Better Get Used To Us Now
on living in Los Angeles in 2025, or, why I'm starting a Substack
Los Angeles has been invaded.
That may seem like a crazy sentence, but it’s undeniably true. It’s hard to deny if you were in DTLA on June 14, 2025, the day of the first No Kings protest. Downtown was under a curfew, and there were so many people walking the streets wearing so many different uniforms and carrying so many different weapons that the truth felt undeniable: We’ve been invaded.
It’s hard to deny if you’ve ever been outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, where MSNBC reports that ICE keeps people in cages so crowded they sleep standing up, where the lights are always on, where they use one toilet in full view of everyone, and where sometimes their only meal of the day comes at 3AM. If you’ve stood on that sidewalk and looked at the masked men who guard it — who look back at you and film you and point weapons at you — it’s hard to deny that we’ve been invaded.
It’s hard to deny, too, if you’ve kept on top of the news. On July 7th, dozens of federal troops rolled into MacArthur Park, pointing weapons at civilians and conducting what seems to have openly been intended purely as a propaganda stunt.
LA Mayor Karen Bass went down there that day and she told them to leave, and she’s been coasting on that cachet ever since while her LAPD lines up to protect ICE and beat up protesters on their behalf.
Here’s what Customs and Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino said on July 7th (via Fox11):
“Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon.
We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”
Above are some photos I took that evening, outside the MDC.
(I recommend clicking the photos to view them full-size).
Standing there that evening, looking around, and seeing everyone else looking around too… Everyone waiting… Seeing the way the protesters watched the Department of Homeland Security cops… The way the Department of Homeland Security cops watched the protesters… it all became very clear to me.
If we had to get used to them, they’d have to get used to us.
Los Angeles has been invaded…
And I need to write about it. Thus: this Substack. After all, writing’s what I do, and it’s what I’m most confident in. I’m a film critic, and I do pop culture writing for sites like /Film and TVLine and Looper. I do longform personal essays about movies sometimes, too, like this one about Challengers and Queer.
I’ve always liked taking pictures, but I’ve always thought of myself as primarily a writer. The union of text and images interests me, though, and for a while I thought that meant I had to write a screenplay. I’ve started and abandoned so many scripts; as Rachel Sennott once said, “What?! It’s LA!”
But now I think this year may have changed the course of my life.
I’ll write about it online because—simply put—I’m tired of not doing that.
Since June 11th, I’ve attended dozens of protests and taken thousands of photos. I’ve posted a lot of them to Reddit, where I’ve racked up something like 45 million views. I’m not bragging—trust me, I know Reddit’s lame—but merely pointing out that this is what I’ve spent months doing and thinking about. There have been lots of compliments, which are nice, but my photos have prompted a ton of really wild discussion, too. Coming from a writing background, it’s been hard for me to let my images stand alone; I’ve jumped in the comments a lot, and I do mean a lot. I’ve learned a lot about the state of online discourse — it’s bad out there, y’all! — but I’ve learned a lot about myself, too.
Namely: I’ve learned that I really don’t want to have to go hunting through my Reddit history any time I need to remember how I felt about something I’ve photographed.
Instead, I want to write my way through this new-but-not-new photographic journey, this historical moment, and how they intertwine. Because who knows where this is all leading.
I’ve explained a bit about where this project got its name on the About page, but here’s the gist:
William Eggleston, one of the pioneers of color photography, was an incredibly-prolific photographer who chronicled the people and places of the deep South. He found startling compositions everywhere and imbued his subjects with breathtaking humanity, making you feel as though you’d glimpsed an instant in their lives that told you a whole story about who they were.
When Walter Hopps asked him what he wants to accomplish with his photographs, he replied, “I think of them as parts of a novel I’m doing.”
So, with apologies and all due respect to William Eggleston — and I am no William Eggleston — I’m stealing that.
This is my Los Angeles.
I love Hollywood history, and I moved here in part because of that. I love to find myself stuck at a bus stop in an unfamiliar part of town; I’ll google a nearby building and read all about it, finding it mentioned in news articles, in old advertisements, in early-internet blog roundups of Classic Hollywood filming locations. I’ll pass the time learning that Elizabeth Taylor stayed here for a while between husbands. James Dean posed for a photo on that street corner. Paris Hilton stumbled out of a car in this parking lot. That one’s the street that leads to O.J. Simpson’s house. They once searched that motel back there to see if The Black Dahlia was killed there. Beyoncé ate at that strip-mall sushi place.
This isn’t James Dean’s LA anymore, though James Dean’s LA is still all around us. It’s my LA now; it’s ours. This, now, is the LA that we all create together, whose culture we all help define and remember. I may not get to go to Schwab’s Pharmacy—the drugstore where James Dean and his friends hung out at the soda counter—but I get to decide on my own best breakfast sandwich in LA, and I get to find my own friends, and make memories with them, and in some small way, help tell their stories.
So, these are parts of a novel I’m doing.
I like the idea that photos can tell a story, especially a series of photos. That’s what film is, after all — 24 still frames per second, projected so quickly they suggest motion.
I like the idea that my photos can capture not just facts but emotions. I like that I can take a photo that makes you wonder what someone’s thinking, and I like that I can take a photo that sure seems like it tells you what someone’s thinking. I want you to wonder what people are looking at out of frame, and how they feel about what they see, and how I felt when I saw them see it.
I’ve met some incredible people in the last few months, and I’ve felt so many things I can barely convey in words. So I’ll let the images help. I don’t know if this is documentary photography, street photography, photojournalism, amateur, good, something in between or none of the above. So, for now, they’re parts of a novel I’m doing, and we’ll see what happens.
“It is important to act as if bearing witness matters.” - poet Maxine Kumin
After all, protests are meant to be seen. That’s the point of getting out in the streets; you’re using the very fact of your physical presence to help amplify a message you believe in, hoping that others will understand and be moved that the message was so important to you that you showed up.
This is important to me, and I’m committed to showing up.
I don’t want to get used to them.
I want them to get used to us.
Art comes after the fact, as a witness to certain things that have happened. -- Raymond Pettibon
“The best camera is the one you have with you.” ~ Unknown
Met you at Paramount on Wednesday. Your writing and photography are great. Photo essays you’re making on your journey to the book you’re working on. Then there is the story told by the single image, the one frame that says it all. When all of the elements present in that one place and you see it all at the same time. What is referred to as the decisive moment.
Great work Eric, I’m becoming inspired to break out my gear, hit the streets and see if I still have an eye.
Cheers,
Sam