The neighborhood’s streets — narrow, snaking through hills and canyons — had become parking lots as panicked locals stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic bailed out of their vehicles and fled on foot.

Instead of facing up to these problems, we are turning toward far right-wing demagogues selling snake oil.

Many of those are living in miserable conditions in tents, plagued by snakes, scorpions and scabies in the summer, and battered by the weather in the winter.

The concentration of the pair was not even broken by two brief floodlight failures and a spectator wobbling a beer snake next to the sightscreen.

But word got round, and now, as the day begins, he has a line of people snaking out his door, hoping he can turn their bills from waste paper to usable currency.