrado. Growing up in Southern California I was accustomed to such encounters. Yet this one stood out because the guy wanted a warm chocolate drink — and because of his radiating aura. This prompted me to engage him whenever we crossed paths.
Over the years I learned that Roland (not his real name), thirty, was born in Jamaica and moved to Los Angeles with his family at age twelve. A dispute and the death of his father had ostensibly landed him on the street. Since 2017 he had lived in a tent near the Santa Monica Freeway. He had been addicted to methamphetamines for several years, following a weightlifting injury. Although he offered numerous accounts for living on the street, his kindness, wit, and enthusiasm for life were constants. Roland loves to paint infamous cartel leaders like El Chapo and Pablo Escobar, as well as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters and superheroes (Figure 1). (He hopes to be an MMA fighter.) I saw him selling his art and panhandling motorists, always in the middle of the street. And numerous times I watched him buy and use drugs. Our interactions became so frequent that, in time, we usually knew where to find each other. Of course, our relationship was transactional. Roland always asked to use my phone and for money and I usually gave him what I had. In return, Roland gave me company and a sense of community, particularly during the height of the pandemic.
Figure 1. One of Roland’s art pieces on canvas. Photograph by Noah Allison, 2024.
When I asked Roland if I could document his life by writing about him and taking photos, he immediately agreed. In return, I paid him and bought him art supplies. I spent several days in 2024 with him. I used a notebook, audio recorder, and camera to document my observations and conversations with him, including his money-making strategies. Later, with Roland’s consent, cartographer Victor Cano-Ciborro visualized some of my findings in a series of maps (Figures 2, 3, 4).
Figure 2. The boundaries of the County and City of Los Angeles and this study’s field site. Graphic by Victor Cano-Ciborro.
Figure 3. The infrastructures Roland visits on a regular basis. Graphic by Victor Cano-Ciborro.
Figure 4. Roland’s hustling tactics and the locations of other informal activities at the intersection. Graphic by Victor Cano-Ciborro.
Roland lives between and on-ramp to the Santa Monica Freeway and a gas station. Carrying 300,000 vehicles a day, the freeway, part of Interstate 10, generates a constant, thunderous roar (Figure 5). For Roland, it’s become merely white noise. The spot makes a stark departure from the promises of the Hollywood sign visible from Roland’s tent. Importantly, the land’s ownership is ambiguous, minimizing potential harassment from local property owners and passersby (Figure 6). Not for nothing, it’s convenient to everything Roland needs to survive.
Figure 5. The east/west movement of vehicles traveling on the Santa Monica Freeway. Photographs by Noah Allison, 2024.
Figure 6. Roland’s living quarters among the trees and shrubs aligning the Santa Monica Freeway. Photograph by Noah Allison, 2024.
Fitness is Roland’s first order of business upon waking up around 8:00 AM. He dedicates approximately an hour to lifting cinderblocks and performing calisthenics. Such rigorous discipline is driven by his MMA ambitions. Following his workout, he heads north on Arlington Avenue to the gas station where we met to buy Muscle Milk. Typically, he consumes six to ten of these protein drinks a day with the aim of adding fifty pounds to his muscular 230-pound frame. He bemoans the challenges of realizing his MMA aspirations and recognizes the “cruel optimism” inherent in the endeavor, particularly because he lacks a sparring partner, which makes him chuckle at the absurd idea of instigating a fight on the street solely for practice.
Before reaching the gas station, he dashes across the busy avenue, dodging speeding vehicles in both directions. He enters the gate to a four-story prewar apartment building where he shouts something into a grill-protected window. Then he completes his brief journey to Chevron. Muscle Milk in hand with earnings from the previous day, he settles against the light post in the gas station parking lot and downs the protein supplement while enjoying the mild spring sun. Moments later, a whistle comes from a man across the street. Once again, Roland sprints through the avenue with little concern for traffic. He expertly maneuvers around the approaching vehicles, even as he loses one of his lace-less shoes. The man, who has come out of the apartment building, is older, with shoulder-length grey dreadlocks. After a five-minute verbal altercation, Roland pays him a balance owed, twenty-one dollars, and gets the first of his two daily “doses.” Roland returns to his tent to release dopamine into his brain and spend several hours drawing, then sleeping.
It is typically late afternoon when Roland emerges from his tent for the second time of the day. If he has the cash, he often walks west on Washington Boulevard's sidewalks to one of its liquor stores to buy avocados, bananas, and canned sardines. Alternatively, he may opt for hamburgers and fries at a fast-food joint. Occasionally, he visits the local public library to watch MMA and boxing fights on YouTube or find inspiration for his drawings on the web. It is during these excursions that we often cross paths. Washington, along with Arlington Avenue, is the lifeblood of Roland's existence (Figure 7). It’s not only where he shops for food and drugs but where his youth's memories reside. (Roland’s tent is a five-minute walk from the home where he lived as a teenager.)
