99% Invisible - 364- He's Still Neutral

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

When confronted with trash piling up on a median in front of their home in Oakland, Dan and Lu Stevenson decided to try something unusual: they would install a statue of the Buddha to watch over the place. When asked by Criminal’s Phoebe Judge why they chose this particular religious figure, Dan explained simply: “He’s neutral.” He’s Still Neutral Subscribe to Criminal on Apple Podcasts or RadioPublic

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Criminal is a member of Radiotopia and probably my favorite podcast, depending on the moment you're asking me. And we're presenting a story from them today because it's one of their best and most popular episodes and also in terms of subject. It's the best episode of 99% invisible that we never made. It takes place in Oakland, it's about the built world, liminal spaces, and a statue that fights crime. It was originally broadcast in 2015, but updated in 2019, including an interview with our own Kurt Colstad. It's just delightful. It's called, he's still neutral. Here's criminal.

You know, we've had muggings in this neighborhood. You know, we've had muggings and, you know, aggressive behavior, aggravated assaults and all kinds of things over the years here. You know, so it is an issue for lots of people. There's maybe like five or six years ago, the community group gave everybody whistles in case somebody, especially women

or something were accosted or somebody was following and they just have to blow their whistle and alert other people that something was up. This is Dan Stevenson. He and his wife Lou have lived in Oakland, California for 40 years. They live in a two story, purple Victorian in a neighborhood called East Lake. He says the crimes been an issue there for as long as he can remember.

But when you live in a city long enough, you just learn to deal with it. You know, a couple of times some guys tried to get my wallet and just city stuff that, you know, once you live in a city long enough, you've got to at least be a cost of the couple of times or you're not there. Once you know everybody's position, you know, as you go outside, you know who they are and where they are and what they do, it's, you know, there was no hassle. So once you knew that, once you knew that the drug dealer was a drug dealer, you just went about your business and he did his business and you did yours. That's correct, yeah.

And you just stayed out of each other's way. Right, I mean, I wouldn't, like I wouldn't call the police. Why? Well, well, first of all, they don't trust the police. I probably trust the drug dealer more than I trust the cop. So that's part of it. Part of it has to do with the times I have called the police. They just don't seem to be able to come in and do it in a common sensical way.

They have to come in like an army or something over somebody selling drugs or what I don't really care about that. It's one thing not to call the cops, and you suspect a guy down the block might be selling drugs. But it's another thing, when there's a man right outside your bedroom window at 3 a.m. This is what happened to Dan and Lou about five years ago.

My wife was here and we went to bed. About 3 a.m., she nudged us, man, and says there's somebody on the deck. Dan says he actually built a special deck to keep random people from wandering up there. There are no stairs. You have to climb partly up a tree and then lift yourself up over the railing.

So I get up and I look out, sure enough there's a guy on the deck. And so I yell through the door and tell him to get off the f***ing deck. And he kind of is totally gone. I mean, the exchange we had was, like, this guy was strung out on something big time. And he was just out to lunch. So my wife wanted me to call the police, but I thought if I call the police they're going to come, this guy's just screwed up. It's not a, he's of no danger that

I could see. He didn't have any weapons or anything. He's just out of it. So we started the talk. It took Dan 45 minutes, but he talked the guy down. Nobody got hurt. If he had gone the official route with the cops, he says it would have been a real pain. And then I had them in up for another two hours, filling out reports with him. By, you know, within 45 minutes, I was back asleep and it was all good.

But even this guy, the most patient, live and let live guy in the neighborhood, eventually hit his limit. And when he got fed up, he did something desperate. Something that makes absolutely no sense to anyone. Maybe least of all, to Dan himself. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is criminal. What wound up pushing Dan over the edge wasn't drug dealers or sex workers. It was garbage, a gigantic pile of garbage.

The city put in a traffic diverter across the street from their house. It's about 500 feet from their front door. A concrete divide with space in the middle with trees and and nobody took care of it. Nobody took care of it and so it became a de facto garbage dump. People that were moving decided that that would be a place to move everything they didn't want to take with them. So the stack could be like six eight feet high sometimes with So the stack could be like six, eight feet high sometimes with dressers, mattresses, and garbage, and bags of crap and clothing. I mean, it's just intense. And it's been a big problem with Oakland for years all over the place. You know, somebody will dump whatever they have in your front

yard if you're not careful. Dan says he'd watch trucks pull up at night and unload mountains of furniture and garbage and he called the city and called and called and called. So you would wake up in the morning sometimes like eight feet to like an eight foot pile of crap. Yeah. And if the city didn't come fast enough, it could get higher. Because once you have, it's like a magnet. Once you've got to stack stuff, other people think, Oh, that is an idea.

