Category Archives: El Centro

Bacon wrapped hot dog official L.A. hot dog ?

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So let me get this straight, for years the city has fought tooth and nail to condemn these culinary chimeras because of health and safety reasons. Some of the reasons behind this are that the vendors aren’t licensed and governed by the health department, their grills are not safe to cook on and because you can’t be grilling out in the open, they are undermining businesses that pay all kinds of taxes and taking away their business and because it’s just against the law. blah, blah, blah, blah it’s the same rhetoric over and over again. Well, Farmer John is funding a campaign to make the Bacon Wrapped Hot Dog THE OFFICIAL HOT DOG of L.A. Hmm … I’m not sure how this is gonna work, but for every vote they donate a pound of food to a food bank, so I guess that’s a good thing. If the hot dog does become official, I guess we’ll see a “gourmet” lunch truck selling them pretty soon, offering organic hot dogs with bacon. I haven’t been to the art walk in a while, maybe there’s already one out there, who knows. But what I do know is that this isn’t gonna happen and the bacon wrapped hot dog will remain the UNOFFICIAL hot dog of L.A. If the city makes this legit, then they’re full of shit, more so than they already are. It’s just another chapter in the story of how L.A. loves, hates, loves street vendors. Give us your delicious food so when can condemn you later for selling it.

Rambling On My Mind: I Like My Purples Deep and My Markets Black

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Every time I return to México, Mexico City has to get involved. I just want to walk about in a small city like Querétaro or Silao, revisit old pals, discover new streets and do the everyday. I’m simple like that. Mexico City is not simple. It is titanic and perilous and invigorating. One time, a cabbie told me, “Podrías vivir aqui dos años y aun no ver todo, aunque esa fuera tu misión.” After some days in Querétaro and Cuernavaca, I decided to add some days to my trip and check out el DF. Why? Because I could. Anyways, this is about the last time I visited one famous part of that crazy city. Let’s hit the road. First, let’s say good-bye to Cuernavaca. Continue reading →

Riots as Celebration

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While the media pundits start on their predictable perspective regarding the celebrants of today’s various sporting events, I’m going to offer a counter explanation. For whatever its worth.

If you grow up in one of the various under served communities (aka poor) of Los Angeles then you’ll know all about social control, the method by which they keep humans in check. The city offers no social space, no gathering spots for celebration, no common grounds on which we can all gather to mark a significant moment. What to do? You make your social territory. You reclaim the space in which you can connect with others, consequences be damned. Thus, the motley congregations the helicopters are following tonight.

Isn’t the bullshit LA Live complex supposed to be our new destination spot, the center of LA cultural life? So why are people not being allowed to expend that jubilant spirit in this so called center of Life? Because its just another corporate park meant to further profits, not to enhance our social lives. Yeah, there was lots of stupid people out there tonight acting like jerks, but I put the blame squarely on a city that makes no concessions to human needs, that demands euphoria only come with a paid ticket.

In backwards Mexico, they have El Angel, a random spot where everyone knows they can go to celebrate, to expend energy, to be amongst others that just want to scream and shout for a few hours. In LA, they’ve got nothing. Just a sidewalk and whatever street you can use for a few minutes, ’til the cops come to take the party away.

No doubt there’s some jerks doing stupid things out there. But this wouldn’t be happening if you treated LA citizens like human beings with human needs. If we had a proper social space to congregate, our own Zocalo so to speak, then maybe we would be better equipped for something as joyous, and mundane, as the victory of a local sports team. Instead we get bullhorn messages regarding an illegal assembly and an order of dispersal. Just don’t be surprised when the jubilants shout out a wholly understandable ‘Fuck You’.

15th Annual Northern Southern Winds Pow Wow

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click for larger image

This one of my favorite events of the year, I always look forward to attending. The new location at Los Angeles State Park is the perfect venue. Head over today around sunset for a spectacular view and to enjoy the beautiful culture of our indigenous brothers and sisters!

The Fifteenth Annual Northern Southern Winds Pow-Wow, “Honoring Our
Mothers” & “Recognizing No Borders,” taking place this coming May 7th, 8th, & 9th, 2010.
By way of exhibition dancing, singing, and food, Indigenous cultures throughout North, Central, and South America
will be showcased.
The Powwow will be held once again at the beautiful Los Angeles State Historic Park 1245 North Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
The times are from 6pm to 10pm, Friday; 10am to 10pm, Saturday; and 10am to 6pm, Sunday

May Day 2010 in Los Angeles: Some Photos

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If you’ve grown up in the United States as an “other” or you just happen to look like one, you are probably quite accustomed to the regular indignities of not being one of them. Somehow you manage. You just want to get by. But then they do something so utterly outrageous and in your face that yer like “Fuck This, No Mas!” They push the indignities over that line you were hoping to avoid. Arizona did that recently, making any friends and family that look “other” open targets to harassment. It’s not like harassment wasn’t the norm before, its just that now it’s a protected and legal practice.

