Photo via Flickr
I’ve been on many tours in the Los Angeles area most of them have been usually run by the Los Angeles Conservancy. I usually expect people my age to think it is lame or cheesy to go on a tour, but I figure I get to learn new facts and history regarding my own city. The majority of the things I’ve learned on these tours most people who grew up in Los Angeles don’t even know or bother to know. I take it as an educational experience in our own backyard.
More after the jump
Recently I was advised to detach myself from the issues and dramas of this reality and focus on my higher self in order to evolve.
Ok what does that mean?
Don’t sweat the little stuff? What is the little stuff? Is paying my bills little stuff?
Is being responsible with my time and making sure my mind is not always on my money and my money doesn’t take over my mind, or something like that?
Then the other day I was riding with a homegirl and she started telling me about a friend who is not responsible at all. He is into his 40s, keeps getting younger and dumber girlfriends that last less time than the last one, and basically doesn’t give a f@#$. She called him a PETER PAN. Funny thing is two years ago I began writing a piece about Peter Pans in my life.
Artist José Lozano was born in Los Angeles, but early in his life lived in Ciudad Juárez, México the birthplace of his mother.  In Juárez he was exposed to the cultural icons that are now part of his artwork—bad Mexican cinema, fotonovelas, phantasm folk lore, lucha, comic books, boleros y rancheras and the flavors of the Juárez landscape. His family core returned to East LA when he was 8, where he attended public school and began to draw.   Later, through formal art training, he captured the essence that is his personal finger print as an artist. Continue reading
Promo video for the Guadalajara Bookfair
As some of you might know, The City of Los Angeles is the invited guest at this year’s La Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara appropriately taking place in Guadalajara, Mexico this weekend. There will be quite a few Eastside and other Los Angeles writers and artists heading down to participate in the various musical offerings, panel discussions and lectures. In particular, the Vexing exhibition will be making an appearance and artists Sandra de la Loza and Shizu Saldamando will be presenting Eighteen With a Bullet.
I recently returned from a trip to Guadalajara and have a warning for those heading down for the events. The GDL airport does not have x-ray equipment to search your checked-in luggage on your way back. Passenger luggage is picked through and examined by young, tough women with immaculate eye make-up who dig and pull your items from the suitcase in full view of everyone in the airport lobby. Be prepared and don’t end up like the poor ranchero who made a whole line of people gasp when a large homegrown camote was discovered and pulled out from the recesses of his bursting suitcase.
In case you are wondering what Guadalajara and Los Angeles have in common (that is, besides the hundreds of thousands of people that consider both of these cities home) you can buy Suavitel in both places. The guy who tried to bring his camote to Los Angeles obviously didn’t know this because the luggage examiner also pulled out a large bottle of the laundry detergent from his suitcase only to have the line of Tapatio-Angeleno passengers tsk tsk his ignorance. Hey, these things are good to know, right?
Just came across this blog following some of the LA folks in Guadalajara: Blogalajara, Vexico.
I saw a clip of this “event” in Minneapolis with some yahoo teabagger saying, “This is not racism. It’s about the rule of law.” They still think that shit flies, like some 1950’s sheriff in Southern Ole Miss. When you hear “the rule of law,” you better protect your gonads, hold on to your wallet and hide the kids. Spewing fake christian platitudes means somebody gonna get crucified and it’s usually one of a darker hue.
I read about “Robert Erickson” and his “speech” and immediately thought of John Brown and Richard Pryor. That’s how my brain malfunctions. This “performance” is high larry us. Downtown Freddie Brown, Snooky Pryor, anybody with Brown skin or anybody with priors would laugh.
This “current wave of immigrant bashing…” I always like that “current wave” idea. This “wave” is going on half a millenium. No shit it’s current, cuz it ain’t never abated. “Erickson” ain’t Frederick Douglass 1852 throwing down about the 4th of July or Thoreau defending John Brown’s honor 1859, but we in the age of diminishing vocabulary, and while pranking a “crowd” of “European immigrants,” he did fine (despite the bad recording). The lack of cheers when fools realize they’ve been duped is invigorating, especially when dealing with a bunch of clowns. Cheers from those who, when not referring to an athletic competition, see “race” as a verb and not a noun. “Columbus Go Home.” Resistance is Fertile!
Here is the end of his speech:
I say it’s time for us to say enough is enough! Are you with me? Are you with me? Let’s send these European immigrants back where they came from! I don’t care if they are Polish, Irish, English, Italian, or Norwegian! European immigrants are responsible for the most violent and heinous crimes in the history of the world, including genocide and slavery! It’s time to restore the sovereignty of people native to this land!
I want more workplace raids, starting with the big banks downtown. There are thousands of illegals working in those buildings, hiding in their offices, and taking Dakota jobs. Let’s round them up and ship them out. Then we need to hit them at home where they sleep. I don’t care if we separate families, they should have known better when they came here illegally! (editor note: i think i pissed my pants!)
