Category Archives: Rant

The Price of Beer

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As a 20-year-old coed at UCSD the newness of each day as an adventure, still had its momentum. The first female in my family to go to college, to move out at 18-years-old was at once my second-generation-immigrant family’s dream and nightmare. My first year of away-from-home loneliness was defeated by my freedom. I sucked it up, and watched other ingénues file out one by one—until there was 1 Chicana for every 17 Chicanos in my class of 100 in a sea of 7000 students. Freedom meant learning to think and speak critically, handling finances, self-management, validating my culture, being creative, making wise choices, defining myself and not appearing to have been too sheltered by my Christian-freak family.

Being away from family also gave the freedom to live completely bacchanalian, if one chose it. It was an undergraduate rite of passage “to thy own-self be true” and part of the experience needed on the road to where you were headed. By the time some of my high school friends became freshmen, I was their mentor and resolver of all acculturating problems.

I’m not sure how the situation came about–my high school friend Danny taunting me into asking Jose a 22-year old senior to buy us beer, because we were too young. I was uncomfortable, knowing that I would owe Jose some favor that I could not pay back—because he was obviously interested in me. The night ride down Torrey Pines Road in the back of a dark VW bus with Jose and my napping, assigned-sentry Raul, with John as shot-gun and Danny driving, seemed excruciatingly long. Occasionally Danny would pull back the blue Hawaiian print curtain that divided the cab from the carpeted surf den to say, “Is everything ok back there?” followed by a wink and grin at me. He knew I went reluctantly and this was his silly gesture to make light of it, while protecting my honor. Continue reading →

Miracle Books

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A good reason to subscribe to LA Eastside’s rss feed and twitter page is that Chavo and Chimatli have some killer articles to share and instant moments on the eastside ‘you’d have to see for yourself”.

I got this cool impromptu notification from some literati  friends  (more like book lovers) who give back to the community by handing out books—free.  I love free!  They are called The Miracle Bookmobile.  “Bookmobile”–well, that’s a word I have not heard since I was in grammar school and I lived in an area with too many kids and not enough libraries.  Ergo, some funky bus used to roll up on Chollas Elementary School and 4 or 5 of us could climb aboard for 20 minutes and quickly choose books to check out—a ritual that was repeated for about 20 to 30 kids once a week.  It was a kid-friendly library, nothing in a shelf higher than 5 feet (I think).

Tonight, Saturday, October 22,  The Miracle Bookmobile will be in downtown Los Angeles beginning at 7pm in front of Exilo Studio.  Exilo is located at 435 S. Broadway, 90013.  They have a lot of great new literature from LA and Oakland  and they invite you to “c’mon out and get some!”

  Continue reading →

Resistance Is Fertile: The Right To (Be) Merry aka “Uh… Yeah, What He Said.”

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politicians are full of shit. that is not up for debate. but, when one of those leeches gets a little tipsy or isn’t busy trying to fondle little boys or decides not to run for re-election, he can say the “darndest” things. last week, new york senator roy or ronald or whatever mcdonald, said he would vote against his party. he released this statement to the press:

“You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing . . . You might not like that.  You might be very cynical about that.  Well, fuck it, I don’t care what you think.  I’m trying to do the right thing.  I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics.  They can take the job and shove it.  I come from a blue-collar background.  I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m going with this.”

if he had read that statement at a press conference, i’d still be laughing.
link

Cure for the Summer Time Blues

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Have you ever had to say the words “¡Pinches chavalos cabrones!”? That was me yesterday. My car is in the shop, so I am on the metro–and you got to get up a little earlier. The bus waits for no man. As I was walking out of my house—my whole front retainer wall is tagged in HUGE letters including FU (spelled out). I run back inside to quickly paint it myself. I locate a full can of stucco paint and open it—I find that it’s dark purple (I need beige). Double urgh! Quickly I go on line and shoot a message to the city’s graffiti removal program. As I walked towards the bus stop, I see that my neighbors got it too.

As an artist, I know that it’s just a case of Summer Time Blues. Urban kids out of school for the summer looking for something to do. Marginalized from any age appropriate community spaces. Urban kids got it tough. It has been proven time after time that this amateurish scratching, marking, etching, spraying could be an artist taking baby steps.