Fuck that.

Sometimes, enough is enough. Time to take it to the streets to show our collective disapproval.

Warning! Lots of pictures ahead.

Continue reading →

Waiting for Zooey Deschanel

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Waiting for Zooey Deschanel
Matt Lucas

I left as the sun set. The steering
wheel was in my hands for 7 hours. My foot hovered over the gas petal
alternating a heaviness with a light touch. The speedometer measured
my rate of progress. The tires of the automobile took me further down
the forever highway to my destiny.

The banality of work was too much for
me. I’d seen her image everywhere, in everything. I was enraptured,
enthralled. I couldn’t think of anywhere to meet her that would be
more appropriate than in Los Angeles, the city of angels. I left
work, and home, to sip a moment of time with her.
Continue reading →

We Spoke Up

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Cops and Nazis

For a long while, I’ve been questioning the intended efficacy of public protests. I often wonder if the days of marching and holding signs and the persuasive effect they used to have on those in power is long gone. Public protests still serve a purpose though, they create a sense of solidarity with other like-minded folks, walking on empty streets with thousands of other people is an interesting way to take in the city, creative sign slogans are entertaining and inspiring, and protests can sometimes turn into riots. With these things in mind, I headed Downtown this weekend for the Anti-Nazi Protest with a Bay Area friend in-tow. I wanted him to experience Los Angeles style oppositional politics, a sorta intro to “This is how we do it.”

Continue reading →

My Comment As Post aka Long Live The Death Of L.A. Live

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El Chavo’s L.A. Live Post Here

El Chavo is usually talking sense, except when he goes blasphemous by throwing some corporate cheez in tamales. But, on the subject of that staples center concrete wonderland, he has never been more spot on. his cold, calculating description is muzak to my eyes. Shiny cement cesspools. Is there any way around that? Parks and libraries getting shut down and these commercial camps get ballyhooed. But those are public, this is private! Huh? Just so cold and sterile. Remember when De La Soul said, “neighborhoods are now hoods, cuz nobody’s neighbors…” Well I do. It’s a brothel without the “fun,” even though patrons do get fucked one way or another. L.A. Live. Music, dining, sports, living? Whateverz, as RHS students say. The grey buildings and grey walls and grey floors and those giant televisions. “OMG, they put Christ Miss lights on the bald trees. What a nice detail.” I dont want my trees trimmed, or anything else trimmed. Let’s keep it real. “Hey, where you going?” Oh, to go watch television. Outside. Television? Outside?

You’re Killing Me

Acerbic naysayer? What are the solutions? What would you replace it with? What am I now, a city planner? Those assholes should be losing their jobs. Solutions? For starters, don’t be calling a concrete commercial center (or as their site claims, “a one of a kind entertainment campus,”) a haven. I’m not the one lying. Fuck you very much.

Who runs that dump? The Dutch East India Company?

I hope the Lakers and Kings lose. Everyday! Enjoy the video.

American Lit

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Reading about John Fante Square being inaugurated on 5th and Grand I remember the passionate racial fights between Bandini and his Mexican girlfriend. Soon after, Kerouac comes into mind smoking marijuana in the desert heat of a Mexican afternoon, the gratifying pleasure he felt after eating the refried beans made by his Mexican girl. These page-turned memories rising on the same heat-rippled smoke of mirage like driving on the 15 into The Cajon Pass. Back in the city, Hunter Thompson’s friend, Oscar Zeta Acosta’s, attorney-rants in Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, the Juarez prison cell, the judge demanding for him to learn his father’s language: Spanish. How many other aspects of American literary culture have been ignored, or forgotten, even by Chicano Studies courses, let alone more traditional literature classes, I ask myself?

Submitted by M. Saldivar Galindo

Another Downtown Eyesore

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nolife12

A few days ago I caught a link by LA Observed that mentions some of the supposed worst “eyesores” in El Centro. Well I happened to be downtown on that very day, and I’d like to submit the following location to the list of eyesores. Yes, LA Live. A most inappropriate name. Well, unless you were trying to zap some sort of “life” into a monster. But at least the icon of a pole dancing stripper seems to work. They’ve bothered to make a map, not that you’ll ever need to refer to it.

Click ahead for some pics of this so called “Living.”

Continue reading →