And they keep stacking it. So what did you decide to do about it? Well, that was, that is a good question. That was, that is a good question. Lu and I discussed this for quite some time and we came up with the idea of a Buddha to put a Buddha there. Are you Buddhist? No, we have nothing to do with Buddhism at all. But you figured if there's one thing that might help here, it's Buddha.

Well, yeah, because he's neutral. I mean, if we threw Christ up there, he's controversial. Everybody's got to deal about him. But Buddha, nobody seems to be that perturbed in general about a Buddha. So Dan and Lou had made up their minds, and it turns out they had a lot of options. We looked at the different ones, and she picked out one that she liked to face me, because they come out of a concrete cast, so some of them look more mellow than others. Lu went off to Aeshardware and picked one out. Which you know she brought

home and I liked them you know you look cool to me and then he sat in a basement for about three or four months because I couldn't figure out a way they put them over there without having him stolen or ruined and those things with a really pissed me on. So finally I came up with a plan and I drilled into him and put epoxy rebar into his body and I fixed the buddhist so he'd be looking at our house. In fact, looking through the window where I could look at him.

So when I get up in the morning and have my coffee, I could look over and see how he's doing. Are you allowed to do this? It feels like this is breaking some sort of city code. Oh, allowed. That's another thing. It's best not to ask before you do things because it's always no. You kind of just do it and see what happens. Danden tell his neighbors about his plan.

He drags him extension courts from his house and used a drill to affix the Buddha to a slab of concrete. And that was it. And there he was. It's like a surprise. And he just sat there. How long before something happened? It was probably about maybe four months or something of him just sitting there being concrete.

But one morning I wake up and look over and boo this white. Some of these come in pain of a soft white. This was someone that kind of carefully done this on purpose. Oh, very carefully. I mean, there's no paint around him or any, I mean, strictly whoever did it took care and painting. And, you know, I thought that's interesting. And then after that, you know, he'd have an orange and pretty soon two oranges and maybe a pair. Just as mysteriously as Dan had installed the statue, people began leaving little gifts, oranges or coins. One day he said he came home from work and there was a big stack of payers. And he had no idea where they were coming from or what they represented.

I assume now, because of what has happened, the Vietnamese community decided that he needs to be cared for. And from there it just grew to where it is today, which is a total shrine. Yeah, will you describe what the Buddha looks like right now? Well, the Buddha now is like upgraded considerably. I mean, he's gold now. His eyes are painted in and he's got a a gold draped clothing and he's just really top drawer cool looking Buddha. I mean he's he's come a long ways in terms of his dress. Now he sits on the kind of a rock pedestal kind of thing that's not a granite or something. And then he has a house that would, you know,

you could probably live in if you were a single person and small. The house is now around Buddha, so Buddha's protected from the rain and such. Oh yeah, and so if you wanted to pray there, which they do constantly, you just slip inside the little building, and you kneel down and Buddha's there.

And he's got Other friends of boot is you know, and then there's a big quan you in outside, which is you know the goddess of mercy But what what do you what do you mean when they come to pray who who's coming there do people come there often every Every morning at 7 a.m. They pray and they have this little clacker thing They have a little it's like a little drum and they go and they go through that and then know, and they put out food and all these people come and they pray and they go through that and then they eat and they have a kind of a community. Do you ever go out and introduce yourself? Oh, they know who I am. So they know that you, they know that you are the man who brought

the Buddha from Ace Hardware in 2009. And there lies the problem. Yes, because at every feast day, they bring over a stack of food and fruit and wine and a bottle of whiskey one time. And just presents for. Thank you. Yes, yeah. And I keep telling them, thanks a lot,

but there's only like, Lu and I, and we can't eat all this stuff. But these aren't like your neighbors bringing over food. These are people who are coming to visit Buddha from other neighborhoods and appreciating what you started. Yes. And they all bow. And none of them speak English so I bow and we all bow it's embarrassing kind of for me because I don't even know what they're thinking you know but I keep trying to tell them that it's their Buddha and good luck with him and and Adios but they don't kind of go for that.

