Hooded homeless in San Pedro

We have a morning ritual here on the sailboat or what might be described as dog vs Ship Captain with frequent outburst such as "shut the fuck up" or stop that whining". The German Shepherd who's name is Happy wants to get off the boat first thing. Last year I had to stop making and drinking coffee in the morning because shithead whined too much to allow for coffee. Personal record was over a year with no coffee.

Rental Bike

As mentioned in the last blog we found a unlocked Lime Bike close to the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club which is next to where we are docked. Happy escorted the bike pulling like a sled dog and Lucky ran along side having dog fun. These are rental bikes that are scattered around San Pedro that required an App on your smart phone to unlock the bike and you pay through your phone connection. There are Metro Bikes around San Pedro that are locked at docking stations and require returning to another docking station. The Slime Lime bikes are not docked and can be anywhere, blocking the sidewalk, on the pier or beach, in the middle of a dirt field. 

My neighbor who is a bike nut (a real Fred) found one of the Lime locks laying in the gutter across town. He gave it to me and I tried to return the lock but delays in returning e-mails and other messages getting buried in Voice Mail resulted in my decision to take the lock apart. I did and saved all the parts which I may display the internal parts later. 

Lucky in a Basket

I often see homeless using the Lime bikes which led me to the theory that these things could be hacked. Yesterday we took the bike (shown above with Lucky in the basket) out cruising. After a few minutes an audio alarm went off from the speaker attached to the bike lock announcing "the police would be called". WTF, I maybe come apart of a cop chase on the afternoon TV news. 

L

So the bike was parked next to my Nissan in the late afternoon and was gone when we got up this morning. Likely the circuit board inside the lock has GPS and some type of communication to report locations.

Homeless living on Cabrillo Beach

My morning bird watch started with my grousing about the homeless on Cabrillo Beach.

The picture above shows a homeless tent located west of the lifeguard station.

Homeless camping next to Life Guards

As you can see the windows in the Life Guard Station look out on the homeless sleeping next to the signs that say "no tents, no camping". That station is an LA County Life Guard with is part of the LA County Fire Department. This is not to be confused with the second Life Guard Station at Cabrillo next to the boat ramp which is ran and manned by the City of Los Angeles Life Guards.

Lots of shorebirds today

This morning after our beach trip we headed up to Pacific Ave to visit the Post Office at Fort MacArthur. My PO Box is located there not the larger one on Beacon Street close to downtown San Pedro where the homeless are headquartered. Homeless seem to be everywhere here and when I last lived in Orange County there was a family of a mother and two children living along the creek by our house and the children would bath in the creek before going to the public school in the morning.

italian Bakery now gone

Along the sidewalk by the Fort (now an Air Force Base) there are some signs from Old San Pedro on the buildings.

Fort MacArthur 

There is this plaque at the Fort and Richard Henry Dana name appears on it. Dana actually lived here above where my sailboat is located while he was handling the hides collected for the ships return to Boston. As our dog walk continues past the Post Office and back to 22nd Street where we can drop down to the harbor we go through a neighborhood that is not that pleasant to look at.

Homeless living on bus stop bench

This hooded person
lives next to "the Spot" a local dive bar and across from a Cafe that serves breakfast and lunch