“La Crisis”

fruit cart

After I deposited some long over due client checks at the ATM outside of Lucy’s Laundry Mart, I went over to the fruit cart to get my custom bag of fruit with lime, salt and chile. I hadn’t been in a minute. I was excited.

As a solopreneur, I have for sure felt the blow of this f-ed up economy. I figured its summer timers and the fruit cart biz must be a booming, right? WRONG!

I started up convo with the fruit cart man and asked him what time he’s usually done for the day. He said that sometimes he’s there until 6pm. I was like really?! I told him I thought with it being Summer timers he’d be done by mid-afternoon. He said that most summers its like that but not now with “la crisis”, making people pinch every penny.

Damn.

Churros

Walking down Cesar Chavez yesterday to go see my friend at work I was thinking, “Man I could sure go for a churro right about now. That sweet,greasy stick always hits the spot anytime, anywhere.” Just as I think my hunger for churros will go unfulfilled, I see a man and his cart standing in front of the Big Buy full of churros. Four for a dollar he yelled and like Batman to the bat-signal, I grab a dollar from my pocket and with a smile on my face I asked him to help me fulfill my sugary craving. The vendor was an older looking man, late ’40s early ’50s, he had a light beer smell to him, possibly budweiser and looked as if he just crawled from under a pickup truck. Despite his rugged appearance I didn’t hesitate as I took a bite of my churro, still warm and soft as it was recently made. The man told me that his suegra had rushed him out the door to go and sell after she finished making them. He asked her if he could have one more beer before he left the house, but no dice. Across the street from him other people were selling other various foods and random items. On Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday it gets packed on that side walk with people buying food and just enjoying themselves. However I digress from my point, which is that no matter what your craving there will be someone in a cart or stand selling what ever your craving for a reasonable price and extremely delicious. I <3 Boyle Heights.  

The LA Times cuts Jesus Sanchez

“And_then_there_were_none With so many good people leaving the paper, it seems unfair to single anyone out. But readers of this blog have come to know Jesus Sanchez, to seek him out for his sly and dry wit, his knowledge of the city where he was born, and his uncanny ability to find and tell the quietly great story. It would be wrong to have his photo vanish from this page without letting you know Jesus has been laid off. “  Veronique de Turenne, LA Now, LA Times, Thank you Jesus.  July 15

It to me is amazing in regards to who is staying and who is going, this is a sad time for LA print media.

Browne

 

Food Packaging

Corporate

gave me a headache after i ate

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of the BBQ Sparerib Potato Chip

Purchased: 7-11 (Freedom’s waiting for you)
Design: full color, slick, do enjoy the juxtaposition of slabs of meat and the statue of liberty
Taste: good going down especially in the morning after eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Post-consumption: severe headache

D.I.Y.

yummy

Purchased: next to a gas station late at night while driving up to Kalasin from the woman who made them
Design: simple, right up my alley, pre-printed info tag, rubber bands and staples to keep the contents of the delicious treat inside while cooking
Taste: sweet, smokey, coconut mixture grilled over charcoal, very delicious (did I write delicious enough?), purplish in color
Post-consumption: raring to go and no sugar crash

Terminator- The Silver Lake Chronicles

Fox TV was filming some scenes from TERMINATOR THE SARAH CONNER CHRONICLES in my neighborhood today. Not much action, but they did Terminate all of the parking for three blocks around for two days. A major pain in the ass, but it’s an industry town, right? Just one of the prices we pay for living in Tinseltown. We still bitched to the studio people, and they gave us their usual response: “But we bring Money into the neighborhood!”. Wish I’d see some of it.

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Cityhood for East L.A.

The community of East Los Angeles is once again pushing forward an initiative to incorporate itself as a city, and if successful, it will be the 89th city in the county. This past Independence Day marked the launch of a drive to get the required 9,000 signatures to get the official process of incorporation. If you’d like to sign the petition, you can visit this website.

For more information on East L.A.’s push for incorporation, visit its official website. You can also check out the official pages at Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr.

ELA DJ Panel #2 Wed. 7/16 @ 6:30 pm

(Everybody knows a DJ. Everyone has danced to a DJ at some time. This is part of our culture. Come and participate in this.

ELA DJ PM panels #2

Part of the “Featuring the Lightz and Soundz of…” Exhibition @ g727

These discussions revolve around the concept of exploring and archiving DJ culture from ELA. The panels are designed to capture testimonies from leaders of the DJ movement from the present, past and future so their history can be included in future discussions of the west coast and global dance scene and Chicano cultural production.

(pics and audio of the first panel http://sicklyseason.com/dialogo/g727/g727dj.htm)

Here are the details.

Panel 2 Wednesday, July 16

Innovators of Style and Programming
An intimate conversation with Frank Del Rio, Richard Vission and other DJs TBC who helped shape the art of mixing and programming. Via their DJ booths, radio shows and productions these DJs refined the art of DJing.
Hosted by Gerard Meraz

Wednesday, July 16th Doors open at 6:30pm
Panel starts 7pm sharp

@ g727
727 South Spring Street
LA, CA 90014
213 627 9563

www.g727.org

Your Stuff to Do!! 7/14-7/20

Did you wake up one day and realized that you weren’t the most valuable living being on the planet? No, neither have I, but I am making a real effort at getting there.

Maybe you can’t change the world, but you can change a piece of it for at least twenty minutes and if you changed twenty minutes and another person changed twenty minutes, possibly all of you together could have an impact on someone’s day.

If you believe in that kind of concept and you think patchouli smells good here’s a list of your things to do.

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Penny and nicked in LA. A car wash story.

Barbara Ehrenreich speaking at Mama\'s Hot Tamales

“Tesco is to stop importing about £1m ($2m) of fresh vegetables from Zimbabwe, reversing its previous stance that the trade was essential to support the families of the farm workers who grow crops such as mange tout and baby corn.” By John Willman in London and Tony Hawkins in Harare at the Financial Times.

Tesco owns the recent upstart in the organic food game, Fresh & Easy (which for some odd reason the blogosphere is obsessed with.)

Not that I believe that Tesco was only trying to help, but how far is too far in regards to “helping” and what’s not far enough?

On Friday I went to a get together at MacArthur Park’s Mama’s Hot Tamales in support of the ongoing carwash boycott that first came to the attention of the media with the boycotting of the Pirian-owned Vermont Hand Wash in Los Feliz.

At the event Barbara Ehrenreicht (author of Nickle and Dimed and the new book This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation) gave the boycott organizers and their supporters her encouragement.

“America has forgotten it’s own history of organized collective action and outright rebellion…” Barbara Ehrenreicht.

That to me is the key. You can’t go too far, but you can screw yourself if you don’t go far enough.

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