Viva La Revolucion!!!
by AlDesmadre
VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
¡Atencíon Pueblo Eastside! Ahi Viene-la-plaga ¡The MTA Gold Line Train is Coming!!!
By order of Mi General “Chavo Villa” (“El Centauro del NorEste”), we must begin mounting our DEFENSES against the coming INVASION of GENTRIFIERS, GENTRIMANDERERS, YUPPIES, WHITEWASHERS, DEVELOPERS, HIPSTERS and other CABRONES!!!!
There may be GOOD and BAD hombres & mujéres among the incoming hordes, But we can’t always tell the Pinchi Difference! So Beware!!! Aguas, Gente!!!! Let’s keep the the greater good for our Eastside always in focus and in the forefront!
VIVA EL PUEBLO EASTSIDE!!!!!
We true Eastsiders already have advance troops infiltrating the Gold Line Train Cars! Here is a smuggled photograph of our Elite Female Battalion: “LAS ADELITAS” in position aboard one of the incoming Trains….
Shown above are Las Adelitas Del Eastside: CHIMÁTLI, BROWNE, DOÑA JUNTA, CINDYLU, RITZY, VICTORIA, among other fighting “Rieleras”
“BE READY FOR EL TREN, OR SE LOS VA A LLEVAR EL TREN!!!”
VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!!!! VIVA EL EASTSIDE CABRONES!!!!!!
LikeRelated posts:
Comments(30)
Yo ti espero, mi General!
Estamos listos pa la batalla contra Los Gentrimanderers, pero they already have a foothold in Highland Park and Lincoln Hts. Estos cabrones are muy sneaky and have already taken over parts of the Eastside and changed the names to Garvanza, Montecito Hts, Hermon, and the Brewery lofts. They are even calling parts of the Avenues, Highland Park and Cypress Park, “Mt Washington”, Frogtown has been under attack by real estate developers who refer to it as Silverlake. Elephant Hill in El Sereno has been taken forcefully by Yuppie developers as a future fortress of Gentrification, and La Chismosa, Hortensia found out from Comadre Chole that the First and Boyle area is to be developed as a combination upscale Calle Olvera and Pasadena Old Town called Quesadillaville. Sepa!
Mira mi General, lo que paso in Brooklyn NY.
To the barricades!
Park Slope: Where Is the Love?
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
FAMILY FRIENDLY Other neighborhoods have strollers, food co-ops and brownstones. So why is sneering at Park Slope an urban blood sport?
By LYNN HARRIS
Published: May 18, 2008
“Remember Chavez Ravine”, “Remember Bunker Hill”, Beaudry, The Chandlers etc…
Any of you ever read “A Community Under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River, 1945 – 1975″ by Rodolfo Acuña. It was a professor at Cal Poly that was the project manager for the then East LA “red-line” who introduced it to the class.
Jajaja! I love it!
fyi, there will be some street closings in the next couple of days for gold line constructions. you can find them at http://www.metro.net/projects_studies/eastside/construction_notices.htm to see if they affect you.
Housing prices as they are I don’t think you have much to worry about, but I always welcome wild paranoia. If the schools here performed even marginally then you might have an issue. Thank god for underachievement?
Nobody with money is going to seriously consider the Eastside a destination until the schools improve and crime rate drop. It’s like throwing money at nothing. Why buy a home or condo in an area that you can’t have kids in? That’s what they care about.
salty, i could be wrong, but i think the post is satire. the reaction you get on the westside (or even west valley) anytime trains are mentioned is that the waves of unwashed masses will rend the fabric of their existence into oblivion and anyone stepping off them require extra special suspicion (except their own personal hired help of course, who they insist they would pay more except they don’t need it because they don’t have a car payment).
otoh, i do hate gentrimanderers and hipsters, so maybe i will join el chavo (the one in the poster, not the one who posts here, though i’ve noticed i never see them both in the same room at the same time) in whatever it is the spanish in the post says — something about offsetting cabrones credits, i think.
Human,
I have no idea what you just said. Was that a point?
