Last year, there was an excellent episode of This American Life themed “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”
The last segment of the show was about a pre-med student at UCLA from East LA who is undocumented.
I was wondering if anyone listened to it, possibly knows this person, and if so what her situation is like now.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1235
Many of America’s cities are in the crapper thanks to years of policy that’s favored suburbanites and their wasteful consumption habits. And LA has suffered the glut of gentrifying jerks looking for a lifestyle instead of a place to live. Buildings turned into condos, markets turned into fancy t-shirt shops, restaurants with one word names. It’s like some invasion by rich asshole foreigners, quickly turning Los Angeles into a First World City, instead of an American city. But this trend is reversible and the opportunity to clean up this city, and get rid of all the cleaned-up-ness, is achievable.
What’s the difference between a First World City and an American City? Let me show you the signs.
There was a time when it seemed that some Westside Angelenos perceived life east of the river to be something like this…..
Apparently, there’s been some change of heart by our neighbors to the West. I received today the following email care of L.A. Eastside and I thought it would be worthy of sharing with our readers:
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Continuing their campaign to raise pedestrian awareness, Metro is going to have ambassadors all week at different spots in East Los dishing out information about rail safety. I would have posted this earlier, but I got caught up with “things.” For more information about all the other stuff happening with the gold line extension, you can go to metro’s web site for the Eastside extension. Â They also have this interesting map called “Eastside Flavors.” It’s kinda outdated because they still have the Homegirl Cafe listed and they’ve been gone since they relocated to Chinatown. They mention all the local spots near by around every station so it’s an ok map I guess. The gold line is almost here and the anticipation is KILLING me. Â Â Â
Working Class Historian Gifford Hartman (a white guy that grew up in East Los by the way) sent me this link to a fascinating piece about the Jewish influence on radical politics and multiculturalism in Boyle Heights during the 1950’s. For those interested in the history of the Eastside, it’s a must read. There’s lots of good quotes I could pull but this has to be my favorite:
Frumkin already saw the distinction between his community of Boyle Heights and the growing Jewish community on the Westside in 1945. There was “an unspoken solidarity among all the neighbors†on the Eastside, including the 60 percent of his neighbors who were Mexican. “We never had a lock on our door, never had a key. You just didn’t do it. I don’t know if it was unspoken, but as poor as we were, nobody stole from anybody else.†In this working-class solidarity, a certain level of contempt was reserved for the more middle-class surroundings on the Westside.
“When we would smoke, for instance, we would keep the cigarettes in the car. We would never dump them out in East L.A. When we used to go to West L.A. to the Jewish Community Center to dances, we’d dump all our ashtrays out, because we knew the streets were going to be cleaned there. But we never did it here.”
Wow, even in the 50’s people were complaining about the disparity of service in our communities. Some things never change. Is ashtray micro-resistance an action we can learn from our Eastside ancestors? It couldn’t hurt!
The full title of the article is “What’s Good for Boyle Heights Is Good for the Jews”: Creating Multiculturalism on the Eastside during the 1950s by George J. Sanchez
Download the pdf from Muse here
or from us at LA Eastside here
Hopefully, a few Eastside residents auditioned for Cornerstone Theater Company held auditions for “Flow,” a Julie Herbert play about the Los Angeles River and surrounding communities.
When CTC called for anyone who live, work, or loves the LA River to try some acting, El Chavo commented “I’m gonna see if I can be the shopping cart somebody threw into the water.”
I saw this on Sunday. So I took a photo.
ADD: A play worth writing is one that talks about what the Eastside is.
Pictured: Under the Sixth Street Bridge, Â a shopping cart is sitting in the Los Angeles River (or it’s El Chavo doing some method acting for “Flow”)
For good reason, many people are down on Villaraigosa and his bid to be Los Angeles Mayor again. Yes, he is a disappointment, which is to be expected when you put too much hope for change in a politician. (Obama fans, get ready.) Real change rarely comes from the ballot box. Still, I don’t understand the “anyone but Villaraigosa” approach, much less when Walter Moore is presented as somehow an acceptable option, when he is clearly a man on a mission against Mexicans.
