First they came for our taco trucks. Then they deported some family members, a few friends, and some other paisas that lived down the street. On the weekend they went to TJ and had some fun, it wasn’t so bad. Yeah, One Love. Then they paid us to mow the grass and wheel out their fucking trash cans. Sometime way before any of this they threw out some po-mo ramblings and tossed the Eastside moniker up in the air, up for grabby grabs, but I just remembered so this timeline might be off by a month or two. Afterwards they demanded we bring them the food already, cuz they’ve been sitting here for 10 minutes. Right around this time some asshole ran for mayor under the English Only/ Down with the Wetters platform. But the chittichangas were good with guacamole and they decided to forget that foray into the Old Ways. Then they decided that taco trucks were actually a good idea, maybe even kinda cool, and the proper people also liked them, so yeah, lets not enforce that arbitrary law. Then they wanted to do that whole 187 thing against children of immigrants again, you know, for old times sake. It’s part of that grab bag of ideas they put into rotation when things go bad; they’re just not that creative.
And now, dipping back into said bag, they want to ban roosters, again. This shit has got to stop. No pasaran. Stand for California. The buck is in the sand, the line stops near here, or something of the sort.
Let the chickens be.
I grew up with this hatred of the pet chicken, I had the gobierno come and knock on my door a few times about them. I don’t understand the hate for this beautiful bird, is it cuz people don’t want to think about them when they are eating a bucket dinner? Maybe. The noise isn’t any worse than the many, many yards full of asshole barking dogs that won’t STFU while you walk by. They are louder than the gentle morning crow of any rooster I’ve known. (Yes, gentle morning crow.)
But I don’t see anyone asking for a ban on those ugly pick-up-my-poo creatures. And even though I think dogs are disgusting and should be sterilized into extinction, I can understand the attachment humans have for flea bags. Will you not also consider my love for the chicken? Are we lesser than just because Target doesn’t have an aisle dedicated to our needs? Should I start eating dogs so that you can see they are also animals, just like chickens? Please don’t make me saute your poodle just to prove a point.
I’m willing to meet people half-way: if you want to ban chickens and roosters as pets from our yards, then ban them as food products on the kitchen table as well. That seems fair enough.
And then, the Taco Bell Chihuahua died, and they were all confused.
Roosters also provide entertainment for Eastside youth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruSCaMyWDwc
And we all know the song is Tres Animales not dos!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDCK4E8JHp0
I will join your cause and stand with California in the sand and not cross the line! La lucha sigue!
“Mis animales son bravos, si no saben torrear no le entren.”
If only drug policy would take this in mind.
Hands off our cocks!
I grew up with a yard full of chickens, and a revolving cast of next door neighbors that got WASPier and WASPier as the years went by. My mom has become an expert in sending the Animal Control clowns packing, as the inevitable phone calls from yet another set of new neighbors decided that hens cackling in the morning when they lay their eggs was insufferable (but their gardener going full blast with the leaf blower was cool).
There are some crazy laws regarding keeping chickens in L.A., and much of the places I’ve see on the Eastside make not even a symbolic attempt to comply with the laws regarding chickens in the city. As far as I can tell, all that leads to is more bugs getting eaten by chickens than might otherwise happen.
In conclusion, no way no how should these birds be banned in L.A. They actually help people turn trash in to compost and you get eggs (and meat?) out of the deal.
One more thing: sometimes one hen in a group of hens becomes the alpha chicken. The alpha hen will develop a more upright comb and start walking around crowing and dry humping her underling sisters. Banning roosters will only lead to more gay chicken sex! These fools obviously have no idea what they are doing, trying to ban roosters.
If roosters are outlawed, then only outlaws will have roosters.
Once in while someone would leave the backyard gate open and the girls (my six hens), would get out. I’d come around the corner after work and there would be those girls strutting down the sidewalk, heading towards Bobby’s house, where Chu Chu the gallo chingon lived.
Those little puta’s! I’d feed them, put a roof over their heads, supply the clean water, scraps from the table, nice fluffy straw nests to lay their eggs in, everything a hen could ask for. And there they go, waddling down the sidewalk, to visit Chu Chu el gallo, where he would start crowing, flapping his wings, kicking up dust, and jump on those disgraceful hens of mine, two or three seconds and it was over, big damn deal, and those tramp hens of mine would waddle back up the street to juiri juiri and act all innocent.
Lyrics by the great Willie Dixon, must of been written about Bobby’s gallo Chu Chu.
I am the little red rooster
Too lazy to crow for day
I am the little red rooster
Too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the farm yard upset in every way
The dogs begin to bark and hounds begin to howl
Dogs begin to bark and hounds begin to howl
Watch out strange cat people
Little red rooster’s on the prowl
If you see my little red rooster
Please drive him home
If you see my little red rooster
Please drive him home
Ain’t had no peace in the farm yard
Since my little red rooster’s been gone
Strange how some people won’t eat the fresh eggs you can get from having your own chickens, they say the eggs taste too much like eggs, the yolks are too orange, they prefer the mass produced chemical ladden eggs from those poor hens that live in an industrial setting, feet never hitting the ground, having amphetamines shot up thier ass’s.