How many people are coming? How many people are coming on a daily basis? Would you say to see the board? Or at least 70. A day. A day, yeah. And then there's also the tourist thing. They'll knock on my door and they're from Minneapolis

and somebody on Facebook posted something. You know, they want to take my picture with them in front of the booth. It's just for me, you know, as cynical as I am, this is like, what is happening? Remember, Dan and Lou put the Buddha up as a sort of desperate shot in the dark, a truly random attempt to curtail dumping and crime. Any accidentally created a sacred place for members of Oakland's Vietnamese Buddhist community. But that's not the end of the story. Older crime has pretty much disappeared in a sense.

The drug dealing definitely is gone, and so's the prostitution. I mean, there's none, zero zero within, you know, quite a distance from our area now. But it's a slow process that I didn't really notice that happening and didn't even think of it in those terms until I read it in the paper. In September, over Porter for the San Francisco Chronicle did a story on Dan and the Buddha and asked the Oakland Police Department for the updated crime statistics for the neighborhood. Here's what he wrote. Since 2012, when worshipers began showing up for daily prayers,

overall year to date crime has dropped by 82%. I mean, I think we all have some respect for religious symbols. Whether it's the religion that we ascribe to, whether we ascribe to a religion at all, I mean, there's something rather sacred about things like this. Well, I agree. And I don't know if it's superstition

or whether Buddhist says don't f*** with this or what, I have no idea. But it works. So you're right. I think people do have a feeling of either respect or fear. I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. Crime is death. 82%. I spoke with Dan Stevenson in 2015. In the past four years, things have only gotten bigger at the Buddha. It's all thanks to one Vietnamese family. Here's Vina Vow and her husband with some translation help from their son, Kokvo. Every day, morning, seven o'clock, every day, four, two, one day, two times,

seven o'clock, and four o'clock. Six o'clock I go home. Every day, I make over here. I make my husband make over here. How's your home then? I'm put a Buddha in make it over here. How's your home, Dan? I'm put in the Buddha. In the Raka, here. My dad says it was all days to Dan here.

We have a peaceful shrine here. And make the neighbors calm down a little bit. So we have a peaceful mindness and tranquility. Venus says some mornings, she arrives to find that other people have brought new incense and fresh flowers. She says it's a peaceful place. If you'd like to visit yourself, it's easy to find these days. The Buddha is on Google Maps. Just search for the Buddha of Oakland. It even has reviews.

One says, best Buddha. It even has reviews. One says, best Buddha. This is beyond my wildest thought pattern. I just couldn't, I wouldn't even fan them at that time. We called Dan last week to see what was new. It's insane in terms of what has happened to a concrete garden Buddha, which was just on the shelf with a whole bunch of other Buddhas all just sitting there in the nursery. And different things have happened along the way. Cars will miss the corner or something and hit something

or there's been some vandalism over the years but every time anything happens, the response is they make it bigger. So it used to be just a small one little building and then it's two, and then somebody tried they broke a statue or something, so then it's three and then four, and then there's a little shed, I guess you'd call it a shed, but a little side building. I understand that the guy in that building is the God of war or the protection or God of somebody that has done pretty good jobs since they put them in. They keep things calm. Do you ever sit back and think to yourself, well, that was really something. That was quite an idea I had. Well, Lu and I had the idea,

neither one of us expected much of anything except maybe it was shift the garbage and it did that. But then this has been outrageous. Do you still have anybody knocking on your door coming and saying, Hi, are you the guy? Are you the famous Dan of the Buddha? I pretty much get that, not a whole lot, but more than I would expect at this point in time. And also people stopping me on the streets somehow, they've not even close to my house and they have a reference point. Or somebody in some business,

some place will recognize me. I don't even know where they find the information out, tell you the truth, or how they figured it was me, but they do. And it's, I guess it's nice. To me, I put the boot in and I'm done. You know, the rest of this is somebody else's work. You know, so I helped start it. You know, and, you know, and Loon, I had lots of discussions before, you know, we did it because she's much more positive than I am. So I would always look at how are they going to wreck it as

opposed to the possibilities and she's much more of a possibility person. You know, she was right. She definitely was. She's right on a lot of things. Not just the Buddha. We spend a lot of time talking spirituality and the greater things. And she's pretty much on the mark on most of it. Way ahead of me, you know, just, you know, way ahead of me. She's much more positive. This is one of our, we have 119 episodes. And this is one of our most popular episodes ever.

Wow. Why do you think the story gets to people? Well, I would say that it's positive. It's a positive story of, you know, actually hope. I mean, it truly blows my mind that it exists in the world that we live in. It's just like, it's almost counter to everything that I hear it constantly, but it's not really because it's happening everywhere. It's just that we only hear the bad parts most of the time. So it's just kind of a giving thing.

