Category Archives: Greater Los Angeles

Eastside filming locations

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Over at Metblogs L.A., Cutter is making a short film about bicycles and he needs your help:

[P]art of the production involves shooting a bicycle chase in and around the eastern neighborhoods of Downtown Los Angeles.

. . .

We’re also shooting in Chinatown and in Boyle Heights. One of the potential locations included the beautiful Mariachi Square, but after scouting in that neighborhood I discovered that the Square is under construction and every street in a 1-block radius has been closed to through traffic.

Foiled!

So the question I put to you, faithful readers is this: What are some of the lesser known but no less interesting and distinctive East La/Boyle Heights/Downtown landmarks that might lend themselves to being photographed?

What locations do you suggest, Eastsiders? I think the Sears at Soto & Olympic is perfect, especially at night, when the sign at the top of the tower is lit and shines EARS (on one side, I think) to Boyle Heights. Leave suggestions here or over at Metblogs!

The N word. Reasons I hated college

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College was an interesting experience for me, because I really hated it.

I meet teenage women of color at times (I give back and that crap, so I volunteer at places) and they think I’m so neat and they are impressed that I went to college and want to know what school I went to. I get conflicted as to what to tell them. Should I tell them the truth? My truth seems so harsh.

Most people of color always say this, “I loved college it made me such a better person and blah, blah, I was so happy to have the opportunity to learn to kiss ass properly.”

I hate the taste of ass.

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Where’s my bus rider tax break? Post Tax Day Post

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Prius drivers get tax breaks, why not transit riders?

“Because it’s entirely different,” a person who knows where I’m going with this, but wants to stop me, because bringing up race and class is divisive and makes people feel bad.

Well too bad.

Ever since I’ve given up my car I realized some things:

    People who take the bus are treated very shittily.

    The bus takes way too long to come.

    It is very easy to not pay and take the Red Line.

I get treated way differently than my white boyfriend in regards to not having a car. No one ever asks Bob if he has a car when he’s applying for some little shit job to make some extra cash, but that’s one of the first questions that will come out of their mouth with me.

“Do you have a car?”

I applied for a job at an environmental organization and they wanted to know if I had a car?

WTF? If I can do the job what does it matter how I do it, especially if other people there don’t have a car?

What the fudge kind of environmental agency are you anyway?
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I’ll give you a tour for 30 cents. The Bridges of LA.

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Me and my friend BusTard were going to Alcanzando La Historia (a tour of the 4th, 6th, and 1st Street Bridges) put on by the LA Conservancy, but then we found out it was thirty dollars.

And in order to get the tickets I had to go down to smug SCI-Arc where everyone uses hyphens and parentheses for no reason and then I just was like, well how about I just do my own tour.

And killjoy, I mean BusTard was like, I’m not even doing this.

Don’t get me wrong I like SCI-Arc they are perfectly arty and shit. I love them and their little “I think interior design should be pragmatic. I made this kitchen slash bathroom while on a sabbatical in Amsterdam. My parents are quite wealthy you know, though I look as though I don’t shower. That is all for dramatic effect. So in my kitchen slash bathroom you take a shit and then the shit is put through this cleanser made from formerly used naturally clean apple scented ‘i care more the earth than you, so i drive a prius’ dishwashing liquid (20 dollars at Trader Joes) and slowly excreted into a mini kitchen garden as fertilizer, which vegetables and fruit you clean using your own urine, sanitized of course in a completely eco manner. I call it Re (U)-S-E/Re (P)-O-O.”

Re(U)-S-E/Re(P)-O-O
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95 Out

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http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2219/2409100864_69c29309cb.jpg
When you live on the Eastside, the beach is never a hop, skip, and a jump away (at best, it’s a long bus ride down Lakewood Blvd. away). So, you find another way to get cool.

For my family, this involves a short walk to Salt Lake Park. Today, after picking up some tostadas de camarón at Ceviche Loco, my mom lounged under palm trees while it was 95 degrees in L.A. I watched the Second Annual Salt Lake Park Skate Contest. And throughout, the soccer players played.
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The Beautiful and Ugly Los Angeles: Ralph Lazo

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In America people like to pretend that certain things didn’t happen and they like to try to encourage you to go with that program by getting super pissed at you for bringing up “negative” memories from the past. I guess for some people facts become being pessimistic when it makes other people look like total assholes. You know the genocide of the Native American population, slavery, the Bracero Program, the list goes and on and, but today we’re going to talk about the internment of Japanese-Americans.
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L.A. Rights

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Obviously throughout bloglandia the debate of where is the real Eastside and Westside has raged and I believe that Militant Angeleno’s proposal is the best so far, so that ends that debate as far as I’m concerned.

The other day my home boy told me a story that made me scratch my head, laugh and wonder: ‘Is this a new front on the culture wars?’

He told me about how he ‘checked’ two of his homies for claiming L.A. when both of them are from the Valley.

