City Beat: Experiment in shedding virtual world for real one

Getting sucked into the virtual world is a common problem these days. You can spend so much time on Twitter and Facebook that you miss what’s going on around you.

Stacy Dacheux, a writer and artist, had gotten in the habit of starting each day by checking Facebook status updates before she even got out of bed.

She knew what people from her distant past were doing. But what was she doing? Staring at a small screen.

She decided to shake things up.

Every morning for the month of November, she carried a folding chair and her manual typewriter out to a small roundabout in her Echo Park neighborhood.

There she typed what she saw around her -- cars whizzing by, people passing by, dogs on leashes, tall trees.

But something happened that she hadn’t expected. People noticed her and came by to talk.

Soon she was meeting many people in her neighborhood. They were talking about all sorts of things.

Read all about Dacheux and her roundabout residency in my latest City Beat story.

And keep scrolling down to see the version of the story -- in photos and video -- that I sent out on Twitter.

Just for the record, I did it after a long walk through my Hollywood neighborhood in which I focused on the real -- talking to neighbors and taking in my surroundings.

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