The story of how Pierce and Brownotter, both clear-headed and able-bodied, came to be living under a bridge offers certain clues about how Tent City came into existence and the challenges of making it go away. They steer clear of hard drugs, and they don’t manifest any obvious symptoms of mental illness. They’ve tried smoking K2 and there was what Brownotter refers to vaguely as the “mushroom incident,” but, unlike many of their friends, they don’t start shaking if they go without alcohol. “Wendy is lucid,” one of her neighbors says. ![]() Brownotter, who is imposing when he rises to full height and squares his shoulders, acts as a peacekeeper in the camp, intercepting potential threats when they stumble into camp and evicting those who fail to comply with their section’s “no asshole” policy. When she raises her eyebrows, as she does frequently in serious conversation, they give her a bewildered look.īy Tent City standards, they are models of sobriety and rectitude. Her pale green eyes are wide and slightly off-kilter. Pierce is 41 with dirty blond hair and freckles. ![]() In Texas, his olive complexion marks him as Hispanic, but he’s full-blood Sioux with roots in South Dakota. He keeps it pulled back in a slender, shoulder-length ponytail that hangs from the backwards baseball cap he wears. Brownotter is 43, and his jet-black hair is flecked with strands of gray. Pierce and Brownotter ignore the outburst and take seats away from Ron, she in a camp chair, he on a stout tree stump. As if on cue, Ron, apropos of nothing, hollers “ASS!” at the top of his lungs and cackles gleefully. He’s normally jolly but grows obnoxious when drunk, and he’s been on a bender. With a roll of her eyes, she explains she’s been avoiding their neighbor Ron, a rotund figure slouched on a dusty couch in front of the communal burn barrel. ![]() Pierce has scarcely emerged for the past two days. Mike Brownotter and Wendy Pierce clamber from their shared tent. The sun hasn’t yet sunk low enough to squeeze between the underside of the freeway and the roofs of the low-slung warehouses that surround it, but it will soon, briefly chasing away the otherwise permanent gloom. Overhead, the incessant whir of traffic on Interstate 45 has become a muffled groan with the onset of rush hour.
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