East Side Story
by chimatli
East Side Story, Vol 9
The last few years have been frustrating for those of us on the Eastside. I’ve been on many a Los Angeles blog explaining, defending and educating folks on why certain parts of the city shouldn’t be called the Eastside. Despite testimonials, historical references and other persuasive truths, there are many who choose to keep using the term Eastside inappropriately. Putting aside the geographical debate, it’s important for many to realize the cultural connection many Mexicans and Chicanos have to the term Eastside.
For those of us who have grown up in these neighborhoods, “Eastside” is a more than just a place, it’s been a cultural signifier. It represents the communities and the cultures of folks who have lived in Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, City Terrace and the great Easterly Beyond. The term Eastside has been used to describe many sorts of cultural innovations emanating from the people east of the river. One of my favorites is a series of albums from the 70s called East Side Story.
From the backside of the album cover:
The EAST SIDE STORY volumes are dedicated to the Low Riders and to those who appreciate the “soul type” oldies.
Never before has there been a collection of oldies that was created especially for the Low Rider.
This creation is the culmination of years of exposure and dedication to the “soul type” oldies, and the results speak for themselves.
The EAST SIDE STORY volumes are destined to be collectors items that will live on forever, because the very nature of the songs goes to the essence of the way of life of the Low Rider.
The immediate success of the EAST SIDE STORY volumes bears this out only too well.
As far as I know, there were twelve volumes released, with classic favorites like:
Smile Now Cry Later-Sunny
Yes I’m Ready-Barbara Mason
Hypnotized-Linda Jones
Baby I’m For Real-The Originals
Hey There Lonely Girl-Eddie Holman
Natural High-Bloodstone
Me & You-Brenton Wood
[Brenton Wood, an unofficial Chicano hero, was once described by a friend of a friend as "The Mozart of cholo slow jams."]
These “soul oldies” were popularized by radio personalities like Art Laboe and Huggy Boy and can probably still be heard emanating from lowriders in East LA to Norwalk to Rialto. The albums are sadly out of print but have been re-released in a CD boxset (warning, the tracks on the CDs are not exactly the same as the original releases.)
For more info on this popular Eastside cultural export, check out Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock n’ Roll from Southern California by David Reyes and Tom Waldman and The Old Barrio Guide to Lowrider Music by Ruben Molina.
Rhino Records also has an excellent collection of Chicano oldies called Brown Eyed Soul, check it out, ese!
Morning bonus, some tunes to listen to while you’re reading:
It’s odd how certain people can just steal your identity, because they decide they want it and then get irritated with you because you call them on it.
As a joke we should rename Culver City, Larchmont, Hancock Park, and Mar Vista South Central, (since that’s not hip and still viewed as the scary ghetto) then when people get irritated we can say, “Well who are you to decide what is South Central and what is not…”
That would really piss people off.
Pissing people off is fun.
Browne
And besides everybody knows what Eastside meant before the hipsters decided their parents were dorks and didn’t want to be westsiders anymore.
How is that the LA Chicano communities problem that you have parent issues? It’s not. People who call westside neighborhoods the eastside knowing damn well that eastside meant Mexican-American should go some more tattoos if they want to seem more street.
Hell they can get hourly jobs if they want to keep it real.
People want to be urban, but not too urban. I think it’s funny that the same people who are so “this is the eastside” would never set foot in the real eastside after dark unless it was to get in the car and go to an art event and then get in their car and go home.
I wash my clothes at the Laundry Mat on 1st and Boyle and interesting I never see anyone from Sci-Arc washing their clothes down there.
And that’s pretty much the only Laundry Mat down there, that’s near the arts district and downtown and the beginning of the real eastside.
It’s odd how I know people who live in the Brewery who have never even gone grocery shopping in Lincoln Heights, but people in the Brewery oddly won’t say they live on the eastside, they say they live in downtown…how the heck does that work…
Browne
One more thing people in the arts district claim they can’t use public transit because there is no bus.
The Montebello 40, the MTA 30, 31…
Ok…I got to do my daily writing exercises.
Browne
Thanks for the comments Browne! I look forward to reading your posts every morning.
I think the sad part is, there are tons of folks who had no idea that the Eastside meant more than a geographic area. It shows there is a lack of recognition for the brown communities in Los Angeles, it becomes a sort of historic and linguistic gentrification. Our history is not recognized or incorporated into the larger idea of “Los Angeles” and continues to be ignored and dismissed. Of course there are the token nods when discussing Mexican food or Mariachis or something but I wonder if certain people realize “soul oldies” are part of the soundtrack of this city, along with Randy Newman.
I like soul oldies. I remember when they were new.
wo0t! Boyle Heights!
The Great Easterly Beyond is a mystical land.
Actually, as a kid growing up in Azusa, whenever I heard the term “the Valley,” I thought it meant the SGV. I was so bitterly disappointed when I realized the truth.
But your point is very true.
