{"id":573,"date":"2010-01-24T23:21:46","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T07:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/blog\/?p=573"},"modified":"2018-10-11T12:32:45","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T16:32:45","slug":"bird-man-homeless-echo-park-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"videos","link":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/videos\/bird-man-homeless-echo-park-los-angeles\/","title":{"rendered":"Birdman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love interesting people. In Washington, DC I observed <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/2009\/10\/elijah-alfred-natureboy-alexander-jr-homeless-washington-dc\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u2018Nature Boy\u2019<\/a> walking down the street. He was such a contrast to the neighborhood I had to find him. As luck would have it we met at a park across the street from the White House. While driving the Embarcadero in San Francisco I got a glimpse of a man trying to leverage his wheelchair to dig deeper into a trash can. The next day I went back<a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/2009\/11\/dale-homeless-veteran-san-francisco\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> purposely to find Dale<\/a>. For maybe a year now I would pass by \u2018Bird Man\u2019 regretting I didn\u2019t have my camera on me. The times I drove to his Echo Park location off the 101 with my camera he was never there.<a href=\"http:\/\/hardlynormal.posterous.com\/bird-man-says-he-doesnt-know-why-people-call\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Today that changed. <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ninja, as he likes to be called, has been on the streets for 20 years. He says the birds are attracted to him because he has a heart full of love. The very sad part is I often see him sleeping on the cold concrete under the freeway overpass.<\/p>\n<p>I can very much relate to \u2018Bird Man\u2019. When I was homeless my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/37946616@N05\/4228246331\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pet iguana D.O.G <\/a>provided me with a gimmick to increase panhandling revenue.<\/p>\n<p>When I asked Ninja for his three wishes without hesitation he responded \u201chealth, wealth and wisdom\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[283,230,241],"tags":[100,253,515,508,285,507,509],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/videos\/573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/videos"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/videos"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}