Anyhow, I understood it was satire, but satire doesn’t come without a message. My message was simple, there is no invasion. Yours? Not sure.
“Nobody with money is going to seriously consider the Eastside a destination until the schools improve and crime rate drop. It’s like throwing money at nothing. Why buy a home or condo in an area that you can’t have kids in? That’s what they care about.”
That’s what they said about Silver Lake, Echo Park, Downtown and Hollywood about 15 years ago.
MY point is that we have seen in the past how the “Groundwork” is gradually put down in other places and what may come next. It’s a gradual process that starts with investors, trendy businesses, increased values & gentrifiers. The school issue doesn’t always stop them either (ie. magnet, private schools, busing, commuting to “good” schools, home schooling). Also, you have a lot of trendy folks with no kids. I’m just saying to the Eastside; Be Aware of the signs to be prepared for what may or may not happen. That’s all.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes by a well known philosopher….
“In the End, only the paranoid will survive”
“Our present urban renewal laws are an attempt to break this particular linkage in the vicious circles by forthrightly wiping away slums and their populations, and replacing them with projects intended to produce higher tax yields, or to lure back easier populations with less expensive public requirements. The method fails. At best, it merely shifts slums from here to there, adding its own tincture of extra hardship and disruption. At worst, it destroys neighborhoods wher constructive and improving communities exist and where the situation calls for encouragement rather than destruction…Conventional planning approaches to slums and slum dwellers are thoroughly paternalistic. The trouble with paternalists is that they want to make impossibly profound changes, and they choose impossibly superficial means of doing so…” (Jane Jacobs, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” 1961).
salty, many points actually. sorry if they were obfuscated. here they are again, more simply as requested.
1) noting the satirization of mass transit nimby’s
2) making fun of angelenos’ attitude towards mass transit
3) noting that many angelenos’ hired help comes from the eastside on mass transit
4) even in light of this satire, the slow trickle of “groundwork,” as al subsequently put it, is worth stopping
5) making light of the fact that el chavo in al’s poster is not the poster “EL CHAVO!” on this blog
6) not everyone who reads this blog knows spanish
7) making what i thought was a pretty funny example of how a non-spanish speaker might confuse words (“cabron” and “carbon” in this case). do you know how many gentrimanderers purchase carbon credits? wouldn’t it be nice to have a cap-and-trade system for cabrones too?
somehow, i liked the way it came across before better than this enumerated list. but, if i must enumerate, i must.
Human,
I was a little grouchy and dense last night. After careful reading I “got” your post. And there are some funny points, I agree…
Where’s my back up!? I’m here on the front lines holding down the fort !!!
There’s a story about Pancho Villa back when he was being pursued by Gen. Pershing of the U.S. Army. Villa apparently sent an unmanned run-away locomotive filled with explosives hurtling on the tracks back towards Pershing’s position, causing some real Desmadres.
I propose that we Eastsiders similarly send a Gold Line Train back across the River filled with powerful explosive devices such as “Lupe’s 12 Kinds of Burritos”.
I think Al’s first tactical bean powered strategy seems a good place to launch the assault. ‘Pa Delante!
Al-
To extrapolate on my point in more detail, allow me to use myself as an example:
I’m mid-thirties, white in a mixed marriage and looking for a house. I’d love to stay in Lincoln Heights and find some beautiful craftsman house here, but the schools are are some the worst in LA. The crime isn’t much better. I’m not having kids but my buyer might so I’m thinking about the bottom line. If I dump $60,000 as a down payment on a house I’m thinking if this house is going to sell in 10 years, after all my hard work fixing it up.
The truth is hell no. It just doesn’t add up, Gold Line or no, as Lincoln Heights already has the Gold Line. Think about it, The Gold Line to Pasadena only connected Pasadena to Downtown and marginally changed the demographic in Highland Park. The promised flood of hipsters hasn’t really happened and as most hipsters are renters anyhow, the switch hasn’t come about.