Growing up in a homogeneous community like ELA has it’s good
and bad points. But there’s something special about
living in a place where everybody has the same cultural fabric,
where the food, the music, the looks, the lingo are all common
elements with everyone you meet and anywhere you go. You had the feeling
you were a part of something unique & personal. If you were from the Eastside,
it was your identity, and it was real. When we went off into the rest of the world,
we would always carry our cultural ties to ELA in our pockets. Today, I sense
that people from outside ELA will inevitably find ways to invade
and exploit the area and see only potential real estate value without fully appreciating or caring about the cultural & historical significance that is so a part of us and of this city. The Romans and other invaders throughout history would build their new cities and impose their own culture, literally, on top of the old conquered ones, effectively smothering them out.
I see it coming and I’ve made it my mission to not let our ourselves get smothered
out. I’ll use my art & whatever tools I may have to help keep the voice of ELA alive. They may eventually take our streets, our homes, or even our name (Eastside), but never our spirit. Thanks to all on this site who keep the Eastside voices alive!
Growing up in a homogeneous community like ELA, and then moving away for college made me realize how little I knew about other people, cultures, food. It made me realize that diversity was a concept lost to me and others from my part of town. Sure, my community was a tight-knit family and a security blanket of sorts, but man did i miss out on a lot of stuff.While my parents have are long gone from our hometown, I would probably never go back. NO, i don’t think it’s “ghetto”, but my idea of community has changed drastically.
People might be surprised at how conservative the views of older generations in ELA can be. My dad is a real Mexican Archie Bunker. One of the negative aspects of growing up there is the “Cocoon” culture of the community. It tends to get isolationist and in worst cases, hold you back so you tend to be unprepared for the reality of the rest of the world. Going off to college, out of ELA for the first time, I saw how easy it was to want to wrap yourself in a cultural pride (another cocoon) (ie. join Mecha) to take the edge off of feelings of fear and personal insecurity. It took me years to realize that my father had been wrong about a lot of things, for example, not all Gringos have horns & tails.
Don’t all culture grow up in a bubble? I think you should have a myriad of experiences, but I think sometimes there is this bad view of “ethnic” bubbles.
I remember when I was in college I hung out with a bunch of people, I was the multyculty queen. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into hanging out with one group, but you know I remember a response I had to one of my friends who had this question.
Why do all of the black girls sit at that table, all of the latina’s sit at that table, and all of the asian girls sit at that table (went to an all women’s college) and my response was, why do all of the white girls all sit at the same 20 tables.
And yes minorities need to branch, but I think white people need to branch out also.
And not just to live in a cool building, but never shop in the neighborhood, hang out with the people in the neighborhood, and then decide when they like it to just move everyone out and replace it with things that they like.
Yes while white people aren’t the majority any more in LA, in California they are still the biggest single group in this state and by far the biggest single group in four year colleges and in white collar professions needing degrees.
I don’t understand why with people of color for us to grow and become open minded we must stop living around people who look like us.
No disrespect to anyone I totally know what you mean, but white people seem to have no problem being progressive and living in majority white neighborhoods.
San Francisco. Manhattan. Portland. Humboldt County California.
All very progressive. All very educated. All very white. And they are all completely ok with that.
Up until 2000 Los Angeles white people were the most likely to be isolated from all of ethnic groups (and that took some special skill right there) and I’m thinking it was by choice, the only reason that it’s not the case now is because there are a large population of Latinos, so they can’t now.
http://www.usc.edu/schools/sppd/research/census2000/race_census/racecontours/ethington/isolation_index.pdf
Not saying people of color shouldn’t get out and stretch their legs, but I think we stretch our legs an awful lot in comparison to non people of color.
Browne
Browne, I agree with you, I feel like that too. But sometimes, It’s almost like if we don’t go to them, they’ll never come to us. You know?
I took a class a while ago on Chican@ music. We read the Land of a Thousand Dances, among other things. It was quite amazing to learn about the role Chican@s had in R&B and rock n’ roll that’s never really talked about. I see and Eastside music post in the future. It’s not just Los Lobos…
My experience growing up bewtween Echo Park and SGV was that we tended to choose friends by musical preferences and not necessarily ethnicity. I’ve always felt like being Chicana was “normal” so to create my identity I chose a particular music scene to belong to. For me, it was punk/hardcore but I know others were into metal, disco, ska etc. So in that sense, I didn’t feel like I lived in a homogeneous culture.
I had an African American roommate from Camden, New Jersey in college. She was shocked when I appropriated Tower of Power and War and Earth Wind & Fire songs as Chicano oldies. She saw them strictly as R&B. Then she moved to L.A. to go to USC Law School and stayed with my family in Boyle Heights while looking for an apartment. Now she’d admit that those oldies belong to everyone.
As for the “mystical land” comment, we used to say in college that Aztlan was a state of mind; East L.A. is for real.