Oh wait, I mean, he just hates the language they speak, cuz it’s so Third World-ey. And really, if they can be taught to say “can I take you plate?” they can surely be forced to communicate amongst themselves in a semi-useful but stunted Queen’s Kinda English. At the very least, it’ll reassure real Americans that the help isn’t saying things you already know they are thinking. Yes, they really do think that about you. Yes, even despite that nice tip. Welcome to the other LA!
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~ Picture courtesy of Metro ~
Metro is going to be holding rail safety meetings in the next few days. I saw a flier walking to school and then read the press release from Metro. Here is a list of times and locations where residents can go to and ask questions and find out what it takes to be safe around the tracks.Â
~ Benjamin Franklin Library, 2200 East First Street, Tuesday, March 3, 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday, March 14, 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.
~ East Los Angeles Public Library, 4837 East Third Street, Saturday, March 7, 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., and Wednesday, March 11, 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
~ Little Tokyo Library, 203 South Los Angeles Street, Thursday, March 19, 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday, March 21, 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.
~ Stevenson Public Library, 803 Spence Street, Tuesday, March 24, 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday, April 4, 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.
~ Anthony Quinn Library, 3965 East Cesar Chavez Ave., Monday, April 6, 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday, April 18, 11 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
And they also explain what the meetings are about in a nut shell:
~ Exercise caution at all times.
~ Always wait for “walk†signal before entering crosswalk
~ Always use crosswalk
~ Always be prepared for what may be coming from around the corner
~ Always look both ways before crossing any street
~ Never make a left turn on a red arrow signal
~Â Never make illegal right turns
~ Never run to catch a bus or train
~ Never walk, play near or on rails tracks
~ Never jaywalk across the street
~ Obey all the traffic signals and warning signs
~ Watch for TRAIN signal
~ Watch for buses and trains from both directions
While some people may not get in regards to unemployment numbers how bad it is out there. We have other indicators that are in my opinion better indicators. And to me unemployment numbers are not a good statiscal visual for the average person (at least not in the beginning,)  jobs have been going away since 2007 and some people have just stopped looking, so how do we see how bad it truly is? Continue reading
For the last two years I have seen this automated public toilet and never once thought about using it. It’s a public restroom I’m not going in there who knows what I might see. However I don’t think people know it’s a toilet because looks can be deceiving. So I decided to give everyone a first hand tour of these amazing craping machines.Â
photo by Cindylu
Welcome to Part Two of the Taking Over reviews. A couple of reviews are still making their way through the LA Eastside digital transport, so please revisit this post in the next few days. (New review from Pachuco 3000 below!)
Part one can be found here.
Cindylu:
I’ve lived just a few minutes away from Downtown Culver City since 2000 in Palms South Robertson*. Despite living here for 8+ years, I only recently started spending any significant time (and money) in the area. Previously, there was nothing to do after 5 pm and a dearth of any other sorts of entertainment.
That’s all slowly been changing. The Kirk Douglas Theater playbill featured an article about the “revitalization” (aka gentrification) of DCC in recent years. In a small area you can find several architecture firms, art galleries, a couple of theaters, and several restaurants. On Tuesdays, local growers set up a farmer’s market on a 1-block long Main Street. If you go during a weekend night, you’ll find the 5 or so blocks between the Trader Joe’s and Kirk Douglas Theater quite busy. Now, I regularly shop at Trader Joe’s, buy fruit and vegetables at the farmer’s market, watch movies at the Pacific Theater and eat at some of the restaurants. I’d never gone to a production at the Kirk Douglas until last week. And yes, I can see the inherent contradiction of watching a play on gentrification in my neighborhood due to the gentrification in the area.
A play about gentrification? Sounds like an outing for LA Eastsiders! We made our way across town to see if the play would live up to the hype. Did it? Read on…
First, a short summary of the play from the Kirk Douglas Theater website:
OBIE Award-winning solo artist Danny Hoch returns to Center Theatre Group with his riveting new work, Taking Over, a show that brings to vivid life the residents of his Brooklyn neighborhood.
In rapidly changing Williamsburg, the melting pot is boiling over with strained ethnic relations and economic tensions—and the threat of gentrification, which threatens to crush the city’s diversity. Hoch masterfully depicts this community in transition with compassionate and hilarious results.
Read more at the Danny Hoch website. Taking Over ends February 22, that’s Sunday! Oh, and don’t bother watching the opening night video clip on the Kirk Douglas website, lame.
Reviews below, more coming tomorrow…