The people that they're involved with are, I mean, they give, it's a giving of their beliefs and their stuff. And people that come just respect that. I mean, we now have, I haven't kept track of it, but there's tour buses now that come to visit. And here's this huge bus coming, trying to get through the streets, you know, rather smaller in terms of buses, to drop people off, to take photos and stuff. It's impressive.

I never realized how something like this could be this, you know. I mean, it certainly inspires people to better things, I think. Anything else going on in your life? Too much to mention. I keep busy all the time. Phoebe talks with our own Kurt Kohlstedt after this. My name is Kurt Kohlstedt and I am the digital director and a producer at 99% invisible and I work on episodes and articles and other things for this show which is all about design and built environments. Kurtz's Dan's Buddha can be viewed through the lens of a design concept known as hostile architecture.

Hostile architecture is one facet of efforts to quote, design out crime. Change something about public space in order to deter unwanted behavior. A few years ago, a community group in Hamburg, Germany got fed up with the constant smell of urine in their neighborhood, a neighborhood packed with nightclubs, and they decided to fight back with a special kind of paint. This paint is designed to be used on boats and will not absorb liquid.

If it weren't absorbed liquid, they thought, maybe it will repel urine. They were right. When someone walked out of a nightclub and attempted to relieve themselves on a wall, their urine quote, bounced back onto them. Other cities have followed suit. Cities implement design changes like spikes on window

cells to prevent people from sitting down. Arm rests on benches aren't just to give us a place to rest our elbows. They also prevent people from lying down. Hostile architecture is often criticized for being less than subtle and it's attempt to drive away a city's homeless population. While cities come in and try to alter the public's behavior from the top down, often in aggressive ways, there are also plenty of examples of citizens stepping in, like Dan Stevenson with his Buddha implementing changes from the bottom up, changes that may or may not be legal. Kurt says there are a lot of playful examples of this.

So, parklets are essentially public parking spaces converted into little parks. The idea got really big after this group called Rebar in San Francisco, made a parklet, and it went really viral online. And essentially all they did was they rolled out some sod and they put some furniture out in the grass and they fed the meter and then they just weighed

to see what would happen. And some people stopped by and actually used the parklet. And as they tell the story, a traffic cop came by too and was saying, hey, you know, I'm gonna have to write your ticket and they said, no, we've legally rented this spot and they kind of got him to go away. So through this kind of loophole, they legally occupy this space by paying the rent, paying the meter, which

is just a different way to think about this kind of public space. We think about it as a space for cars. They thought about it as a space for a park. It's not really what the law was designed to accommodate, and yet they're making the law work for them, and work for the public. But there are a lot of things out there that kind of skirt this line of legal or illegal, and I was thinking about like fire hydrants. Right, yeah. Fire hydrants are kind of this classic thing, where you've seen, everybody's

seen scenes of movies where kids are playing in the street, and the fire hydrants are kind of this classic thing, where you've seen, everybody's seen scenes of movies where kids are playing in the street and the fire hydrants pouring water and everybody's having fun. And, you know, it's one of those things. We all know if we think about it, that's probably technically illegal. And in fact, it usually is. You can get fines for doing that. But there are also cases where, you know, the firefighters will actually come along and like help people open up the hydrants. So it kind of goes back and forth. And it goes way back to, so there is this heat wave

in the late 1800s in New York City where the city just said, you know, we're going to open up the hydrants, we're going to distribute ice. We're going to basically help cool down the city and and keep people safe and happy. And all this back and forth, is it illegal? Is it illegal? Eventually, New York came up with this kind of novel compromise where they created these caps that control the flow of water. It makes it so it's safer to use, it's waste less water, but it still lets people crack

open these hydrants. So it's this kind of acceptance by the city that people are gonna do this. Let's maybe try to find a way that they can do it more safely and not just kind of recklessly, like it's been done in the past. In Chicago, when I grew up, it would get really hot in the summers and there would be fire hydrants that would be opened.

And I remember very clearly being a really little girl and it's really powerful, the water. I mean, this is, it's too much. It's almost too powerful. The force of the water coming out of this thing for like a seven-year-old girl to be playing in. But there was something about it that the city, that the firefighters, that the police

were acknowledging, hey, we just got to get through today, because it's 115. So let's bend these rules, let's all just come together. And it felt really nice. Yeah, and I think that is part of the appeal. It's like it breaks down these barriers. Like we think it, you know, oh, city infrastructures for city stuff, and we're not allowed to touch that.