Your point about Silverlake and Echo Park makes a point, however, those neighborhoods are spitting distance to Hollywood and that’s where they really want to be anyhow. Foreclosures are in full effect in both neighborhoods, and I assume that those houses will be snapped up by more “adventurous” hiptards, having no net effect.
Probably the most profound effect of the Eastside Gold Line will be the enhanced mobility of the people that live there. It’s been a long time coming and rather than a paternalistic advance upon the untrodden Eastside, I see it as a benefit to those that live there and need to work elsewhere. Demographics do switch but it takes a very long time indeed. You could make the same argument for the Blue Line in South LA, yet I don’t see scads of douchebags lining up to move there and change the face of the neighborhood. What about the addition of the Gold Line do you see as different than the Blue Line?
In truth, I’ll have to look elsewhere for a house, much to my disappointment. I love this place and don’t want to change it, but the market has turned and it’s not worth it to stay. The paranoid “the hipsters are coming!” sentiment sounds a little far-fetched. I hope I’m right and you’re wrong.
Sale Vale! Aqui in Highland Park the soldado’s put the kabosh on a devious plan to put chairs and tables with Cinzano umbrellas outside on the sidewalk at El Arco Iris Restraunt. And another evil plan to replace Caldo de Siete Mares at the Siete Mares Restraunt with cedar planked smoked salmon and quinoa was squashed by the moche pescuezo’s brigade.
Adelante!
I think the fact that u even have a rail extending to the eastside is a sign of the times. I hope they dont try to convert Boyle Heights to commercialized Olvera st(don’t get me started on Olvera st). Anyway back to my point, a sign of the times. There already plans to make BH fall into line with the dense and commercial built up that is taking over Downtown. Everything from rebuilding Wyvernwood courts(8st projects) and adding additional units. Tearing down the sears tower to add more business. De la Hoya is moving his charter school to BH on lorena. I high ranked and accomplished school, like the one Salty was arguing would be needed to attract more yuppies. And the list of projects goes on.
Dont get me wrong. I am not trying to make a judgment about all of this. more so just trying to point out that whether it be a result of the rail or just that the rail is a sign of the larger change ahead. The eastside will be changing from community it was when we grew up in it.
There are a couple of community meeting coming up soon. http://bheightsncp.googlepages.com/home If ur interested in influencing this change you should go.
Highland Park, Montecito Heights and especially Mount Washington are full of yuppies who moved here from the west along with their kids. Guess where they send their kids to school? Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Pasadena…I know this for certain, I know some of these kids.
Just a couple of months ago, Los Angeles Times had a story about yuppie parents who moved to Highland Park when they were childless and thought they would move once they had children. Now they are stuck here and decided to try and change the public schools so they’ll be good enough for their children. I think they started some kind of second language immersion program (not ESL). And a few years ago there was a meeting at AVE 50 Gallery about school choices for yuppie kids in the Northeast LA area. Lead by guess who? Sandra Tsing Loh.
love it..yo wacho from my stop at the atlantic/pomona station.
Chimatli touches on an interesting subject, the Gentrimanderers who move to one of the working class Eastside areas and then turn their homes into bomb shelters.
You rarely see them outside the house except when they are getting in or out of their cars. If they happen to be outside they always look down or away and don’t acknowledge the presence of any of the neighbors. If they have a child or two they send them to private schools, isolate them from the “normal” kids in the neighborhood and have them enrolled in soccer league’s somewhere else.
Practically the only time you will see these kids is on the 4th of July, peeking out their windows sadly and meekly, when all the regular people and their kids from the neighborhood are putting on one of the typical Eastside mass pyrotechnics displays out in the streets.
They talk about these people being the “saviors” of urban areas, but have you seen what they have done on Broadway? The street is a vibrant bustling place until you hit the mid block where the Orpheum is and it is dead beyond the random Latino pedestrian passing through. how is that an improvement?
Art,
maybe they’re talking about saving Broadway from Latinos
Thanks Rob, Chimatli & DonQ for your excellent input.
I have witnessed first-hand the educational “yuppie-flight” here in the Silver Lake area just to get their kids as far away from the “public school brown savages” as possible.
