It seems a pack of coyotes has taken over Danzig's backyard.
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Many of my friends were in Los Angeles this weekend because I got married here on Saturday. [holds for applause] And wanting to squeeze some good content out of my own wedding I made sure to take my visiting guests by my favorite Los Angeles tourist destination, Glenn Danzig‘s House.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that Danzig’s abandoned house on Franklin Avenue has been sort of an ongoing art project for me. I released a photo zine a couple years ago called People Standing in Front of Danzig‘s House: Vol One which collects photos of, well, you can probably guess from the title.
I spend a lot of time taking photos in front of The House and have sort of become the de facto gumshoe reporter covering the Danzig House beat. Last year a few blogs took interest when I reported that his piece of shit refrigerator was being thrown out on the curb and listed on Craigslist.
On Friday morning, in the final precious hours before my own wedding when I really should have been making last-minute arrangements with my very patient and understanding wife, I brought my Chicago friends David Anthony and Nina Corcoran by The House to take their portrait for the forthcoming Volume 2. I got a couple of pretty good shots. One of them looks like this.
Then Nina said, “Dan! Dan! There’s a coyote right there!” I looked beyond the gate and sure enough, all the way down the long driveway, there was a coyote peeking out from the backyard. The coyote assessed the situation, decided he did not want to be around people, and returned to the dark solitude of the backyard. Very much like the real Glenn Danzig would do. This is the man who once sang that he had wolf’s blood in his veins, after all.
Coyotes in this part of Los Angeles are extremely common. They can usually be found roaming the streets in the mornings before retiring to the neighboring hills to sleep for the day. But in all of the time that I’ve spent in front of Danzig‘s House, which, not to brag, is A LOT, I’ve never seen a coyote on the property. I tried to get a picture, but as I said, he was a bit shy. This was the closest I could get.
Then on Monday, my friend Tyler Soucy, who plays drums in the band A Great Big Pile of Leaves and was in town to photograph our wedding, took a trip to The House and said that he also spotted a coyote out front.
Then my friend Kim Taylor Bennett, who appears in the first volume of People Standing in Front of Danzig’s House, went by there while in town and also saw a coyote out front.
It seems every person who has gone by The House in the last few days has reported that they’ve seen a coyote milling about. I’ve been poking around with my trusted Danzig sources and from what I understand, there’s a pretty annoying pack of coyotes living in the backyard. This is not surprising given that the “landscaping” often goes months without being attended to. These are photos I took a month apart, for example.
What I’m saying is, if I were a coyote, this is where I would hang out too. It’s a wild and spacious wildlife sanctuary and aside from some asshole who comes by with a camera every other day, it’s pretty desolate.
I returned to The House this morning but did not see any coyotes. I will continue to investigate until I have an update. As always, my Danzig’s House tip line is open.
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