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
My grandmother, her mother, her sisters, my grandfather (in the baggy pants), friends and neighbors at their first Echo Park home. The home no longer exists and the neighborhood is now called Historic Filipinotown.
I wrote this a couple of months ago but was hesitant to post. But as a friend of mine (a prolific emailer and a notorious drunk – a bad combination) once told me “just close your eyes and press enter”
My friend and I tried to go to the Stories Bookstore opening in Echo Park. We walked by 15 minutes before the opening party was due to start and got a handful of stares from the young guys silk screening in the store window. Hmmm, no sign of opening party anywhere and the sign on the door says “open next week”. Perhaps it’s a private party, oh well.
We walked into the Time Travel Mart, I’d been curious about the place. It looked cool in photos. My friend walked in with me but leaves immediately because he cannot tolerate pretentious irony and the store was chock full of it. I thought the place would be more interesting somehow but it wasn’t. It could be me, I just didn’t get it.
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Even though the car culture in Los Angeles is kinda the reason why everything is so fucked up, sometimes, very few times, you can at least use said steel cage to get away from all that fucked-up-ness. I have a good friend that also tends to want to get away, we picked a direction and off we go!
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.â€
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For the last three years, I have been walking and sometimes jogging around Evergreen Cemetery with my Harley by my side. In fact, the only reason I even started the 1.5 mile walk around the cemetery was to get Harley some exercise because a tired dog, is a happy dog. So for those of you too lazy to actually go and walk around the cemetery, this is your lucky day. Strap on your running shoes and follow the black labrador down the jogging path…
It took a full year, but the I-TAP is finally here and I got mine. Browne and Bustard also blogged about their expirience with the new bus pass and since I finally got mine, I’d figure I’d do the same. For $15 I have a bus pass that’s good for the next six months saving me $216 in total !!!! How awesome is that. I’m still broke as a joke and my future is uncertain, but I have a bus pass for the next six months. On my first day out using the pass, I twist my ankle jumping outta the bus as I was getting off. Now it’s super swollen and throbbing. Nice way to start things off right ?
  ~ Picture Courtesy of MTA ~
Anyone know what WSP stands for? I’ve been looking for an answer but have not found one. Not the Eastside, but still worth posting here.
Seen on the Blue Line, Boston, Massachusetts, January 24, 2009.
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
I didn’t drive out here just for this, but since I was in the neighborhood, why not stop by the museum to get me a bit of culturing? And though this place isn’t free (unlike the original idea for this series) I figured I’d share what I saw, that’s gotta be worth something. Click ahead for some cheapo adventures!
I’m not going to front. I have never been to the Kingdom Day Parade. The times I thought about going I got this response from my bourgie black girfriends, “That’s real ghetto Browne, let’s just do brunch.â€
Girl on 92.3 the Beat float.
This year I decided I was going, but then I decided I wasn’t because I had gotten drunk the night before.
My personal predictions for businesses that might go belly-up in 2009……
1)Â Â Â K-Mart
2)Â Â Â Blockbuster Video
3)Â Â Â Sears
4)Â Â Â L.A. Weekly
5)Â Â Â JC Penny
6)Â Â Â Radio Shack
7)Â Â Â Krispy Kremes
8)Â Â Â Sizzler
9)Â Â Â Big 5 Sporting Goods
10)Â Yahoo
11)Â Clear Channel
Dear Gato 103.1,
Is it true? Are you really gonna play cumbias? Because lots of stations have said they were and ended up in a funky morass of Durangense and Marco Antonio Solis.
There are a few tears for the former station that came before you, perhaps it’s because those folks haven’t really learned to appreciate the beauty and the glory of what’s called (in English) Mexican Regional Music but what we call Norteñas, Rancheras, Banda, Corridos, Cumbias and yes, even Duranguense.
I promise to love you Gatito if you play my two favorite songs on Los Angeles radio at the moment:
Los Picadientes de Caborca – La Cumbia del RÃo
Banda MS – EL Mechon
Con Mucho Cariño,
chimatli
Links to the real videos (embedding disabled, how dare they?). La Cumbia del RÃo is one you should especially check out as it shows real Los Angeles residents dancing about their places of employment in a humorous and entertaining way!
Los Pikadientes De Caborca – La Cumbia Del RÃo