I wish I had the time to be more articulate. Or the patience to be more patient. In these times of La Crisis and economic uncertainty I find that I have to economize on words: can’t be wasting them on any old thing. But believe me that I have words, big bags of them, waiting to get poured out in a flood of meaning when I can figure out how to fit it into my schedule. Just cuz I ain’t saying nothing don’t mean I’m not thinking stuff. Thoughts cross my mind at all hours of the day, sometimes making me laugh for no reason, sometimes getting me upset like a mofo at some joker that deserves it. At some point I will have to squeeze in a bout of insanity to my busy life just to mete out my version of comeuppance.
Until that fateful day arrives I’ve come up with a quick and easy solution to deal with this problem that keeps gnawing at me, and I’m gonna call it El Dedo. (Yes, The Finger.) What unifies this fine series of posts? Well, the fact that I will give the finger to people, projects, and papers that sorely deserve it! Isn’t that kinda petty and juvenile? But of course!
I am equipped to tolerate lots of abuse but I am sick of these posers moving to LA and a few month later deciding to rename the city, calling everything East of where they feel comfortable the “Eastside.” We were making some headway on informing these newbies that the Eastside has a long history in Los Angeles and that it begins East of the river but lately there’s been another skirmish in that battle with lots of naive offenders once again writing us off the map, thinking they can dismiss El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, and Boyle Heights as being simply part of East LA. Nah fool, we ain’t having it.
The honor of the initial post to this series goes to that shitty paper with the even shittier title of “Brand X” which has been consistent in their renaming of the Eastside strategy, even though their mothership the LA Times thinks otherwise.
Bland X is the LA Times freebie trying to be hip and relevant to the younger generation, with lots of ads surrounded by fluff articles on fluffy subjects. This issue had ground breaking info on growing tomatoes. And that putting chicken feathers in your hair is a “new” fashion trend. (Won’t the natives be surprised!) I don’t care about all that garbage too much but I do care when they go on their let’s-rename-the-Eastside kick, as they do in this article about some comedy events in Los Feliz and Echo Park.
“I really like the idea of free Eastside great comedy … [the Eastside] hasn’t been exploited to where it should be”
–some jerkoff quoted in the paper.
Oh how I have things to tell you! Instead I’m gonna let my finger do the talking.
Toma!
UPDATE!
On the same day I read BlandX talking about the cool club Low End Theory @ The Airliner in “Highland Park” (wrong again BlandX, that’s Lincoln Heights!) I find out that they are going under. Ha Ha! El Dedo has Power! Toma!
If you do this right, you might make it so that these pendejos will see all of LA as the “east side”, i.e., they won’t feel comfortable unless they’re at least 20 miles off the coast… at the bottom of the friggin’ ocean….
Fuck them!
For me the eastside is boyle heights and east los angeles only.
This on the heels of that stoopid “Taste of the Eastside” event a couple weekends ago… where? Barnsdall Park. And with who? 24 of 27 of the attending eateries were from Silver Lake, Echo Park, Atwater Village and Los Feliz. I avoided that shit like the plague.
What’s incredible is that these puto’s aren’t even the slightest bit ashamed of being lame ass wanabee’s. It doesn’t surprise me though, we on the Eastside were always considered “The Invisible People” by these miedoso’s who felt that their whole universe is that strange insulated place west of Sepulveda Blvd.. Now their offspring want to feel edgy and somehow with it, so they have migrated as far as those safe havens of Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and even, God forbid! Echo Park, somehow thinking this is as far east as they want to be, and so in their small brains they beat their wimpy chests and proclaim the westside the “Eastside”.
Very Pathetic
How do you guys feel about including NELA under the Eastside umbrella? I’ve always felt like HLP, Cypress Park, Glassel Park are part of the eastside. To some degree I feel like anything east of the river is eastside, however, that would include Atwater and Eagle Rock. I’m not as comfortable calling Eagle Rock the eastside because (to me) the title eastside has some meaning to it. It’s like the Eastside is a crew, and there are 2 rule to get in. 1. you have to be east of the river and 2. you need to earn your stripes (by that I mean the area has/had some tough times, kinda earn that infamous eastside rep). I feel like Atwater, HLP, Cypress, Glassel, Sereno, LH, BH, East LA , ect have all been through the shit and share some similar trial and tribulations, Eagle Rock not so much but it is east of the river. So what do you think? Is NELA part of the Eastside family or are they separate crew?
A que bueno, I thought I was the only one who had noticed this new trend. I think the meeedia thinks that anywhere that there is Mexicans, it’s East L.A. When there’s a story and they are reporting from General Hospital or County USC, just about every news station signs off with something different, these are the ones that I always hear: “reporting live from East L.A.” “reporting from Boyle Heights” “Live from Lincoln Heights”. I don’t know, maybe General Hospital became a mobile clinic???
Will,
Ha those fools are coming up next for the finger!
Batmanuel,
I don’t necessarily think of NELA as part of the Eastside but I guess a case could be made. I don’t know why Highland Park or Eagle Rock would want to use it though, they have such a strong neighborhood identity. Same with Lincoln Heights, I call it by name because it is a unique area compared to BH and ELA but I do see it as part of the larger Eastside area.
Another dedo coming for places like The Brewery that are in LH yet act like they are in downtown, fuck them too.
El dedo? You had me scared there for a moment, I thought you were talking about a snitch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSQ2V62-okI
Looking at the videos on this site about L.A. and its people it appears anything northwest of downtown L.A. is the east side http://www.iamlosangeles.com/category/the-east-side/