Melissa Richardson Banks

I love my downtown L.A. -- its concrete starkness, its desolate beauty, its haunting quietness. Over the past three years, when it suddenly became "hip," these peaceful qualities were often shattered by the sounds of loud voices, too many cars, and breaking beer bottles. Luckily, that phase seems to be more of an ugly duckling phase as the area's hipness clunkily settles in. I still miss the longer spans of solitude that used to exist as I traversed the city at all hours, but now I find it in less-traveled paths at night.

I've lived and worked downtown since 1993, and never have I felt threatened, scared, or frightened to be here. Before I started my business in 2000, my office was at Central Library, so I dutifully walked a four-mile trip every weekday, leaving each morning at 7 AM and returning home around 7 PM. I was one of the few in those days who walked downtown at night. Last night, I had an interesting experience. I have two dogs that I walk thrice-daily, the last walk typically around 9 or 10 PM. We took a familiar route, and stopped for a moment so my dogs could tinkle in the grass near a four-story office structure on the north side of my loft building. We were about four feet from its glass entrance when the left door suddenly shattered. I was on the cell phone, talking to my boyfriend. It seemed like his call disconnected around the same time of a flash of something, glass breaking, and the noise of it all. I looked across the street -- no movement, no people, no sounds ... parked cars