Nonfiction. MarchXness. 2025.
“On April 28th 2018, I saw Crystal Waters perform at The Precinct, a gay bar in Downtown LA. It was a small stage, crowd level. The whole club screamed, “She’s homeless, She’s homeless,” when Waters held the microphone out. She did box step choreography with two male back-up dancers and performed two other songs: “100% Pure Love,” and a track that I hadn’t heard before. I don’t think we paid any money for tickets, but it was LA, so perhaps a cover charge, well drinks in the double digits, a thirty-minute Uber ride there and back to Long Beach. She sang the beginning of “Gypsy Woman” in acapella. In a video archived from my Instagram stories that night, my friend and I screamed lyrics into the front-facing camera, subtle filter. She’s homeless. She’s homeless. The Precinct is a fifteen-minute walk to edge of Skid Row, a 50-block neighborhood with the largest stable population of unhoused people. La da dee la dee da la da dee la dee da. We bopped in the club to the song’s iconic bassline with everyone else. We didn’t think twice about the lyrics.”
