Category Archives: Analysis

The Best Thing About Boyle Heights? Some White Guy

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Really? Really! At least according to LA City Beat, which picks “the best things in your neighborhood” in it’s latest issue. Who is it? Why, it’s Ron Gormon…whoever the fuck that is. Since you probably don’t know him either, here is the fascinating entry:

Boyle Heights
Ron Garmon
There used to be a real swing to Boyle Heights, they tell me. Most of this was just a quick whoosh of air from people ducking behind walls and flowerpots and lampposts and fat people when they saw Hunter S. Thompson coming toward them. Oh, it was also the case that Thee Midniters and Los Lobos brought wild nights and neighborhood pride to clubs that have since (of course) been murdered most foul. These days, there is little to commend in the sad, dingy nabe – except for one bright shining star: our very own Mister Ron Garmon.

You can see him, with his gleaming pale mull-hawk and fierce blue peepers, striding purposefully for a bus. (Just look for the guy who looks like Sting, or Rutger Hauer, or Rod Stewart, but mostly Sting.) You can see him, focused furiously on a far horizon, mostly because he’s on drugs. You can befriend him! He has many friends! He is kind, and handsome, and a man of talent and taste. Ron Garmon? So recommended. 5209 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 938-1700. (RS)

Oh, I guess he writes for them. Hey, and checkout his handsome face. Ay que chulo! Now I know who to congratulate for being the best thing someone could scrounge up about that “sad, dingy nabe” where I grew up.

Is this supposed to be a joke? Jaja, muy chistoso cabron.  If the media, blogs, westsiders, and newbies weren’t so consistently dismissive and confused about this part of town, maybe I’d laugh too. But reading such Dude-Bro humor as I was trying my first PinkBerry dessert (cuz I want to understand you Westies and your ways) just made me want to spit my yogurt out as an act of defiance. Thanks LA City Beat, you really made my day!

PS. The yogurt was good, but you Westies go crazy over nothing.

Leftovers can help in an economic downturn.

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This weekend I came upon a gem of an article in the LA Times that described what steps you should take when you’re unemployed.

Jobless? Tips for Survival.

And here are a smidgen of some of the great tips:

“Leftovers are also great — I have barbecued chicken today, and tomorrow it’s in my enchiladas and then it’s in a chicken salad,” said Marguerite Womack, director of economic and workforce development for United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

I’ve seen the United Way office. It is next to the Starbucks where a policeman harassed me for looking homeless. There is a big sign by that building around 5th street in downtown and on the building it says: Don’t give the homeless money, because they’ll just ask for more…ok it doesn’t say that exactly, but pretty close.

Here’s another crumb of advice:

Jessica Hodgdon, 24, was out of work recently for six months. To save money, she moved into the East Los Angeles apartment of a friend, who waived rent in exchange for Hodgdon’s help cooking and cleaning.

Free rent please.

Free rent please.

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The East Los Angeles College swap meet

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Biting off Chavos post about the swap meet I figured I would dig up an article I wrote about the swap meets history and the vendors there. As an East Los Angeles College student I will be posting a few ELAC related post from time to time because so many people have and will come through here. ELAC has been around since 1945 and needless to say there is a long history. To me, ELAC is the school of second chances because it’s here that I was able to put my life together and start on the path of making something of myself. If it wasn’t for ELAC, I would be out there in the streets doing God knows what. The pictures are pre-solar panel days.    

The ELAC swap meet has been catering to the shopping needs of students and the surrounding communities for the last 22 years. The swap meet was formed from a combination of necessity and community growth. Martin Garcia, who is a full-time Biology instructor at Los Angeles City College, has been a vendor since the swap meet’s inception in 1986 with his two brothers Sergio and Jose Garcia. Garcia and his brothers primarily sell heavy metal music CDs along with miscellaneous objects they might have or that people specifically ask for.

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Memories of A Lost Boulevard- The Center Theater Part 2; A Date With Destiny

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The Center Theater; A Date With Destiny. Commemorating the 38th Anniversary of the E.L.A. Chicano Moratorium Demonstrations and the Murder of Ruben Salazar on August 29th 1970.
It was a roasting, sweaty Saturday. I was on summer vacation from elementary school. Mom had been edgy all day with all that news coming over Canal 34 and KWKW radio about the “Chicano Riots” coming down Whittier Blvd…. Continue reading →

A funny thing happened on my way to the internet.

