Rambling On My Mind: Final Daze in Medellin: Like A Walk In The Park

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Part I
Part II
Part III


2 homies still asleep in hostel. whole place is quiet. i leave and at 945 i’m on the metro, not packed. get to vegetus in downtown, across from this parking lot. small spot, kinda cramped. they tell me it’s all vegan. hells yeah! get lasagna and it’s alright. yes, lasagna at 1030! even got some ice cream made of avena. i take some pics of menu and a woman kindly asks me why and i tell her, just for memories. she goes over to the counter and brings me a menu and says, “you can keep this one.” here it is

i split and it’s noon and hit up a net place and write some shit. walk around and at a corner, in front of shopping center, is a long-haired metal head selling the latest in death and black metal. i walk over and we talk. i dabble in the metal arts, i say. i favor the traditional heavy style a la trouble. push play, sucka, and let the dark riffs remind you why ozzy and tony are seers. and no that is not ozzy. as if.
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The Little Burglars of Lincoln Heights, 1906

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Not the little boys from Lincoln Heights but a reasonable representation

There have always been “juvenile delinquents” on the Eastside. As the years have gone by, perhaps the ethnicity of the children has changed but the acts are the same. Kids get bored, they experiment, they are curious, they want things and figure out various ways to acquire the articles they seek. A phenomenon common to all humans. Sadly for these little burglars, their names and addresses were printed in the Los Angeles Times for all to see. Worse, the newspaper mocked their common predicament by stating: “This is the saddest time of their lives.”

THREE SMALL BURGLARS.
They All Ran Off With Pocket Knives and This Is the Saddest Time of Their Lives.
Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1906

Three small boys, none of them over thirteen years of age were charged with burglarizing the Griffin-avenue schoolhouse. The three lads have made a full confession. They are Miles and Earl Vaughan, aged 13 and 10 years who live with their parents at No. 248 at South Gates street. Their father is a switchman with Southern Pacific.
The third and smallest member of the trio is Eddie Crist, aged 9. He lives with his parents at No.516 South Gates Street. His father is a carpenter. The boys were arrested and taken to the East Side Police Station and later removed to the Detention Home.
According to the story the three lads tell, they were playing in the yard of the schoolhouse Tuesday morning It was a holiday, owing to the Fiesta parade, and no one was in the building. They pushed on the door of the building and the lock gave way.
Once inside they made a thorough search through the rooms and say they took a number of pocket knives and fountain pens. Little Eddie Crist says he only took one pocket knife. The other boys admit taking several and some fountain pens. Their only excuse is that they wanted the articles. The lads will have to face a charge of burglary in the Juvenile Court.

Article courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, all grammar and punctuation are from the original story.

Nominated: Worst Water Feature in LA County

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It’s hard to get a good picture from a moving vehicle and this is the best I could do. What you kinda see in that picture above is a ridiculous aesthetic touch for that new mall in Monterey Park on Atlantic by the 10, better known as the newest location of Happy Family Vegetarian Restaurant, after being forced to relocate from this very spot to allow for the development of this very mall! Wherever they go they still make great food. Too bad the new place is a drab and lifeless stucco enclosure, no doubt some vision of the future of yet another lousy developer.

Which brings us back to that aesthetic touch, a water feature in the underground parking lot, which you only notice on the way out. There is something dehumanizing about this fountain. A miserable attempt at having you leave the miserable development in a better mood because you saw some water floating by. It ends up only highlighting the lifelessness of the whole structure, reminding you of how unnatural this all is, a fucking mini-river on your way out of an ugly underground parking structure. Lipstick on a corpse.

If you plan to visit this waterwork, take the exit to Hellman which is where you will find this refreshing addition to our social car lives. Don’t you dare park to get a closer view, the river of cars need to keep flowing!

Yes, I hereby nominate this as the Worst Water Feature in LA County. There just can’t be anything else as absurd, can there?

The Geniuses of East LA

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Last month Popular Mechanics announced that Motive Industries in Canada is in the process of developing an earth-friendly-eco car made out of hemp. Gives the concept of hot-boxing a new definition, right?

As I laughed non-stop about the marijuana-mobile in Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke— never did I think, “Hey, that’s a great idea!” I kinda remember this vehicle made out of weed as funny and absurd. Who knew that 33 years later this stoner-logic would be the answer to our gas and ecological woes? Now it’s genius!

This hemp car, The Kestrel is scheduled to be available in 2012 or 2013. More than likely it will not be too popular on the eastside though, because of its size, being electrical and its general meekness. Had the developers stuck to the original van as Cheech and Chong had envisioned it—we might have been more into it. Especially, if the van had that burning exhaust pipe, with it’s 100-foot mota-smoke screen.