And these people are here to enforce laws and put out fires. But yeah, that's kind of beautiful. When those barriers break down and we realize, now the city is all of ours. And here's a novel way or a different way to put its infrastructure to use. What are other examples of people playing with their environment?

I mean, one of the types that I'm particularly fascinated by is sort of, it's generally known as guerrilla gardening. And this idea, it goes back to the 70s and it sort of started with people taking over abandoned lots in New York and turning them into community gardens. And it started out illegal. And some of those gardens have since become legal.

So there's this group in San Francisco that call themselves the guerrilla grafters, and their approach to guerrilla gardening is sort of different from most. Instead of trying to plant new things or take over abandoned spaces, they're actively grafting fruit bearing branches onto non-fruit bearing trees.

So essentially, they're turning these ornamental trees into fruit bearing trees in the city. And at first you'd think, hey, who would have a problem with that, right? I mean, they're creating food where there was no food before and that's kind of their take on it. But it turns out that those trees are ornamental for a reason. The city doesn't want them attracting animals. They don't want to like have these fruits falling and making messes that the city then has to clean up. And so these grafters end up having to work kind of under the radar. Wait, so just tell me exactly what they're doing, this guerrilla gardening. They're putting like an apple branch on like a maple tree?

I did not really understand that you could do this, but essentially you can make a little cut into an existing tree and attach a little sion, a living branch, and then it heals in place and becomes part of that existing tree. So you don't convert the entire tree into a fruit bearing tree, but you add a fruit bearing branch to that tree. And then over time, you know, these start producing fruit. And the idea is that, you know, anybody can walk up and just kind of say, oh, there's an apple on this tree. And then over time, you know, these start producing fruit. And the idea is that, you know, anybody can walk up and just kind of say, Oh, there's an apple on this tree. I can eat that. And it's subtle. It's a subtle intervention. And probably nobody would

be the wiser until suddenly there was fruit all along the block. These are all examples. Dan and his Buddha included of people kind of thinking outside the box. Yes. And I think that's, that's the most interesting thing about all of this, right? Like we, we have a way that we think of cities. We think of cities as being planned things where if you want to get something to change, maybe you talk to a city council, but what these kinds of projects show is that there are a lot of opportunities to try, you know, with Dan Stevens and to it, and you could say, I'm just going to go get this Buddha and stick it to the ground and see what happens, you know, ask for forgiveness and not permission.

And what I find really fascinating about the Dan Stevens and example is that people love it, too, right? People come and care for it and love it, and it's become part of the community that, you know, Buddhists and non-Buddhist alike seem to really appreciate. You just went back there. You just saw it. You were just there last night. I was.

And it's amazing. I mean, at night you can see it from blocks away. I mean, there are these blinking lights, these are spiraling blinking lights. When you get close, you can really smell the incense. And there are all these different budas, summer white and some are painted and their different sizes, different materials. And the original buda isn't actually the central buda.

He's sort of sitting off to one side in this smaller hut. So he kind of sparked this thing, but he's not at the heart of it anymore. It's just been taken over and grown. And, you know, behind the main building, there are a couple of rooms, which I assume, you know, is part of the Keeping the Area Clean effort. So it is doing what Dan Stevens and wanted it to. It's getting people invested and keeping the area clean.

But it's also taken out a life of its own. And what's really crazy, I just found this last night, if you turn the corner, just another block and a half away from this shrine, is another one. And it's like a smaller version of the same thing, but it's growing. And I could just imagine in like five or ten years, these could just be all over the neighborhood, right? So, I don't know. And I could just imagine in like five or ten years, these could just be all over the neighborhood, right?

So I don't know, I think it's, you know, what started with this one Buddha has become something much, much bigger. The Criminal is created by Lauren Sporer and Phoebe Judge. Their senior producer is Nadia Wilson, audio mix by Rob Byers and Michael Rayfield. Special thanks to Eric Menel, Alex Blair and Kobe Mcdonald. If this is the first time you've heard a story from criminal, I actually kind of envy you because you now have 119 episodes to go dive in and enjoy. Find them at this is criminal.com.

99% of visible is a project of KLW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. We are a member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of the most innovative shows in all of podcasting. Find them all at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show in joint discussion about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org. Run Instagram and read it too.

But I welcome you to dive in and try a story you haven't heard at 9NIPI.org.