My friend tells me that I can get a $1000 reward for catching the culprits. Last time I saw the kids doing this, I yelled “Why don’t you take an art class? You don’t even know how to do it right. It looks ugly!” That moratorium on tagging my street lasted a few years.
Continue reading →

El Dedo: Brand X

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I wish I had the time to be more articulate. Or the patience to be more patient. In these times of La Crisis and economic uncertainty I find that I have to economize on words: can’t be wasting them on any old thing. But believe me that I have words, big bags of them, waiting to get poured out in a flood of meaning when I can figure out how to fit it into my schedule. Just cuz I ain’t saying nothing don’t mean I’m not thinking stuff. Thoughts cross my mind at all hours of the day, sometimes making me laugh for no reason, sometimes getting me upset like a mofo at some joker that deserves it. At some point I will have to squeeze in a bout of insanity to my busy life just to mete out my version of comeuppance.

Until that fateful day arrives I’ve come up with a quick and easy solution to deal with this problem that keeps gnawing at me, and I’m gonna call it El Dedo. (Yes, The Finger.) What unifies this fine series of posts? Well, the fact that I will give the finger to people, projects, and papers that sorely deserve it! Isn’t that kinda petty and juvenile? But of course!

I am equipped to tolerate lots of abuse but I am sick of these posers moving to LA and a few month later deciding to rename the city, calling everything East of where they feel comfortable the “Eastside.” We were making some headway on informing these newbies that the Eastside has a long history in Los Angeles and that it begins East of the river but lately there’s been another skirmish in that battle with lots of naive offenders once again writing us off the map, thinking they can dismiss El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, and Boyle Heights as being simply part of East LA. Nah fool, we ain’t having it.

The honor of the initial post to this series goes to that shitty paper with the even shittier title of “Brand X” which has been consistent in their renaming of the Eastside strategy, even though their mothership the LA Times thinks otherwise.

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Halcónes de Noche

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I was at Georges Burgers Tuesday night grabbing dinner, which was a $1.50 hamburger, and as I was waiting for my burger I took a pic that reminded me of the Edward Hooper paiting, “Night Hawks.” Georges is a lot like the painting in that it’s frozen in time. I mean, most of the guys working there have been there for years. In fact, I asked one of the cooks and he said that the person with the least amount of time working there was 15 years. But that’s how it’s always been, the same guys cooking up fries and burgers for as long as I can remember. In fact, some of them have been there working longer than I have been alive. Despite the Mc Donald’s up the block, king taco, KFC/Taco Bell, Jack in the Box and a bunch of other restaurants around them, they’ve stayed in business all these years.  At this point, I’m looking forward to the day when I can take my kids there for a burger.

The Xentrification Situation in Boyle Heights

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I like Cinthia Gonzalez because in her recent “Gentrification in Boyle Heights” post over at the rough rider blog, she broke down how she see’s the changes going on in Boyle Heights. Esos pinches hipsters !! So, La Curbed picked up on it and some pendejos started talking shit. FTP. So, then Southern California Public Radio picked up on it as well asking readers to chime in on whether BH is getting gentrified. And now everyone, including myself because when I hear BH mentioned my ears ring is talking about it. I think the L.A. Times just sent someone over to write a story too.  So, what do people think ? Is BH officially gentrified or as I have come to say Xentrified ?

Funny thing is that I have been working on a post to talk about xentrification but Cinthia beat me to the punch. Great job !! She has an awesome journalism teacher over at Roosevelt that encourages and pushes the students to write reactionary stories like this. As for what I think about the xentrification situation, well the place is pretty much going to those who have an active voice at community planning meetings, elders. I go to all these meetings about what streets are gonna get lights, speed bumps and stuff and all I see is elders. They want safe, nice looking streets for everyone.

At the same time, not to put anyone on blast, but any xentrification that is going comes directly from “people” like me. Yes that’s right, it’s an inside job. I tell hipsters about how awesome BH through this very blog and what do they do ? Blog about it as well and tell soo many people that we can’t have street vendors around anymore. But who are “people” like me you ask ? Well pretty much anyone that goes to art shows, goes to primera taza, drinks at eastside luv, goes on bike rides from mariachi plaza. You know, Xikano Hipsters.