If we aren’t able to stand up to these European immigrants, who can we stand up to? We need to send every one of them back home, right now.
Thank you very much, and we’ll see you in the streets!
Columbus Go Home! Columbus Go Home! Columbus Go Home!
Here is the complete text of his “speech.”
Spotted in the wealthy part of town: In all our decadence people die.
This was being constructed right next to the graffitied trash bin.
On my way home up an undisclosed street in Boyle Heights at 11pm on a Monday night, I saw a news van parked in front of a food stand.* The food stand were run by a familiar Breed Street family. Since I had my digital point-and-shoot handy, I stopped and took a few photos (without the flash). I was immediately approached by one of the individuals with the food team and her male sidekick. They asked me in Spanish what I was taking the photos for. I responded in my poor Spanish that the photos were just for me, that I lived in the neighborhood and that I was also a regular customer. They proceeded to explain that they’ve been getting harassed by the cops and that all the Breed Street vendors were kicked out because of all the media hype. Then the news reporter for the [undisclosed] news station approached me and explained that they were there doing the story to publicize the negative repercussions the Councilman’s office has had on the livelihoods of the Breed Street family businesses.
For a moment, I felt like a criminal for carrying a handheld camera. Granted, from where I was standing and my lack of professionalism not having approached anyone for their consent, I did look like a suspicious onlooker with a possible ulterior motive. But I’m just an ordinary girl living in an ordinary world with an affordable digital camera made for the consumer. Why was I looked at as a threat?
Everyone has a camera these days, whether it’s a feature on their phone, a point-and-shoot within arm’s reach of their breast pocket, or an SLR slung around their shoulder. In a time where communication is excitingly instant via the phone and internet, however, it is easy to overlook the flipside of all the hype. People communicating and sharing information with each other on their own volition has become nearly detrimental to the livelihoods of the people we talk about on blogs like this. We’ve become LA Times’ enablers. We’ve even become, I dare say, enablers of gentrification. It’s become quite apparent that anything “underground” is considered “cool” and “hip.” Once it spreads word-of-mouth, we’ll see the information and all its details on a blog somewhere. Then it becomes officially popular and the official news media go after their hot story secretly using the local blogs as their direct source of information. Then it becomes a matter of control. City councilmen suddenly become the faces of everything that’s been going on in their very own community that they didn’t know about before the LA Times article appeared.
Lesson learned: use caution when taking photos.
Solution: Should I just take pictures of landscape and candids at family barbeques to avoid any possible controversy?
*names will not be named
Notice anything out of the ordinary here? Well if you ate here, you would know that a few hundred people eating some of the greatest soul food around are missing. Over the last few weeks, the vendors at the street food oasis have been getting raided by the police. Normally, they would disappear for a while only to come back in full force as if nothing ever happened, but something did happen. Things got out of control and the oasis got burned, big time. First it was the L.A. Times a few years ago, as Chimatli tells me, and fellow bloggers putting it on blast and telling everyone to go check it out. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but because this was an under the table operation, there was a need for a level of discretion that helped the vendors make a living and kept the cops at bay. That harmony is now gone and so are the vendors.
Finally, it’s here. Dangerous intersections and all. I took a quick look before the crowds, click ahead to see some pics.
Yes, I agree with the curator of Rastros y Crónicas , we need gender equality. As one of the artists in this exhibit, I am grateful for the latest addition of the National Museum of Mexican Art to this struggle for justice in Ciudad Juarez, now in its 16th year. However, I am not sure why this is a Mexican woman or Latina matter as portrayed by the curation of this exhibit. Many of the artists who have been diligent with touring protest exhibits (on Juarez) throughout Mexico and here on the west coast are males. I understand the aesthetics of exhibits–but what a powerful statement we make—when we are all united as one to speak out publicly against injustices. We cannot ask the world culture towards women to change, when we (ourselves) are not equal in our actions and everyday practices.
Rastros y Crónicas, Exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago
Opening Reception October 16, 2009, 6-8 pm
Exhibition runs through February 14, 2010The RubÃn and Paula Torres Gallery and The Kraft Gallery
Since 1993, more then 500 women have been killed
in Ciudad Juárez in the northern Mexican state of
Chihuahua. For some time now, Mexican and Mexican
American artists have been sensitive to the subject
of Women of Juarez and have worked on diverse
projects to share their perspective on this disturbing
situation. read more
I love L.A. and there is nothing I would change about this beautiful city, except maybe peoples attitudes but that’s another story. Gallery 727 and Department of Architecture at the Royal University Collage of Fine Arts in Stockholm and the Latino Urban Forum present what will be a great show on how L.A. can survive without fossil fuel.