The techs working on this hemp car have no idea how the car body will wear down, they believe it will have a quiet interior and will not smell. Still, I envision a side industry of car sprays and air fresheners with names like Kalifornia Kush, Turkish Gold or Blueberry Purps—sort of a rip on the popular New Car scent. I also wondered if the Kestrel would drive the scent dogs crazy when crossing the international border, especially on a really hot day. Since the body is organic, it is supposed to bounce back and be easy to repair. Just a few Zig-Zags would work maybe.

Hemp has the lowest amount of THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its magical properties. You’d probably have to torch the whole car to get any effect—but hemp does have great nutritional value. I think that’s a big plus, because during some natural disaster—you’d have something life saving to gnaw on.

Now my thoughts are onto other genius inventions from the eastside. Maybe in 2025 all vehicles will come standard with hydraulics—something we may need for a future flood or for jumping-in during an earthquake.

 

Support for Wyvernwood

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Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar came out Thursday against a $2-billion proposal to raze nearly 1,200 apartments in Boyle Heights and replace them with shops, offices and new homes — some of them in high-rises as tall as 24 stories.

Appearing with tenant activists and historic preservationists, Huizar said he would fight efforts by Miami-based Fifteen Group to demolish the Wyvernwood apartments, which house an estimated 6,000 residents in 153 buildings.

Read whole article here.

The Fight for Wyverwood, in depth look at the issues here.

APRIL FOOLS: 1st Street to have $tarbuck$ & Denny’$ in Boyle Heights

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I got word down the grape vine earlier this week that the Metro owned property on the corner of 1st and Boyle will officially become the new site for the :First Street Plaza.” It’s funny because with all this talk of gentrification, the plaza, where the laundry mat use to be, will now be the site for a brand new Denny’s Restaurant and a Starbucks. In the past, the site was a prime location when they were trying to bring in a Barns and Nobles, but community peeps made their voices heard and stopped that project from going any further. So where was everyone one this one ? I never thought it was going to officially go through because I thought the same people and groups would have made their voices heard, but they didn’t.

Home boy that clued me in to the deal going down said that it’s official like a referee with a whistle now, it’s too late. The project is slated to cost close to a million clams, maybe more because there is currently nothing on that lot except dirt, so they are going to build and an entirely new “green building”. Besides having a Denny’s and  Starbucks, they’re in talks with having a pink berry/yogurt land to come in as well. They figured that with the success of the shops in Little Tokyo off Central and 2nd, 1st and Boyle would be prime locations to bring in “variety” to the community. And of course, it’s goldline adjacent for anyone to just hop on the train and stop by. I still can’t believe Boyle Heights residents fell asleep at the wheel and we let this deal go down like Walgreens. Chale.

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.

No Rush Hour Turns on Soto/1st street

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Part of me feels bad that I didn’t do this post the first day I noticed these new traffic signs last year. A bigger part of me could care less about people getting tickets for not paying attention to road signs. Now, another part of me started feeling like ok, maybe I should say something about the new “no left/right turn” during rush hour signs. And now another part of me is hungry, there’s just no winning. Continue reading →

24 Hour Party People

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Lynwood Ditch Party

“Tonight, Fox Undercover shows you what is clearly one of the most objectionable acts of the party crews, the ditch party…”

Thanks to LA Eastside reader DJ Mr Ed for recommending this link. We posted it on our Facebook page last week and were surprised when some of our readers said they recognized people in the video. Do you?

As exploitive as Fox News was of Latino youth and our subcultures in the 90s, it’s kinda nice, 20 years later, to have some documentation of the DIY Eastside and Southeast LA backyard party scene. Interestingly, they never infiltrated the punk backyard gig scene of the same era, maybe it’s cause punks are a little smarter. Yeah, I stick by that statement.

This video also confirmed my suspicion that the “rebel” look (only a few guys in the video below have the rebel look – there’s more in the above clip) was just one incarnation of an enduring style on the Eastside, a gradual morphing of 80s rockabilly into rebel into swing/rockabilly into psychobilly and finally, into present day greasers. The look never really died. In the 90s, the pompadour and James Dean chic was a style reference to artists like Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode. A quick aside, everyone talks about the prolific “Mexican Morrissey fans” but in the 90s, it was Depeche Mode who sold out the Rose Bowl. They were more famous here than anywhere else (“These guys are god over here!”) and even inspired a riot at a local album signing. A huge part of their fan base were Latino/Chicano kids. Naturally, young folks would emulate this look and these folks were called “rebels.”

How about you? Do you know someone who has rocked a pompadour and creepers for more than twenty years?


The Rebel Party Scene

“It’s a Saturday night house party in Huntington Park. Strobe lights color an evening of dancing, drinking and dope smoking. Here, boy comes to meet girl in a ritual as old as time…”