Those are among the many slaps in the face the local blue collar brown community faces around here. This is one ugly symptom of gentrification. I’ve communicated with Sandra Tsing Loh on this as well. I have much too much material on this to even post here in blog form. The time is coming for an expose’….
Anyway, I had wished to keep this post humorous & satirical
Let’s not miss the jokes for the issues here! (:
I have been posted at my garrison on the eastern bank of the Olympic Bridge, just in case they want to sneak around us via Sears/Wyvenwood incursion.
Bad news: the eloteros have reported quiche-froyo LEDs disguised as america apparel refuse set up at various points rendering our vehicles useless. Apparently the purple BID cops harassing street vendors have been disgraced by our guerilla food vending techniques, and this is payback. We are fervently armoring shopping carts as I type with steel undercarriages to handle the dairy laiden explosions, concentrated near the historic core and FIDM. Baby strollers and hand carts are no longer allowed in the combat zone.
We had recon confirmation of Christian Audgier shirts spotted near the Commerce Center, but the panic subsided when the mentioned shirt was deemed a knock off from the callejones.
If the time comes (which it never will) for us to retreat, I have a ‘stache of cyanide laced hollenbecks waiting for us at Rudy’s bikes on the East LA/ Montebello border. There are also gun turrets ready for action at A& G custom sounds on whittier and suicide bombers ready to hit Eastside Love and Chim Maya.
El Metro 501
el que corría por El Este
por eso los “eastsiders”
el que no suspira llora.
Era un domingo señores
como a las tres de la tarde
estaba El Chavo
aconsejando AlDesmadre.
Dentro de pocos momentos
AlDesmadre tengo que partir
del tren se escucha el silbato
se acerca mi porvenir.
Cuando llego a la estación
un metro ya estaba silbando
y un carro de dinamita
ya se le estaba quemando.
La Chimatli le dice,
Chavo vamos apeando
mira que el carro de atrás
ya se nos viene quemando.
El Chavo le contesta
yo pienso muy diferente
yo no quiero ser la causa
de que se mueva tanta gente.
Le dio vuelta a su vapor
porque era de cuesta arriba
antes de llegar a la “Main”
ahí termino su vida.
Desde ese día inolvidable
tú te has ganado la cruz
tú te has ganado las palmas
eres un héroe ElChavo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTgNlNI87lk
Let the Corridos begin! Ajua!
¿Que paso, Que paso, Vamos ahí?!? I’m not ready to kick the bucket yet!
Well at least I know there will be at least one corrido to honor my lifetime of pendejadas!
The schools. I think the thing that makes me the most irritated is how in gentrified areas there is always a magnet and that magnet school seems to always be for one group of kids, the non minority group of kids. And I don’t understand why people can’t fight for the whole school district of LAUSD instead of just portions of it.
Why is sending your kid up the street with the neighborhood kids in the neighborhood you chose to live in such a horrible thing? And why does the fight for quality education has to be so literally drawn between class and racial lines? And if the school thinks its doing such an inappropriate job that it needs to create a school within a school then why not create those enriched experiences for the magnet and that quality and consideration into the whole schools.
I know that parents who have been in gentrified or nongentrified ethnic neigborhoods have been complaining for years why are the only complaints that are listened to or the one from people who just moved there yesterday.
Reminds me of LAPD enforcement. It pisses me off when I look at Echo Park and Silver Lake remembering how much te mom’s there begged and no one cared, no one cared until a bunch of people with 3000 dollar sleeve tattoos from the movie industry moved in.
LAUSD is racist. The LAPD is racist. The City of LA is racist (and institutional racism doesn’t go away with a Latino mayor and a black president) and that’s what it is and until that is addressed nothing is going to change.
The people in Westchester are just as working class as the people in Lincoln Heights and Leimert Park is just as middle class as Mar Vista. so this it’s just about class point that people try to jab into our eye is just not going to hold water.
Browne
Urbanista, thanks for the honor of being included in your clever updated corrido. Ajua, indeed!
Adelita-lu a sus ordenes!
http://tinyurl.com/88bvyd