The Rats On First And Hill Are Amazing

The Rats on First and Hill Are Amazing

BY Geoffrey Altrocchi

There is a place in downtown LA, well, to be specific, the southwest corner of first and hill streets, right outside of the civic center metro station, where you will see the biggest rats that LA has to offer.

Now, this means a lot to me, because, well, there was a time, and yes, this was the same time that I was feeling down about LA, that I felt that maybe and perhaps LA did NOT have the largest rats to offer. And of course, anyone looking for any racial slurs or parallels, no, don’t get your hopes up because this man here is SIMPLY talking about rats. Rats, pure and simple. What you have to understand is that at First and Hill is this is how it starts. We have all been sitting next to a bush and felt as if, hey, you know, there was a rustle, it must be a squirrel, or perhaps a little mouse. But when you hear a rustle that may actually be a human being late at night, you, I’m afraid to say, well, you jump a little bit and you look behind you, and that’s what I did.

But all I could see was the furry head of a rat.

“Hello rat,” I seem to remember saying.

But then, as I sat on, waiting for the bus, I looked out across the way and saw this rat climbing up the wall and people, well, people, when I say that the rat in Princess of the Bride was small compared to this motherfucker, I am not kidding. This guy had girth. THIS was a real rat.

Not like all those chump rats over there in westwood. Yes, that’s right, when I was over in Westwood, I kept seeing all these little chumpy rats on my way home, on, I think it was Kern Street. These rats were no good I tell you, they were nothing my friends. Yet, there they were. And this was about the time that I was wondering, you know, is LA a real city and it’s so lonely and it’s so full of chumps, and then, when I saw those rats, it was suddenly like . . . well . . .see . . . not even the rats in this city are real.

Maybe I should have moved to New York, I kept thinking, as if the quantity and size of the rats were equal to the size of the rats or the size of opportunity in the entertainment industry. Poppycock! I thought. I started to wonder, though, what I really should be doing.

I had a rat complex. I was perfectly acute and in tune with the size of my penis, but I was worried about how small my city’s rats were. Go figure!

But First and Hill changed everything for me that way.

“Perhaps this is a real city,” I started thinking. “I mean look at the US bank building, it’s no joke, right?!”

Being of my generation, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to this bush and, well, the storied rats of Nimh, who, if I remember correctly, were tainted by nuclear treatment and therefore destined to become these huge super intelligent rats!

Finally, and I mean finally in my life, I feel like I finally had made it to a big city, where only the biggest of dreams could come true, and where a starving artist would never, ever go hungry, because if needed they could kill a rat and live off the rat’s meat for days.