Category Archives: Analysis

On the LA Times Map and Patt Morrison

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rivercrack

On the LA River, a tear in the fence.

There’s been lots of mention today of the LA Times map, a work in progress that attempts to define the various neighborhoods in this city. Of particular interest to many of us on this blog, and of course, many people East of the river, was their designation of the region known for a long, long, time as the Eastside. I have to hand it to them, they did the smart thing and stuck with a safe approach, with only Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, and Boyle Heights making the list. Mind you, we all know that East Los Angeles (the unincorporated part of the County) is also part of the Eastside, but it’s not part of the city proper so that makes sense. But Eastside it is, through and through. To the map makers, I raise my glass and toast you some light praise.

Even though Highland Park and some other nearby neighborhoods were appropriately placed in the Northeast region it could be open to some interpretation of it sorta being on the Eastside. I don’t really think so, but it’s possible. But the Northeast and Highland Park are not having an identity crisis, so there’s really no need to figure out if it is or isn’t.

But speaking of identity crisis…

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Where you from !?

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snapshot_boyle11

Looks like the Eastside debate is heating up once again. Not to add fuel to the fire, but this morning I happened to come across Patt Morrison’s piece on where the Eastside really is and how haters need to stop frontin’, “What lights my fuse is the attempted rebranding of Silver Lake as the “Eastside,” mostly, I think, by people who stand to make a buck by appropriating the name of one part of L.A. and slapping it on another.” What lights my fuse are those sexy hats she likes to wear hahahaha.

Ed also gets into it and talks about the The L.A. Times trying to map the city, but as he points out, the arts district got the shaft. I also noticed that there’s a South Los Angeles and a Historic South Central Los Angeles. I don’t know exactly what they’re smoking over there at the Times, but in my mind there’s only ONE South Central Los Angeles and that’s the one I lived in on and off as a kid. For anyone who feels inclined to voice their two cents about the map, they also allow you to correct them by submitting a geocomment, which lets you define your hood in the little map they provide.

Parking Rate Increase Decreases Parking

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lhpark1

As many may have noticed, the City has decided to jack up the price you pay at parking meters, and those increases have been showing up all around town. In Lincoln Heights, the parking lot behind the 99¢ store and the Payless Shoes, has gone crazy with those crazy fees: the price for an hour has increased by 400%.  One dollar an hour might not seem that much to some, but it’s really exorbitant for many working people.

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Hipster Racism Revisited. And Africa is still not a country.

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The topic of Hipster Racism (a phrase originally coined by Carmen Van Kerckhove) has been visited in the past by me on LA Eastside, Cruel Secretary over at Racialicious, and by Angry Asian Man over at Angry Asian Man.

Why do people think this kind of thing is clever or smart? There is no difference between this and a thirteen year old boy telling fart jokes.

Maybe we can blame this on Canada since Alanis Morrisette messed up the definition of irony.

Just because something is trying to be ironic it doesn’t mean it’s not racist.

by Browne Molyneux
H/T to Macon Dee over at Racialicious who watches TV and movies, so I don’t have to.

I can’t breathe!!! The Inconvenient Truth of the trash problem in the inner city.

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I have recently spent about a month working for a client in Compton. And as this month has progressed it has become more and more difficult for me to breathe during the week days.

It disappears when I get home.

After a three day weekend taking a break and coming back home this evening and feeling horrible I decided to do some research in regards to the pollution around Compton. Continue reading →

Scenes from a Murder

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Chimatli mentioned this murder in a previous post, I decided to drive by the scene the morning after and take a picture. As you can see, everything looks normal on this street, except for the chalk mark near the sidewalk, no doubt circling a bullet case, and some shattered glass going the other way. I think we can make out a trajectory. Every media outlet said it was in an alley, but it wasn’t. Which proves that the media is no longer doing it’s job of actually reporting, keep that in mind for future reference.

The night of the incident, police quickly speculated it was “gang related”, yet they still haven’t figured out her hometown. I’d like to know why they use this “gang related” term before they have all the details, why don’t they instead just call it an unsolved murder? Or do we not deserve that much? It may ultimately be true (Lincoln Heights is no stranger to gang violence) but that moniker is used too often as a code for ‘don’t worry about this one, there’s a good enough reason.” The name of the victim, a young woman of 25 years, was released: Breanne A. Hanna.

R.I.P. young lady, no matter what social group and stats sheet they finally decide is your proper place.

La Crisis: A list of all the companies that have laid-off this year (the last six weeks.)

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A Margaret Bourke-White Photo

A Margaret Bourke-White Photo

Here is a volunteer information list of all of the companies who are or who have given people notice that they will no longer have a job.

