This afternoon I took Elijah to the Kidspace Museum in Pasadena, which Regina had introduced him to a couple of days before Christmas. He'd been so enthralled with the place that we bought a low-level membership that gets us in 2 to 5 on weekdays, 9:30 to 11:30 Sunday mornings, and 15 other random times of our choosing. Of particular interest to my son was the enormous "ant hole," a labyrinth of tunnels big enough for a man (I went down them myself), dotted with windows that light up intermittently, revealing nightmarish giant creatures straight out of a 50's atomic terror movie. He also likes a large tower made of at least two dozen cantilevered levels of blue fiberglass, because he can jump from level to level without fear of injury. He minors in an outdoor grass maze, and a tricycle track. And today was the beginning of a "Winter Wonderland" celebration. We threw ice balls at each other and sat through a lecture about condensation so we could get to the non-irritant fan-blown soap snowflakes at the end.

The museum sits at the east end of a spacious public park adjacent to the Rose Bowl, nestled in a verdant valley surrounded by the foothills of the Angeles National Forest. From my front door, it's less than a ten-minute drive, even during rush hour, even on city streets.

Meanwhile, in another universe, Regina was in our house, unpacking bathroom boxes. There was a knock on the door. Regina opened it. There stood a woman who looked to be in her late forties. The woman held a Q-Tip in one hand and a manila envelope in the other. She looked to be in terrible pain; she told Regina it was due to a chronic ear infection.

"I'm really sorry to bother you," she said.

"Not at all," said Regina.

"We were going to have a carwash, but we didn't know it was going to rain today."

"OK," Regina said, having no idea what the woman was talking about. The woman quickly explained. She was raising money for the family of a good friend of hers. The family was still overcome by grief, she said. She held up a picture of a little girl, who couldn't have been any older than five. The girl had been murdered by two teenagers earlier this year, in the neighborhood into which we'd moved with our three-year-old son.

Elijah was going down the ant hole with a little girl he'd befriended when I got the call. My heart went numb. Earlier this year, in Austin, a 22-year old man was stabbed in the heart with a coathanger in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, two blocks from my house. In Philly, an off-duty copy had been mugged and beaten bloody, left to die in the snow, two blocks from my house. And now this. Once again, in our hurry to get our asses across the country for no good reason, Regina and I had plunged into the danger zone, or at least the discomfort zone.

For the last two weeks, we've tried to be optimistic, even though the old woman who lives next door from us turned her back on me, went into her house, and slammed the door when I extended my hand in greeting. Even though, when we're walking our dog, at least a half-dozen evil-looking other dogs, of various breeds, strain at their collars or attempt to leap very short fences to get at him. Even though two guys were drag racing down our street on Christmas Day.

I've lived in cities, and this is the biggest city yet. I knew coming in that L.A. wasn't for the fainthearted. Still, there are plenty of neighborhoods where it doesn't matter whether or your kid's bedroom window faces the street.

That said, I recognize that the neighborhood in which we landed, Highland Park, is complicated, and a vast improvement in many ways over where we came from. In Austin, we lived in an accidental residential sliver by the highway that existed mainly to serve a day-labor center and several large apartment buildings that exploited recently-arrived immigrants. Here, we live in an urban setting at the heart of the Arroyo Seco, an area of natural beauty unparalleled in an American city. This neighborhood contains more original craftsman bungalows than any other in Southern California. It's equadistant to Pasadena, Glendale, South Pasadena, Eagle Rock, and Dodger Stadium, and a short little jaunt from downtown L.A. Signs of gentrification abound on the major retail districts. Art galleries, coffeehouses, even a cheese shop are, if not within walking distance, than within a negligible drive. There are several incredible looking taquerias in my immediate purview. At night, I can smell the al pastor drifing up from York Blvd. And Mr. T's Bowl, arguably the town's hippest rock-n-roll dive, is only a short if dangerous stroll away. I want to like it here.

Unfortunately, the two major news stories to come out of Highland Park in the last year are as follows: 1. Several homes were red-tagged during the February mudslides. 2. More relevant to my theme here, four Latino gang members were indicted last month in a plot to kill as many black people as possible in my neighborhood. It's a charming story that gives me much hope for the future. I don't feel particularly good that the Avenues, a gang that Jackson Browne wrote a song about, are based in Highland Park, even if they are down to about 800 members from their original 2,000. That's still a pretty big gang.

I know the odds of anything bad happening to us are small. The major crime here, as anywhere, is vehicle break-in. There've been 21 reported homicides in our police district this year, and that encompasses all of Silverlake, Los Feliz, Eagle Rock, Mount Washington, Griffith Park, Echo Park, and parts of Hollywood, not a bad percentage for an overpopulated hipster outpost. But I do know this: Our son will not be playing alone in our front yard. He probably won't even be allowed to stand by the front door. Tomorrow, I'm calling the neighborhood beat officer to let him know that another family of marginally employed yuppies looking for an "urban lifestyle" has arrived. It's good to have a relationship with your neighborhood cops, if they're amenable to such a thing. I just wish that, for us, it wasn't always necessary.

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