My homie said, “You need to be born and raised in the city limits of L.A. to claim L.A. while traveling in Southern California. When you travel outside, you can claim L.A. because most people aren’t gonna know what a Reseda or North Hollywood is. There is a persona and image of what LA is, Palmdale, Inglewood nor Beverly Hills are L.A. We work hard to make that image and don’t want peeps claiming what itsn’t theirs” 

WOW, I know I got some L.A. pride but I never heard it like this!

Made me wonder about it. Yes my friends from the Valley or Inland Empire or even San Gabriel have no clue about the heart of L.A. with its gleaming buildings and skid row funk right next to each other. They have a strip mall view and we got something else. For them parking is a given when running an errand. 

I have friends who moved here and have lived here for 15 plus years, but they have never traveled more than 5 miles from where they live. They have lived in L.A., but don’t knowL.A.

I think you have to know the ‘center’ of L.A. and all outline areas to really get the flavor of what most people in general consider L.A. no matter how long you lived here if you don’t go all over the area you won’t understand what L.A. really is.

You need to know: Downtown (The Alley, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Olvera St., Financial District, Metro), the USC area, South L.A.’s history and changes, Pico Union, McArthur Park, Hancock Park, what is on Fairfax and Melrose, Inglewood (gotta know how to get to LAX without the freeway), the Westside, the beaches (Redondo to Pt. Dune), the Valley (all of it), all the Hollywoods (N, E, W, and their differences), Pasadena (old and South and plain), San Gabriel Valley (it’s big), Pico Rivera, Whittier, Montebello, a lil bit of the north OC like La Habra and Seal Beach, South Gate, Huntington Park, Bell, and of course the nooks and crannies of our beloved Eastside. You need to know El Mercadito, El Oyo, the views from Flat Tops, Elysian Pk., and Mt. Washington, (a few good taco trucks, panaderias, a spot for menudo, birria, and great chilaquiles).

All of these areas have there own flavor and funk. There are some overlapping similarities but there are small attitudinal differences that if you lived in LA long enough and got around to these areas, you would know.

So what do you think? Are we over thinking this?

I guess this is native born conversation. We know we aren’t the plastic people from some far away state that came here to be a star and thus play into the plastic life image that the whole of LA is saddled with.

 

 

 

 

 

Reasons I love the Eastside- #1 The Montebello 40 Bus Line

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Montebello 40 Bus Stop on 4th and Gless

Across the street from my art studio in Boyle Height there’s the nicest bus stop ever. It’s not a MTA bus stop, because nothing nice is connected to the MTA (at least in the neighborhoods that are not gentrified yet, since I’m around family here I’ll just say the neighborhoods that are black and brown, ever notice how PC in the negative way only means, “why can’t I make fun of the ethnic people, with the ‘funny’ names and ‘funny’ way of doing things,” but if you’re not PC in regards to rich middle-aged white guys you’re accused of being overly sensitive or a reverse racist…so weird, must be nice to be a middle aged rich white guy.)

The Montebello 40 is rad, not just because it has a clean bus and bus stop (I know the City of LA takes care of bus stops, but if Metro had a bit of pride, they would make a bit of an effort in making sure that property with their name looked decent.) Not just because it actually follows a schedule. Not just because I can get on the Montebello 40, buy a transfer (total $1.15) and end up paying less than I would for a one way fare on the MTA ($1.25,) but because the people on the bus are rad. And they talk to you, not the “I don’t have a place to live,” mumbling crazy talk, but normal talk.

The bus drivers remember you and not only that, they spot you. I remember once I couldn’t find an ATM and the bus driver said, “You got a pretty funky hat there, so you can get on.”

That would never happen on the MTA, keep in mind where I pick up the 40 is across the street from I guess from what I’ve heard from some was one of the most violent and largest projects in America, the Pico Gardens projects, but times have changed. I can’t even tell that it used to be a project. Now it’s a mixed income development and no one comes out of there but nice family with little kids that wave at you, but what I’m saying this isn’t a wealthy neighborhood. This is a working and middle class neighborhood so it’s not that people won’t keep things nice if they are not filthy rich it’s just most government agencies don’t make an effort to keep things up if people aren’t filthy rich and writing 5000 letters a week and that’s a damn shame.

The people in Boyle Heights have a lot of pride in their neighborhood, but they don’t do that hipster bullshit. In Boyle Heights if you’re not an asshole, they are completely cool with you. I haven’t had one, “I was here since 1990 and you don’t know blah, blah, blah…” stories, not one. I heard those kind of dumbass stories all of the time in Silver Lake, from people who moved there from Van Nuys (but lied and said they were from Encino, like that was better) five seconds ago.

I’ve had nothing but love from the people of Boyle Heights.

And it’s not just the drivers or the bus stop, it’s the other passengers when I’m on my way somewhere and I’ll see Marie, Veronica, or Shirley from the 40, they’re always happy to see me. They tell how great of a future I’m going to have. It’s like running into old friends, not old friends from high school, because my friends in high school were total bitches.

The Montebello bus line is one of the reasons I love the Eastside.

by
Browne Molyneux