Five Thoughts You Have As Kpcc Donate Car Approaches

Los Angeles has so abounding scruffy, unmanicured average and access strips that I've anticipation about accepting a challenge to name the ugliest.

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But there's a average in Atwater Village that draws absorption for addition reason: It's not an eyesore, it's absolutely nice, with connected improvements such as bedrock and seashell gardens, copse carvings and terraced landscaping.

The acclaim does not go to burghal streets crews, however. It goes to a abandoned guy.

"I like to anticipate of it as a addition to the universe," said Jeff Harmes, a 46-year-old Colorado built-in who told me he's been abandoned aback he was 17.

Anyone who lives in the area, me included, has been advised over the aftermost year to a bit-by-bit transformation of the about 75-foot average band aloof arctic of the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge. This isn't advancing panhandling, it's active panhandling, and you affectionate of ambition there were a thousand guys like him. It ability be the alone way to apple-pie up the city.

Harmes has admiring chuckles and donations by painting "Coin Toss" on a bin at the end of the average strip. He told me that some bodies miss, but others accept sailed $1 bill airplanes into the bin, and one guy tossed six quarters, every one award the mark.

"I can alive calmly on $30 a day," he told me, adage that he spends his money on food, cigarettes and beer, and that he lives "in the woods" abreast the 5 Freeway.

"Hey Steve, look! I aloof put in a rosebush," Harmes said with abundant action Monday afternoon. "Someone brought it to me aftermost night."

Last week, addition larboard an brief alms of greenery in one-gallon containers. Harmes was aggravating to amount out how to fit them into his evolving creation.

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"I don't anticipate they're succulents," he said, which meant he would accept to lug jugs of baptize from a faucet in advanced of a adjacent business.

Harmes said he has no agronomical experience. But he pages through a book alleged "Gardens for All Seasons" for pointers.

He has a bound admirers because cars accept to stop abutting to his garden while cat-and-mouse for the ablaze to about-face green. While I visited with him, one motorist told Harmes that the garden was attractive good.

"I'm aloof aggravating to appearance progress," he told her. "I baldheaded my arch because I didn't appetite to cull my beard out over this. Accept a acceptable one!"

Another disciplinarian formed bottomward his window and captivated out a chargeless cafeteria — a burger and chips from McDonald's.

"Thanks, dude," said Harmes, whose admirers accept donated the garden accoutrement he uses.

"He's a little bit of an artisan in my opinion," said Luis Lopez, who owns an auto adjustment boutique and is controlling administrator of the Atwater Village Chamber of Commerce. "He's done a lot bigger job than the burghal does of advancement the median."

But not anybody in Atwater Village — which has a cogent citizenry of abandoned bodies active forth the river — is cheering. In January, aback a abbreviate adventure about Harmes was acquaint on the website of KPCC host John Rabe, one clairvoyant accused Harmes of burglary plants from yards and addition said "he generally yells at people" and "he's afraid my child."

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Harmes angrily denied any thievery, and association I batten to backed him up. But there is some truth, Harmes admits, to claims that he has casual outbursts, abnormally aback vandals accept messed with his garden.

"I acquaint him he has to stop agreeable and yelling, because bodies do adulation what he's done here," said Netty Carr, a acquaintance who helped Harmes band up a account agriculture job at a adjacent business. "When I allege to him he's not hostile, he's actual gentle, but I do accept he hears voices."

Harmes told me his troubles began aboriginal in life. He was adopted at the age of 5 months, his ancestor died, and his mother affiliated a man who physically abused him and his mother.

I asked Jeff if he anytime had a brainy bloom diagnosis.

"Depression with certifiable features," he said. "I've been on psychotropics and everything."

He acclimated to booze adamantine liquor every day, but that was years ago, Harmes said. Now it's beer, and he said he can handle it.

"I don't agitate anymore," he said.

I asked Harmes if I could allocution to his mother (he proudly beatific her photos of his garden afore his cellphone got stolen). Sure, he said, giving me her cardinal in Colorado.

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Sharon Post said Jeff had lots of behavior problems as a boy, and they approved aggregate from aggressive academy to hospitalization. Jeff threatened to accomplish suicide added than once, Post said, and aback his sister died of a biologic overdose, he said he consistently anticipation he would be the one to die that way.

His diagnosis, Post said, was brainy affliction and biologic addiction, and she was additionally told that Jeff was believed to be a victim of fetal booze syndrome. That agency his biological mother may accept drank abundant to account concrete and brainy defects in her approaching adolescent — altitude that he has wrestled with his absolute life.

Harmes told me he came west in about 1998 and acclimated to ambit the streets aback he was abandoned in Marina del Rey, aggravating to accomplish some affectionate of contribution. He eventually wandered east for no accurate acumen and begin the antiquated average band that would become his latest addition to the universe.

Thousands of bodies are abandoned in Greater Los Angeles, and it's accessible to accomplish aggregate judgments. But Harmes is a admonition that every one of them has a aback story.

I'd like to anticipate there's a way to allure him into admiring apartment except that there's an acute curtailment of that actual thing. He told me he'd never go for a apartment bed on drift row — too abundant chaos.

"I'd rather cycle up in cardboard."

For now, he's begin purpose and fabricated a activity for himself. In December, he told me, he got two $100 bills, amid added Christmas presents.

As we spoke, he reconsidered his adjustment of an aloe vera plant, adage that he capital to replant it area it could be bigger showcased.