While New York has its bustling Greeley Square, LA’s public space named after a journalist is far less utilized. Even the designation of Larry King Square is disregarded by the Angeleno on the street. But the intersection of Vine and Cahuenga presents a confluence of qualities that make it the hands down best city square to be homeless. Perhaps challenged by the Homeless Or Hipster Dilemma coffee barristas at the café on the square’s North West corner allow the indigent to sit for hours in a clean well lit place without fear of getting rousted. In that event, they can cross to the CNN building where a comfy bench in a shaded collonade affords a perch to keep up with the state of world events on a bank of LCD monitors. Then when its time to hustle change and chow down, there is the Jack In The Box. as much a mess hall for the homeless as any skid row mission. The fast food eatery with its daily specials offering some hockey puck of fat and salt for 99 cents has replaced the Mulligan maker as the provider of a bum’s meal of choice and its vast parking lot on the North East corner is nothing if not a modern day Hobo Jungle. We remain amazed at the sight of bearded white bums, looking like they marched out of Andersonville, regularly deployed here like a vanguard for the coming hordes of bums. There are squads of crusty punks, all facial tattoos and piercings, some with dogs in tow, inexplicably as drawn to Hollywood as good looking bimbos, and who being closer to the Earth spirits, loll around a patch of grass from where they solicit passers by. Too there are the flipped-wig can men with colorful custome shopping carts, the bag ladies, all here, in every shape and form from all corners of the nation, leaving us thinking that newspaper man Horace Greeley showed foresight when he urged “go west, young man, go west” as there’s no hobo convention in his square.

Legman’s Note: Some may critique this piece as missing an image of the down and out, which would no doubt illustrate our point. But we do not photograph bums or mental cases (who are not acquaintances) because we respect humanity. People are not objects.