The Federal Complex, Part III
Continuing where we left off...
Wow!  Even more ceiling madness!
I wondered why we hadn't seen any signs of vagrants.  It turned out they clustered themselves in one building (seemingly arbitrarily chosen) on one end of the complex that we didn't get to until almost the last thing.
I realize I'm operating from a completely different perspective, but I'll never understand why homeless people throw their clothes around in their space, wherever it happens to be that they've taken up residence.
A view out what's left of a window.
Finally we found the area all the homeless people occupied.  Apparently some of them do like to drink.  A wise person at a party once sold me that stereotypes save time, and I'm glad this one's been validated to the point that I have no guilt about applying it.
Another room down the hall.  This resident actually kept her(?) place up fairly nice...
...including some, um, interesting wall decorations.  I guess she was excited about xmas coming in another three month.  I have neighbors like that.  They can't wait to never take their lights down after New Years the way we Scrooges are in such a hurry to every year.
Okay, so there's an exception to the generalization about strewing clothes about.
While the kitchen wasn't exactly well-stocked...
...they did have an interesting cooking set-up.

Yes, that's charcoal.

Yes, this is indoors.
Another bedroom/office/location for an as-yet unproduced Jim Jarmusch feature.
Possibly another living area.  In all seriousness, it really is hard to tell in many of these cases.
We never figured out what these markings meant.  There were loads of them in one section of the complex.
An American flag with starry stripes?  A calendar of sorts?  Favorite lottery numbers?
See?  More of these.
We actually got really close to the scavenger guy(s), but didn't want a confrontation after watching entirely too many hours of television to realize that this wouldn't exactly be like walking in on a drug deal between Colombians.
Update: Sometime after we visited this site, it was reported in the news that one of the buildings had burned down.  WhiIe I haven't been back to see which area was torched, I think we can safely assume this was an accidental consequence of the residents trying to cook without workable utilities.
Alexplored 9/4/05.
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