Category Archives: Analysis

Who Felt the Quake? Who Has Money?

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Quake Reponse Data, Mapped

If you go by the raw numbers on the USGS.gov site, one might conclude that rich people felt the quake more than working class people, even though it happened in Inglewood.

The USGS.gov site has a cool feature where you can submit a quake report describing how it felt. You fill in your zip code, and some info about how much things were damaged, or not. During the recent quake on Sunday night, they collected more than 4,000 reports.

As you might expect, this received data was biased to come from upper-middle-class people, and probably younger people. I’ll leave it to the comments to speculate about biases. Details and links after the jump.
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Fiesta Shalom pics, part dos

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img_5029

Chavo was so pressed for time that I didn’t even run into him after I got to the fiesta. I ran into everyone else and their mom, but not C. He’s sneaky like that. But yes I was able to get into the shul and get the quick 15 minute tour everyone was waiting for in the baking sun. I quickly sign a waiver and headed inside wanting to see the inside of the building I have live around and seen, from the outside all my life here in East Los.

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Requiem For A Wino

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rivera

They pulled the plug on “Pops” the other day at Huntington Memorial Hospital.

He was brain dead and his family members called the last shot for Pops, that’s the way he would have wanted it. According to the other winito’s Pops was dragging his leg and arm around totally limp for three weeks, his mouth was twisting at the corner and his headaches were increasing in intensity. The winito’s said that even though they were begging Pops too go to the hospital he wouldn’t budge and finally went into convulsions and someone called 911.

Pops was one of the local neighborhood winitos, they usually consist of between half a dozen and a dozen alcoholics depending on who is busted or in detox or has gotten religion. Pops was the undisputed “mero chingon”of the local bottle gang, a well-liked, well-spoken, very respectable gentleman callejero, who everybody in the neighborhood (except the LAPD) was fond of.

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The US is #1 in putting people in jail. We’re #1!

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Locked Up

The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the world. We’re a country that in some parts uses the test scores of third graders to figure out how many future prison beds we should be building.

So I guess that means if you’re not scoring high on test, you’re not going to get a job, since you live in America you have two choices: homelessness or crime.

Pull yourself up by your boot straps or we’ll lock you up.

In America that seems perfectly reasonable.

America is a perfectly reasonably barbaric country. Continue reading →

Japanophilia, or the obsession with Japan

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Anyone here obsessed with Japanese culture (i.e. anime/manga, cherry trees, samurai, kendo, taiko, karate/judo/aikido, sushi, teriyaki, Kurosawa, “Beat” Takeshi Kitano) and things related to it (Little Tokyo, Comic-Con) and consider themselves or have been called a Japanophile?
I find America’s rising obsession with Japan so interestingly ironic. 20 years ago in elementary school and throughout high school, anyone who looked remotely Asian was called Chino or China.
My mother and other Japanese tenants in nearby apartment buildings in Boyle Heights were and still are called Chin@ by neighbors.
Nowadays, elementary and high school students carry “manga” (Japanese comics) books with them and are fascinated with Japanese culture. Some high school students I’ve worked with are so obsessed with Japan that they are studying the language via podcast and the internet on their own so that they can one day travel there.
An American Caucasian friend of mine who now lives in Tokyo with his Japanese girlfriend has told me that he feels most at home when he arrives to Narita Airport. Another Mexican American/Chicano friend has told me he believes he was Japanese in his past lifetime because of his deep interest in Japan and the culture.
Oh, how I wonder what it would have been like to be “cool” for bringing salmon and riceballs to school in my pink New Kids on the Block lunchbox while envying my classmates who had normal sandwiches and bags of pepinos.

An article by Oxy professor, Morgan Ptelka. http://www.discovernikkei.org/forum/en/node/1709

How Mexican are you?

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Prelude.

As a substitute teacher in public charter schools throughout Los Angeles, I have the honor and pleasure of meeting young students (K-12) – America’s future! – almost everyday. All of the schools I work at are 98% Latino/Raza (except when I get called to work in Inglewood, and rarely do I take the job – too far!).

I’ve worked in East LA, Northeast LA, South Central/LA, Pacoima, Inglewood, Crewnshaw, Korea Town, MacArthur Park and Downtown. The most fun I have and maybe the students have when I’m in the classroom with them is when I introduce myself. First, they have trouble with my name. “Kraus,” I say, “Miss Kraus. It rhymes with mouse and house. If you can say house, you can say Kraus.”

Then it goes into an impromptu Q&A session. “Where are you from, miss?” or “Where are your parents from, miss?” and sometimes just bluntly, “What are you, miss?” Elementary school students don’t care as much as the high school students. I say, “Guess.”
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Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!!

