One thing we can all agree on. In this edition of the rundown I’m walking 18 miles, 40 years of Chicana/o History and other events that I won’t be attending because I’m pretty sure I won’t be doing much of anything after walking 18 miles. Anyone wanna give me a foot massage later ?
Feliz Año Nuevo de la Luna everyone. I’ve been busy with Taco Tech the last few days and haven’t had time to catch up. I have a long list of things to blog about and post. That’s why I came up with “Random’s Rundown.” Like any great idea, this happened while I was in the bathroom. Last night I was making notes on info that I need to post ASAP for y’all to read and I was thinking to myself if I should do single post or bunch everything together. Chimatli already has that covered with the Botanitas post, so I started thinking and then BAM !! It hit me. I’m basically giving everyone the run down on what’s going…. PRESTO “Random’s Rundown.” All the news that is not fit to print, but still hella important. In this installment, Metro meetings for planning on bikes, Mardi Gras with Ollin, Juarez Documentary screening and more from IMIX.
This Saturday a bunch of food trucks are gathering in a parking lot en el centro, setting up shop, and hoping you’ll wait in line to order some of their food items. According to the website, there will be all kinds of trucks, from normal taco trucks to those fancy “mobile gourmets” that seem to be all the rage on the Westside. And it will cost you $5 just to get near these trucks. I feel obligated to share this information with you, but I certainly can’t condone it.
I feel like a dick for writing this: I hope you don’t go.
It’s unfortunate, but many of us Los Angeles natives take Olvera Street aka El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument or La Placita Olvera for granted. It’s the place to buy taquitos, folklorico shoes and other Mexican handicrafts. We go there to eat, stroll, take pictures on donkeys and just hangout. Every year they put on great programs to celebrate different holidays. I have fond memories of winning the best costume contest for Mardi Gras one year (Chicken Girl!) My mom always tells her story of spotting Marlon Brando sitting in the Plaza one afternoon, staring forlornly into space. For myself and my family, Olvera Street is an institution, a part of our personal history.
I recently read the book Los Angeles’s Olvera Street by William Estrada and was surprised by the history of this Los Angeles landmark. If it weren’t for the efforts of Christine Sterling, who recognized the area as a historic treasure, the whole street (actually it’s kind of an alley) would have been demolished and long forgotten by now.
Well, it’s time we all channel our inner Christine Sterlings because we received an urgent email tonight from a LA Eastside reader regarding a very important meeting tomorrow. It seems the City of Los Angeles, in it’s typical short-sighted way wants to privatize Olvera Street. I’m sure it sounds good to the CAOs and accountants to do so, but our history is much more valuable than the small profits number-crunchers try to come up with. This is not to say that there is no room for change or new ideas but privatization usually brings homogenization and corporate culture something Olvera Street, for all it’s faults, refreshingly lacks. Our city has enough malls.
Friends,
Due to the city’s fiscal crisis, tomorrow morning, the Los Angeles City Council will discuss and potentially vote on a plan to privatize El Pueblo Historical Monument, the Birthplace of the City of Los Angeles. Please come to John Ferraro Council Chambers at 11:15 AM ready to share your concerns during public comment.
While the details of privatization have not been disclosed, the plan will likely include the commercialization of El Pueblo, its public museums, galleries and historic sites which are visited by two million people annually, including 300,000 students.
Please communicate to city officials that privatization of the city’s birthplace is nothing short of an abomination, may violate state historic codes, and threatens the city’s irreplaceable cultural and historical heritage. Let them know that El Pueblo’s historic buildings, the oldest in the city, its public space, vast collection of artifacts and photographs that speak to the the city’s early history must be preserved for present and future generations.
Los Angeles City Hall
John Ferraro Council Chambers, Room 340
200 North Spring Street
Los Angeles, 90012
Thanks!
On Saturday morning I had coffee with a Los Angeles city worker, who (among other of his colleagues), is disturbed at the direction city leadership is laying out the LA Game-‘o-Life board. This week Mayor Villaraigosa said regarding the economic crisis fueled job cuts, “I don’t do this because I want to, I do this because I must.†Within this “a man must do what a man must do†blanket statement are also choices. In a city of approximately 40,000 city workers, there are 10,000 police and between 5,000 & 6,000 in the fire department, making them 40% of the city workforce. LA city workers have been appraised that Villaraigosa wants to focus on public safety first, translated means that other services in the city will suffer, but not the police forces.
Across my desk this week were dialogues about student actions being planned regarding the cuts in education, the closing of more parks in the city, the dissolution of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department (I got somewhere around 50 email petitions, which helped overturned this plan—gracias artistas!), an alarming price increase menu on traffic tickets with added rules (drivers beware!), gentrification plans to mow down more eastside historic buildings, and Pearl Art Store selling everything at 75% off (looks like they are going down).
As the students have noted in their various cries for continued funding, this city spends more on prisons and those who can imprison us, than things that can uplift us as a humanity, such as community spaces, art and education. I cringe to think what sort of summer we are headed for in LA. More negative places to be pushed into, armed monitors of humans to catch you erring, climbing prices on everything, mom and pops closing all around us, polluted city drinking water, no jobs, gas that cost more than a blood transfusion and no light at the end of the tunnel. My free-thinking art friends say “let the whole thing crash, we have survived worse.†I am starting to picture myself teaching an impromptu class to eager students on the street corner where they have been locked out of their schools.
