Jail - Tent City

Read the Processing In post first, it will help make sense of this.

After 20 hours of being in little concrete tanks, I was ecstatic to be at the Tent City. The dirt yard, with scattered military tents, depressing scenery, and sad people looked like a glorious oasis in the desert after that whole thing in processing.

I'd been told by a friend "if you see a package come flying over the fence, it's not for you" without explanation, and sure enough, not 5 minutes into being there, two water bottle size packages, wrapped in tape, came flying over the fence. This is how guys in Tent City get items to sell to other inmates, and the salesman in there knew his shit, introduced himself to every new fish in the yard, and was making sales like crazy, mostly cigarettes and sometimes Carnitas or other food items. I didn't buy anything from him, but some of my tent-mates bought Crystal Light packets (3 for $2) to make the water taste better. I was given a tour of the place by my bunkmate, a friendly young guy who said he was an ex heroin addict there 15 days for shoplifting. He showed me where the commissary was, the laundry room, showers, and bathrooms. I learned no tricks from him on how to make my days easier, but he did tell me one thing about the commissary - it will be closed periodically if we misbehave, so take advantage of it while you can. The commissary has 6 vending machines - two with food, three with soda, and one with sundries. I took the opportunity to buy a soda, which would double as my water bottle for  the weekend, as there is a trough with three cold water spickets in the corner of the yard, which is right by the fence to the girls yard. Often times you can see guys gathered around the girls in the corner buying/selling/chatting them up.

After getting the tour and exploring, I went back to my tent to try sleeping, but it was just too hot. I had a top bunk in the opposite corner from the fan, so it was the hottest place in the whole tent. It didn't take long to figure out that it was a good thing I wore my Nike Dri-Fit shirt (some of the best advice I'll give) because I went to the shower and soaked the shirt, wrapped it around my head, and went shirtless. I repeated this about every 30 minutes until the sun went down in order to stay cool,

At sunset, chow was served. Now, I'd heard stories about dinner chow and knew it would be unbearable but still needed to try it. The wafer cookies reappeared, so I snatched those up, and had about 5 packets of them now, and there was some watermelon that night too. The chow itself was more bread, the same bread as the bun at breakfast, but shaped like a roll - I didn't eat it, some broccoli stems, and the soy based stew, and soy based "potatoes". I tried a spoonful and almost vomited. It was inedible by my taste. It's said that Sheriff Joe set a budget of .40 cents per inmate for food per day, and $1.15 per Sheriff dog per day, which I believe. I'm not a guy who eats fancy food on a regular basis, but this was just inedible, and judging by the trash cans full of full plates, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Remember I said I was collecting the wafer cookies? This paid off immediately because after throwing my chow away, I noticed the commissary was closed due to bad behavior, so I would have gone to bed with no dinner had it not been for all those cookies I saved.

Getting to bed about 8pm I realized that bringing the biggest towel I could find was sheer genius. I now had a pillow, and since in the summer you won't cover up with your second blanket, you'll be able to cover that mattress pad extra good! You can get some decent sleep here, but expect to be woken up at least once around midnight when they do bed checks and make you show your jail ID, and possibly a few times when your tent mates are being loud. Remember that everyone is not on the same schedule as you, they process people in and out at all hours so you'll be sound asleep at 2am and guys just arriving to the tent may wake you up.

When I woke up in the morning, it was chow time again, that same breakfast I was given in processing, and this time they gave me a carton of milk which I traded for a second bag of peanut butter and another bread, which they give you two of. So now, I have two peanut butters, three breads, cookies, an orange, and a jelly, so probably good for the morning. The commissary was open so I stocked up on about $12 worth of chips, crackers, sodas, etc. so that I wouldn't go hungry again if we lost commissary (we did) and chow in the evening sucked (it did).

By this point, I was feeling comfortable talking to people around the yard and in my tent, and learning that I wasn't hanging out with DUI people, nope, it was 2/3 actual criminals, some with violent history, and 1/3 DUI people. This is the point I started feeling uneasy. There were three fights that day, one resulting in a guy getting jumped and taken to the hospital because they tore his meniscus. Our commissary was closed, so we went to the girls at the fence to give them money to buy us sodas and chips from their commissary. You'll pay more, because they charge 25 to 50 cents for each purchase and you have the risk of getting caught which means you get nothing and you lose your money. The guy supplying the yard with cigarettes reportedly spat on a girl and got rolled up (put in stripes and taken to Towers) but he had guys working for him and they were able to supply us with stuff stockpiled from the commissary. I got increasingly uneasy and started looking over my shoulder a lot, hiding things under my mattress and in my bag which I put under my blanket. A following page will have some helpful tips for your stay at tent city.

We ended up being on lock-down from about 6pm which meant we couldn't leave our tents due to all the fights that day. We could, however go straight to and from the bathrooms and straight to and from the water, but it was rough being confined to the hot tent. I went to bed just biding my time until I got to go. At 1130 that night, I was woken up, asked for my ID and told to get my shit and go. I was being kicked out, feeling as excited about leaving Tent City as I was to get there.