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Uh Oh! If Mexico is on the shit list of the paranoid conspiracy theorists can the LA Eastside, which is considered the capital of all things Mexican in the USA, be on the shit-list too?

I don’t know about youse guys but mañana all my bacon, Jimmy Dean sausage, chorizo de puerco, carnitas, chicharrones, and even the head cheese and morcilla that I got from the matanza this last winter, is going to be fed to the dogs or given away to the winito’s down on the corner.

It’s starting to look like a holy jihad or a fatwa against anything resembling or having to do with Mexican. Shit it’s bad enough that Gloria Molina has got the anti Mexican forces all in a foam about the “Edward Roybal, Linea de Oro” , last thing we on the Eastside would want is the Rush Limbaugh shock troops campaigning for a total quarantine on the LA Eastside over this Marano flu.
Those culero’s might think we’re part of the “reconquista plot” to take back the southwest. Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
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Race & Hollywood: Latino Images in Film

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salt-of-the-earth-cover

Recently Chimatli’s blog “Glassell Park on TV” created an interesting dialogue about what is fake and hilarious to the eastside audiences in film and how others view these ludicrous stereotypes of Latinos as gospel. Yeah, you know who you are, my little eastside.com tourist friends.

So just for you—those that don’t have a clue that there are racist depictions of Latinos in film—AND you, who can afford cable television during La Crisis –tune into Turner Classic Movies (TCM) starting on Cinco de Mayo (Tuesday, May 5 at 8pm) for an enlightening learning experience about your beloved Hollywood. Via television you will receive a condensed version of a Chicano Studies class—but you won’t be tested until you say something dumb like “Everyone in ELA is a gangbanger or drug addict—-I saw that on a TV show!” Continue reading →

Some LA Eastside legends, who’s the greatest?

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Oscar De La Hoya retires, was he the greatest athlete to ever come out of the Eastside? He certainly was the most popular worldwide, and definitely the most successful financially, He was #2 on the 2007 list of wealthiest athletes, only behind Tiger Woods. De La Hoya made $55 million that year. His Golden Boy Promotions have revolutionized Boxing and have taken it to new heights worldwide.

De La Hoya says he’s retiring from ring

LOS ANGELES — Oscar De La Hoya stopped battling himself Tuesday, deciding after much internal turmoil to retire and end a career in which he won 10 world titles in six divisions and became boxing’s most popular fighter.

He made his announcement at an outdoor plaza across the street from Staples Center, where a 7-foot bronze statue of the 36-year-old Golden Boy stands.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s over,” the East Los Angeles native said before hundreds of fans, including comedian George Lopez and Oscar-nominated actor and former fighter Mickey Rourke. “It’s over inside the ring for me.”

Some other great athletes to come from the Eastside include many characters and in some instances have sad endings, but it also included many groundbreakers in civil and human rights. One thing they all seemed to have in common was a fierce determination and warrior spirit.
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Tricks Are For Kids 101: Jesus Christ! Where The Fuck Have YOU Been?

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grey building, grey people, grey food, grey walls. turned 18, see any hope? think you’ll fit, don’t give a shit, forget your past, cuz nothin’ lasts. see some die, see shallow lies. no going back, no going home, it’s all pitch black. (Dave Dictor)

It happened yesterday. Was it a miracle or just another day at the office? I had 1st period conference. I usually catch up with Adriana in the English Dept. or Liz in the textbook room or clarify something with Deans Zanki or Zubyk. But I got called for Period 1 coverage. I’m sent to the R building, to an English class. I walk in and the teacher leaves. There are 8 students in there. It’s a Special Ed class. They are busy looking up some terms from The Odyssey.

odysseus1
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Coachella. Layaway. YES YOU CAN!

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layaway

I’m listening to cheesy 80s music streaming via yahoo and I hear this commercial for Coachella and not that I’m a big Coachella person or get in a car and go to the desert to listen to crappy music kind of person, even in my 20s that was not me. I have always been a read a book, drink a bottle of vodka, go to sleep, wake up at 9pm and go to a dive bar and argue with you kind of person.

But what caught my ear was apparently this year’s Coachella is offering a layaway option.

Layaway to go to sit in the desert where there are all kinds of rules like:

No chairs
No food or beverages (you have to buy the overpriced food and alcohol there, though I didn’t see anything about alcohol and I’m really not seeing the point of an alcohol free festival unless it is a Mormon Music Festival.)
No stuffed animals (what the hell is that “no” for…)
No drugs or drug paraphernalia (to me there is no point in going to the desert without taking drug, if god didn’t want us to use drugs in the desert then why did he make meth grow there?)
No parking overnight. No overnight parking…??!!! Nearest bus stop is three miles away, nearest train station three miles away…so I guess you spend 100 bucks on a hotel to sleep at for five hours. I wonder do the hotels also have layaway? Continue reading →