Out of curiosity, do you differentiate between the phrases “Eastside” and “East L.A.?” I always kind of got the impression than historically the areas of Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, etc. were referred to as “East L.A.,” while “Eastside” was a more recently coined term. Is that incorrect? Has “Eastside” been in wide use for a long time to describe the same communities as “East L.A.?”
The reason I ask is that, if “Eastside” has an existing and historically specific meaning, I can totally support being indignant over its appropriation. However, if it doesn’t and the issue is really just about getting worked up over who gets to lay claim to the adjective “East,” I can’t really get behind that.
Eastside neighborhoods have historically been used to describe Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, Boyle Heights and parts of City Terrace.
East Los Angeles is the unincorporated areas east of Boyle Heights and extends to the borders of Alhambra, Monteery Park and Montebello.
The terms have been used interchangeably though.
Eastside as it relates to a culture has been used as far back as the early 1900s to describe life in Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights. I know for certain (based on my father who grew up in Boyle Heights and was a musician) that the “Eastside sound” started to be used by Mexican Americans in the the late 1950s.
My grandmother who also grew up in Los Angeles (moved here in the early 1920s) would commonly refer to areas east of the river as “The Eastside.”
Here are two other things to make things confusing:
Prior to 1910 (or around there) Lincoln Heights was officially
known as “East Los Angeles.”
According to my grandmother, Echo Park (where she lived her whole life) was sometimes referred to as “The Westside.”
Among many Chicanos, Eastside has a very distinct cultural reference and that’s why people like myself are angry over it’s appropriation. It further reinforces our belief that our communities and history have been ignored by those on the other side of the city. If we had gotten more respect, people wouldn’t have thought it okay to take the term “Eastside.”
Beautifully said, Chimatli. To put in my two pesos,
5000: I’d like to address the part of your statement “…who gets to lay claim to the adjective “East”, that the term “East” is not in dispute here, that’s a directional term with wide applications. We are referring specifically to the NOUN Eastside or East L.A., describing a city region pertaining to a location, in this case east of the river. The inference that the term Eastside is even “up for grabs” at this point in time is nothing less than insulting and it reflects an apparent self-centered disinterest and ignorance of those of us with cultural ties to the area and to Los Angeles city history as a whole.
I must add that I truly appreciate/respect your asking for more information on the subject to form your opinion. That’s refreshing.
Eastside is very old school LA. The term was more recently discovered by westsiders and valleyites who wanted to seem more gritty…
Browne
>>The term was more recently discovered by westsiders and valleyites who wanted to seem more gritty…
You’re making a lot of assumptions there, Browne. I think there are plenty of people who started calling places like Silver Lake and Echo Park the “east side” because, frankly, it’s on the east side of the city of Los Angeles (though obviously not the metro area). Not that they should call it that, or that they shouldn’t be aware that there are existing connotations to the name, but blanket statements about large groups of people seems like exactly the sort of thing you complain about all the time.
5000,
I’m being assumptive, well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black.
This is you,”“Eastside” has an existing and historically specific meaning, I can totally support being indignant over its appropriation. However, if it doesn’t…”
If that wasn’t assumptive, I don’t know what the hell is. Don’t try to throw it back on me when you were being a little bit of some bs first. I mean if you don’t agree with me fine, but don’t try to get all, “well you’re being assumptive” crap.
Browne
5000,
Silver Lake and Echo park are in the north part of Los Angeles. I will grant that they are east of Hollywood.
Although I were back in NYC while the “eastside” phenomenon was burgeoning, I do know loads of folk responsible for advancing it who lived in Silver Lake, Franklin Hills and East Hollywood. many of them have, like me, been in the small press publishing scene for a couplea decades. However, they found it cool to emulate the hipsters who were appropriating the term for the verry reason this thread was started. I found it pretenstious, as it implied they were living on the edge, or knew something others might have only heard about.
It is not a new development, this attempt to impress others by one’s residential namesake; it has been a scourge in New York for some time. (If you know anything about LES, the Bowery, Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy, to name a few nabes, you will know what I mean. These places indicated a culture usually in regards race, just like East L.A./Eastside.) It has even been employed in TV sitcoms, which means it is olde hat.
“I had an African American roommate from Camden, New Jersey in college. She was shocked when I appropriated Tower of Power and War and Earth Wind & Fire songs as Chicano oldies.”
Vero how can you “appropriate” the music of another people? Are you taking on the mentality of the people that “appropriated” this land from your ancestors? They are not “Chicano oldies.” I don’t know of any Chicanos who played a creative role in the production of the classic Black soul & r&b recordings erroneously referred to as Chicano or lowrider oldies. It is classic soul/r&b created by Black Americans. Its great you appreciate and love the music, but you cannot claim or “appropriate” what you did not have a hand in creating.
We as black americans are so quick to through away black artist and then reclaim them only when someone else wants them. The Black Rose
heckout http://www.expressyourself.net