After the company name is the layoff date and the number of affected workers

Just so you can get a feel of how bad it is this is just for the first two months of 2009 (and February just started.) There are 19 pages of companies.

In 2006 there were only 24 pages for the entire year.
In 2008 44 pages.
At this rate we’ll have 120 pages of layoffs by the end of 2009. At about 40 companies per page the amount of job losses would be staggering.

H/T to LoveandHateLA

AUTOBYTEL IRVINE 5 1/2/09
AT&T, WORLD WIDE CUSTOMER
SERVICE
SAN RAMON 37 2/27/09
AT&T, NATIONAL CUSTOMER
SUPPORT
SAN RAMON 16 2/6/09
AT&T , ADVANCE SOLUTIONS INC MONTEREY PARK 81 3/24/09
ANESIVA, INC SOUTH SAN
FRANCISCO
62 1/9/09
AT&T COMPANY PLEASANTON 16 1/30/09
AT&T COMPANY SAN RAMON 55 1/23/09
AT&T COMPANY PLEASANTON 27 2/6/09
ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED SAN JOSE 191 2/3/09
ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED SAN FRANCISCO 75 2/3/09
ALZA CORPORATION MOUNTAIN VIEW 29 3/20/09
ADVANCED MEDICAL OPTICS MILPITAS 61 1/17/09
ACTIVISION BLIZZARD LOS ANGELES 4 1/31/09
A FIRSTGROUP AMERICA CO DBAFIRST
TRANSIT
LOS ANGELES 177 2/28/09

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Through the Eyes of Babes

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I work in the behavioral field as my paying gig, because we all know writing is a bit unstable. I had to go see one of my clients in the school setting.

I happened upon a game of cops and robbers. It was a game of nine (cops) kids chasing one (robber) kid. In this game they took to yelling, “Put your hands up!! Spread ’em!!! Put your hands up!!!” and the robber running. The game ended with the cops yelling at the kid and beating him and stomping on him.

In the middle of the stomping I asked, “Is this what you think the police act like?” And they said, “Yeah.”
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Institutional Neglect precludes Social Dysfunction

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Un viejito walking around boyle Heights with his clean up cart, one of many…

This whole gentrification issue got me thinking.  Commentor ubrayj noted his efforts to keep his Lincoln Heights neighborhood clean, and that should be commended.  That got me thinking about the million “mexicans leave diapers in the streets” comments I have heard and read from various folks (not that Ub-homeboy was saying that, but the convo got me thinking on the subject), led me to analyze the roots of so much litter and other Quality of Life (QoL) problems in our Latino urban neighborhoods and how they got to be what they are today.

I think the lack of public infrastructure such as Browne was talking about is THE big issue, even more than socially dysfunctional behaviors like litterbugs because it IS the catalyst.  Almost every social oriented planning class and/or policy maker meeting I have been in notes that social dysfunction always follows instituional.  It seems like if the people who study and analyze this problem recognize this aspect of urban QoL (quality of life) regression, that it would eventually make it out into normal convo on the issue, but it hasnt.  People still bitch about mexican and black communities “allowing gangs to exist”, yet when crime drops in those places the community is forgotten and only the police are commended.

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How do I not appear exploitative?

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Thanks Mr Drummond.

Thanks Mr Drummond.

I went to the LA Art Show and saw three lectures. One was with Leimert Park based artist Mark Bradford, the other was with Mat Gleason of Coagula, and another was with Marlena Donahue of Otis and friends. It was an interesting group of lectures that I will discuss more at length later…the one with Marlena was about diversity and how the art world excludes women. Good points were made on Marlena’s lecture BUT if I were running anything that talked about diversity I would make sure to include as many walks of life Continue reading →

Whats Cooking?

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I was out driving a few minutes ago, when I started noticing an aroma not unlike someone cooking Chinese Food. I kept looking around at the storefronts, sniffing and asking:

“Maybe there’s some kind of big outdoor Stir Fry Wok Style BBQ going on around here“. Always on the prowl for any new sources of Tragazón, I became more intrigued.

It all got stranger as the aroma continued to fill my car as I drove further on. After a couple of miles more, I was really puzzled until I looked at the car in front of me and figured it out. It was one of those old Mercedes with the Bio-Fuel converted engine. The exhaust smells like old cooking grease. Fooled again!

I see quite a few of those cars around my Westside neighborhood. I’ve heard that it costs as much or more than gasoline to run them and that you don’t always pass the Cal Smog Check with the converted engine.

I hope they’re helping the environment anyway. And I hope we can start coming up with more alternative energy cars real soon. We could use them.