District 5
From the brine-sweating northern expanse of the sea wall, District 5 seems to ooze up out of the ground in blooms of decaying concrete. The tenement blocks and faceless, anonymous rows of warehouses and lockups form dense mazes of nameless alleyways. The spattering of neon forms signposts for the desperate, marking out liquor shops and pawnbrokers, or the places where bassy music pumps and both flesh and narcotics come cheap.
Bodies hang around on every street corner. They might be selling something, keeping watch, or just acting as a reminder of which territory belongs to whom. The Sons of Chaos cluster around biker bars with rows of old-school combustion engine hogs lined up outside. Diablos Electrico toughs, in bandanas and leathers, haunt front steps and doorways, unashamedly brandishing guns and switchblades. Bored and hungry, they break off to hassle someone hurrying to or from a workplace or the store, and the smart victims hand over what they have and go on their way as if they are paying a toll. Every night the pop-pop-pop echoes from somewhere in the labyrinth, as another street rat earns his gang patch by shooting a passer-by.
The life cycle of District 5 can be seen in action here. The crumbling edifices sag and rot, until they become abandoned and fill with squatters and junkies, before they become totally uninhabitable and are torn down and rebuilt for the cycle to begin again. Some tenements have, against the odds, a sense of community, and decorate their living space with murals, banners and lights. They look after their own here, banding together against the ragged cells of gang members trying to extort them, but they are the exception. Most inhabitants of the 5 are naked and vulnerable, their best defence avoiding attention from the parasites who prey on them.
District 5 is teeming with life, but it’s hidden. This is a place you can do anything. Walk down one of the avenues, past the rows of garage doors and loading bays, and ask yourself – how many of those buildings have a drugs lab in the basement? A vehicle chop shop? A cut-price cybernetics lab? How many have people chained up in the basement? Body parts hanging from the ceiling? Heaps of bodies encased in poured concrete? No one asks, no one pries, so no one knows. The worst place in the city could be around the corner, next door, the floor above or below.
This region of the city has some of the steepest streets in the country. Rainwater and garbage flow down into an urban swamp of trash and sewage at the foot of the wall. Getting out of District 5 is an uphill walk figuratively as well as literally. At least, if you start your walk from the run-off swamp, the only way is up.
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