Go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Mexican American woman with her dead baby in Los Angeles 1950. This photo from the Los Angeles Public Library photo collection speaks volumes about not only a grieving mother but also about our shared humanity and a repudiation of racism and stereotyping of any ethnic or racial group as being inherently violent and immoral, as is becoming so common with xenophobes and racists in the press and on the internet blog sites, even evident here sometimes at “LA Eastsideâ€.
This racist demonization of a people seems especially popular nowadays as the terrible Narco Wars continue unabated in Mexico and innocent people are not only being murdered and traumatized, but to top it off castigated as genetically amoral and prone to violence and depravity.
Hopefully some day, the corruption and violence visited on the Mexican people by the wealthy ruling classes, Drug cartels, arms dealers, and avaricious police and military personnel, who all worship at the altar of the almighty dollar, will end.
Stop-Wake Up (Very awesome video filmed in Los Angeles and popular Hi-NRG song)
Over at my personal blog, I’ve been doing a series of posts based on a book I’ve been reading called Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. I was fascinated to read the chapter on Hi-NRG or what I’ve come to call “Chicano Disco” (my nod to the moniker “Chicano Oldies”) and the music’s influence on a generation of Eastsiders.
Continue reading
The Pink Shack and it’s looming neighbor, The Thrift Store Lofts
I’ve always admired this pink little shack, the way it’s persevered on it’s tiny bit of land, clinging to the pavement while the block around it gradually changed into a neighborhood of factories. It challenges the industrial zone with it’s small but mighty domesticity. Someone lives here! Many of these tiny cottages that dot the area were built for the railroad workers, the rails are just one block to the west, on the east side of the river.
In my opinion, this little home has just as much historical significance as the huge building behind it.
During the brief interlude between storms yesterday, I went for a walk around Lincoln Heights and was thrilled to see all the water rushing down the Arroyo Seco. I’d seen the Arroyo full before but this was impressive. It’s usually just a small trickle running through a boring concrete channel. Notice too how dark and muddy the stream is, where did all that muck come from? Definitely not a time to check out the bike path.
photo courtesy of LAPL.org
Imagine what a beautiful stream it once was…
Starting last year, as proclaimed by our mayor Tony V, January is Art Month here in L.A. and it’s all about the arts. This is the second year of bringing attention to the plight that the arts are facing, which I’m sure a lot of people are already aware of because when things get tight, the arts go out the window. So, the whole point of Art month is to get people out and about into museums, galleries and events all month long to check out what L.A. has to offer and stimulate the local economy. Well I did some stimulating of my own on Wednesday at Corazon del Pueblo by listening to amazing poets put themselves out there. They even inspired me to get up there and read. Aside from that, I knew I had to hit up the Art Walk because not only is it Art’s Month, but it’s the first one of the year. The cities website states, “we are urging Angelenos to enjoy the best the art world has to offer without leaving Los Angeles. And we hope they will make it an adventure by discovering a new museum or performing arts venue!”Adventure ? I’m game.
Harry Blackstone Jr. was the first magician I ever saw. Sure, it was on television, but it seemed so real to me. Magic always has. He had so much style. He was the master of ceremonies, but he was just a conduit. Maybe I exaggerate his modesty because today’s popular magicians seem so arrogant and lacking in personality. Sleeveless and svelte, so easily ignored.
Harry Blackstone Jr. was the real deal. Plus, he had that funny, protypical television voice. To my ears, he wasn’t just old, he was old school. Just listen to him. You hear that playful, diabolical laugh:
“There. And now that you’ve seen it, my dear. Now that you’ve all looked at it carefully, may I show you… a miracle? (snaps fingers) Ha Ha Ha Ha. She says, ‘that’s impossible’. Of course, it’s impossible. That’s why we do it. Ha Ha Ha Ha.” Behold!
Magic. My departed grandmother’s drunken, toofless grin. My little cousins laughing. The five times I’ve been in love. The first time I heard John Bonham’s bass pedal. Eating tamales under the Guanajuato night sky, etc. All those events leave me in a quandary. That childish suspension of belief need not end in a dolt hood. I like shit that can’t be explained. It doesn’t have to be! It’s all an illusion anyway, yes?
“Nothing I do can’t be done by a 10-year-old… with 15 years of practice.”
(Harry Blackstone Jr.)
Disclaimer: If, after watching this video, you think, “Oh, I know how he did it. Let me explain…” put the mic/keyboard down and back the fuck up. This ain’t karaoke. And this ain’t club jenna. Wax on Wax off somewhere else, please. We don’t care. We don’t want to know. But, if you dare share your ignoble insecurity with us, we pray that a gazillion pneumatic lesions terrorize your nether regions. Alakazam!
Previously on ¡Sounds Like Burning:
**¡Sounds Like Burning is about psychos, angels and psychotic angels. Who else deserves mention?
Bill Hicks condensed the first law of all the Arts: Play From Your Fucking Heart!
The performances to be aired here are rigodamnediculous. The biblical scholar Bon Scott once commanded: Let There Be Light. And There Was Light.
Can one make the unknown known? Tune in and Trip out.
It’s no secret that the blog has managed to garner attention in the last year or so that it’s been around. I’m one of the many people covering BH events and that in itself has gotten me attention from others as well, case in point 14th District Council Member Jose Huizar. He reads the blog and through the help of my good friend WC connecting me with Rick Coca, who’s Director of Communication, I got some time in with the councilmen, who’s district also covers Downtown, Eagle Rock, El Sereno, Garvanza, Glassell Park, Hermon, Highland Park and Mount Washington, to talk about what’s going down in the hood. But since I don’t live in those parts of town, so I focused my questions more on BH because that is where I live and it’s where a lot of action is taking place. Continue reading