I’ve had plenty of friends say that the eggs from our chickens are “nasty” too! What is up with these ignorant people?
“Eww it comes out with bird poo poo on it.”
Whatever. Good luck when the trucks from Indio stop delivering you your government approved dosage of antibiotics wrapped in an egg shell.
One of the happiest moments when I moved to HLP back in 2003 was finding a house with chickens in command of a front yard. It made the place feel homey.
How about we ban people from talking ill about and passing unneeded laws against roosters? That is a law I can get behind.
I miss old rural California. Not that I ever knew it, but I miss it.
Too much concrete and shitty laws.
Dogs and chickens can be friends. My dog always wants to play with the neighbor’s hens and roosters, but they just cross the road and run away.
The central and Sacramento valleys are still mostly rural, ATC. The one thing I still like about Sacramento anymore is the fact that it only takes me 20 minutes to get to rural areas that haven’t been developed yet, and haven’t changed a bit. I don’t get out of my car. I’m not a big fan of the people living there, nor their law enforcement, many of them having a simple policy of pulling over every car they don’t recognize and busting their chops about what they’re doing there. Hello?!? Cheapest meth in the country, officer! As if you didn’t know…In all seriousness, the one thing that is changing about these small towns is that Mexican immigrants are slowly taking them over. Every one of the main streets in these towns now has a taqueria or two that just opened in the past few years. Does the LA area have any rural parts left? Parts of the I.E? Out there around Pomona? I know you have to drive a bit to get to them, which is unfortunate.
Q: Why did the Chicken cross the river?
A: To get to the Eastside!
Im in the minority : im all for controlling the chickens in urban/suburban settings.
Damn its bad enough when dog owners cant keep control of their dogs from getting out!
-Im for shoot first and ask questions later 🙂
me vale madre! jejeje
If i want to see pollos y gallos voy de visita a los ranchos.
The LA Times just published a blog entitled, The down and dirty on raising livestock in the city.
The reporter quotes Echo Park resident, Erik Knutzen, co-author of “The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City” and the blog, Homegrown Evolution.
Jessica Garrison last year wrote about the conflict going on with roosters in South LA. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/25/local/me-rooster25
Sounds like a lot of cultural clashes going on over chickens.
I appreciate Chavo’s willingness to speak out about his unpopular view of dogs. I sometimes feel like I’m the only dog hater on the planet. Personally I’d much rather live next to a rooster than a dog.
bentrogena,
your links are bad…I’ll give you a chance to make it up if you do extra credit, otherwise I’m giving you a zero for the day!
Oops! I don’t know what happened with benign breast cancer links. Thought I was being all crafty with the HTML and everything.
Here’s the LA Times blog on urban livestock: http://bit.ly/gOJ1Z
Here’s the Homegrown Evolution blog: http://www.homegrownevolution.com/
And no more teacher jokes! I’ll have you suspended. For a week!
Obviously I’m going to have to look into L.A. livestock rules more carefully. We’d love to have chickens, but the zoning for our area makes it look like we can’t. But maybe all we need is a tape measure to make sure. I certainly don’t have any interest in banning other people’s, and even if there is to be a limit, this seems awfully stringent.
Every place that I’ve lived in the LA area has had pretty lax enforcement concerning laws about livestock. When I was in Inglewood, I’d troop two doors down to give my landord the rent (all $175.00 of it – those were the days…) One day I’m standing on his porch talking with him and his wife and I feel something glaring at the back of my head. I turn around a see an ostrich peeking over his backyard fence! Musta jumped 5 feet! My landlord tells me that he’s only going to be around for a few months then he’s gonna be boots, belts, and in the pot. His 5 year old daughter fell in love with the thing and wouldn’t let him kill it – and the ostrich only liked her – was mean as hell to everyone else.
As a homeowner in Compton, chickens, roosters, and wannabe cowboys (Black and Latino) on horses are an everyday thing. My neighbor brings me eggs all the time. I’ll take cock-a-doodle-doo at sunrise over some uptight neighbor any day of the week.
I thought chickens (just like hipster taco/ice cream trucks) are back in style and accepted by the tatted up vegan hipster crowd? Don’t they now want the freshest eggs possible? Don’t they want to be sure that the Ms Chick is eating only vegetarian food to maximize Omega 3s?
I thought chicks & cocks were back in???
Maybe. I’ve heard a chicken story on This American Life, and some “green” program. It never occurred to me that people were so paranoid about eggs. I thought poultry was popular because you can eat them after they quit laying eggs, and because some people are into cockfights.