More often than not, however, Roland doesn’t have money. Then he goes "to work," as a street hustler, walking fifty feet to Arlington just north of the freeway to solicit money from motorists (Figure 8).
Figure 7. View of the Hollywood sign from the intersection where Roland lives and works. Photograph by Noah Allison, 2024.
Figure 8. The cinderblock Roland uses to exercise. Photograph by Noah Allison, 2024.
Here, he performs a kind of dance. He begins by walking to the middle of the road, where he waits for southbound cars to gather at a red traffic signal. He then navigates between the lanes with the most vehicles and approaches each at the driver's window. Roland does not ask for anything. Instead, he presents one of his paintings. He’s learned that motorists are more inclined to donate if he appears to be selling his work rather than asking for a handout. When the light changes, he turns around and solicits all the slow-moving motorists traveling in the opposite direction. As he walks back to his starting point he moves between yellow traffic-calming lanes that provide a nominal buffer zone between vehicles traveling in opposite directions (Figure 9). Upon reaching the signal, he waits to begin again (Figure 10).
Figure 9. Aerial view of the location where Roland hustles in the street, 2024, annotated by Noah Allison. Courtesy of Google Earth.
Hustling at this intersection for nearly a decade, Roland has never been hit by a car. While luck may play a part, so do agility and skill. Countless cars honk at him as he weaves in and out of traffic, confident if ungracious. To ensure his safety and demonstrate his awareness, Roland uses his body to make himself visible, stretching out his arms to allow drivers to gauge their proximity to him. He is not worried about being discreet. Street hustling has become so common in L.A. as to become invisible; in nearly a decade at this intersection Roland has only had one encounter with a police officer, who simply asked him to get out of the street.
Most days, Roland “works” for one or two hours, earning between $50 and $100 (Figure 11). It is rare for Roland to sell a painting. When he does, he sometimes feels bitter about it because it means he must part with a creation that embodies his dreams and aspirations, an object that gives his life meaning. At the same time, a sale confers dignity. Selling his work helps him transcend his hardships.
“The struggle for survival takes many forms on Los Angeles streets.”
Figure 11. Roland defying the autocentric road while hustling in the street. Photographs by Noah Allison, 2024.
Roland is not the only one hustling at the intersection. From the sidewalk, Latinx vendors peddle flowers and air freshener eight to ten hours a day. Some days a young Roma couple and their infant occupy fold-out chairs in a dirt area adjacent to the road. They take turns holding up a sign soliciting money for four or five hours before returning to their parked car at the gas station. The struggle for survival takes many forms on Los Angeles streets.
When Roland has enough money, he returns to the apartment building for his second dose. The drugs provide a temporary escape from his hard life. He wants to quit. He knows his addiction is a barrier to a more meaningful and healthy life.
Roland’s situation highlights the pervasive challenges faced by marginalized people, particularly racialized groups who experience addiction and homelessness. Roland’s harsh realities are shared by thousands living on Los Angeles’s streets.
And now things might get worse for them. In the past fifteen years, pedestrian deaths in the United States have risen by 77 percent, fueled by poor road design, the replacement of cars by heavier (and far more lethal) SUVs, and smart phones. L.A. tried to get ahead of the problem ten years ago when it passed a Mobility Plan. But rollout was slow. In 2023, an average of one pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle every other day in the city. So, in March 2024 city voters approved ballot measure HLA (Healthy Streets L.A.). Ushered through by local transportation advocacy group Streets For All, it will add bike and bus lanes, widen sidewalks, and upgrade street infrastructure whenever a road is repaved.
HLA passed by a wide margin. On a personal level, I am elated by it, particularly as a car-free Angeleno. And yet I worry. How will these improvements affect Roland and the thousands of others who inhabit the city’s streets and intersections? Since the Mobility Plan’s envisioning, the number of individuals living on Los Angeles’s streets has increased 80 percent, to nearly fifty thousand. No provision has been made to assess how the strategies it calls for will impact panhandlers, vendors, or encampments.
Without safeguards, implementing the plan might inadvertently displace and disrupt the lives of thousands. Roland's daily struggle for survival on the streets underscores the pressing need for urban practitioners to prioritize the movements and safety of all people, including the unhoused, when designing road projects, including those to protect pedestrians. And it begs questions about which L.A. pedestrians’ lives matter.
As HLA rolls out, Roland perseveres. Only time will tell how long L.A.’s streets will foster opportunities for his survival. I hope he can use them however he needs, for as long as he needs them.
Citation
Noah Allison and Victor Cano-Ciborro, “Street Hustling in Los Angeles,” PLATFORM, March 3, 2025.
