How To Be Politely Suicidal
On the LA Times op-ed page, screen and TV writer Mike Armstrong chronicles his family's move to and from downtown LA, and includes this tidbit:

A few months ago I arrived home to find a body on the pavement a few feet from the front door of our building. According to one of the cops on the scene, he was a jumper from the hotel across the street.

The next day, a shopkeeper on the block was furious that the police had closed him down for two hours during their investigation and cleanup. "Why couldn't he have jumped into the alley like all the rest of them?" he asked me. It's a valuable lesson for us all: Just because you kill yourself doesn't mean you have to be disruptive.

Skid row-adjacent living is best experienced while holding one of those trough-sized cokes and staring up at the big screen in a movie theater.