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I was going to go to the SiteLA’s (SiteLA is a Quicksilver marketing campaign) Heya party on Friday, August 22nd.

The transportation event sponsored by Toyota??!!!! I know. How could I NOT comment on that? How can I NOT make fun of SiteLA (I’ve got nothing to lose I’m not in Quicksilver’s demographic. Black girls don’t surf.) I think it’s fab that inspired people who are getting nonunion wages to make a very long commercial are doing inspiring things, but come on.

On Friday evening I was going there to make fun of the “random” coolness (and get free beer,) but then I got an email with a bit from Tina Dupuy.

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Religious advocates

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Now I know that I’m stretching this post a wee considering this event took place in Downtown so please bear with me. No matter where you live, there is no shortage of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and other religious advocates preaching the word of their savior. I have no objections with their views or criticize their religion in any negative way. We all have the right to worship who ever we want without being burned at the stake. I just don’t appreciate it when they choose to take that love out of their homes and feel like sharing it with others, whether we like it or not. Continue reading →

Life outside the eastside

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There is a trend among immigrants that shows that more and more of them are moving to more mid-western areas of the U.S. rather than living in major cities like Los Angeles. My family is proof of that. This weekend I’m visiting my parents here in the greatness that is Utah after leaving the nest egg to find my own way through life a year ago. There’s nothing like a 14 hour road trip to calm the mind and spirits. It’s also a good time to reflect and rethink things in life like school, work, relationships and all that good stuff. The change of scenery and clean air certainly are a welcomed changed as well. Life in L.A. is hard and fast. It’ll drain you of your youth and spirit and leave you a husk of a person bitter and brittle. That’s why they decided to move.

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Is your hood currently suffering from a hipster infestation?

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photo from adbuster article

My friend “Bagel” sent me a link today to an article that breaks it down about hipsters or as “Bagel” calls them hamsters. ADBUSTERS’ main article and cover title are “HIPSTER: THE DEAD END OF CIVILIZATION”

You can read the entire article HERE.

Side Note: My man aka “Mi Osito” mentions, “When hipsters move in, property values go up but so does rent unfortunately. Hipsters are much better protected by police which could make it safer for everyone in the hood. Culture, however, is under constant threat.”

Serving the people, my ass

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Shit is going down in Cudahy in the name of keeping the political status quo.

Since 1999, Cudahy did not have contested elections until 2007, when two newcomers, Daniel Cota and Luis Garcia, ran for positions in the City Council and lost by a few dozen votes. A third newcomer, Tony Mendoza, was forced out of the race after receiving death threats against him and his family.

A year after that election, Cota and Garcia decided to run for office again and set up their 2009 election website a few weeks ago. Last week, Garcia’s house was firebombed (video taken by a security camera), burning the outside of his home and one of his trucks. Below is a picture of Garcia and the damage done to his truck, from the L.A. Now blog.

What’s incredible is that this is the SIXTH time since the past election that he has been vandalized at home. His truck has been showered with gallons of paint four times and two weeks ago, a brick sailed through his window. Continue reading →

Ugly Americans

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(This next post was submitted by reader and commenter Dorit, a piece that highlights some of the ways White Americans perceive the Others.)

I am the offspring of a Celt and a Hillbilly. Thus I am a white-American. And when stripped of the accoutrements of my current tribe (make up, hair color from a bottle, costume and the like) I look just like many of the gazillion people who inhabit our great nation. Some of whom (not all of course) get their news from the fear mongers at Fox News (how can a network that gave us Married with Children, the Simpson’s and King of the Hill give us such right wing rubbish?). And being that I am White-American and to some extent look like them or people they are use to being around, these folks will talk to me and will share with me their demented ideas, fueled more by the AM talk radio, cable news and political TV ads than actual interactions with people unfamiliar to them. And after talking to or overhearing a few of them during a family trip to Sea World California, I can testify:

Ugly Americanism is alive and well.

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