Here
in East Los Angeles, the homes are authentic and well maintained. The
gardens are everything a coastal Angeleno should dream of. But, having
gardeners from East LA do all their work, their soft hands never in the
dirt, the coastal Angeleno's suburban scape is a horrible thing - prepackaged,
unimaginative, over-watered and undernourished. My brother once said,
"LA has no soul because everybody has a gardener." No, he has
never been to South Gate, a stronghold of multi-generation Latino neighborhoods.
Passing
through the City of Vernon, whose industrial plants hang over the river,
Alvin points out, "Thirty-four voting citizens. Smallest city in
LA in terms of population. It's all industrial."
We
drove into what they call 'LA proper'; the city, with its grand lime art
deco bridges over the river. The most spectacular, 4th Street Bridge,
resembles the Los Angeles Water & Power Commission buildings; relics
of tinseltown with their slick, vertical LA architecture. Much of the
networks of storm drains that flow into the Los Angeles River - 70,000
miles of channels - were created during Mulholland's reign as commissioner,
when LA was developing its style.
We
continued through the area sometimes called 'Olvera Street' - Los Angeles'
first street. "You know, all these people in beamers from like USC
are coming to eat here these days," Alvin said. "So all the
Mexicans paint their taco wagons all these different colors for them."
He cursed at the USC students. "What's the big deal?" I asked.
"They drive up the price of tacos."
We
drive to the Dragon Bowl, in the Central American area called Pico/Union.
Mexican and Chinese Cuisine.
"You want I.D.'s?" a man asked as we enter the restaurant. "A
lot of these stores are just fronts for fake driver's licenses and birth
certificates," Alvin said. For underage college students, a fake
I.D. costs about fifty bucks. "…But the Central Americans and
Mexicans have more at stake. A high quality I.D. costs six hundred. And
a birth certificate, twelve hundred."
We
walked through the district, the whole time people waving and whispering
'I.D.s?' at us, or just sitting in the shade sweating in the hundred degree
weather. Some are selling herbs, homemade CDs or incense. From there it
was Frog Town - so called because of the torrent of millions of frogs
which hatched from the river and ran rampant in this neighborhood in the
early twentieth century, around the time of the Pachuco's; zoot-suited
Latinos who ran rampantly about doing machismo things; males impressing
males. Frogtown's gangs have overrun the frogs, and the place is generally
considered to have LA's highest concentration of gangs. But recently,
the highest gang activity has moved to a large mall in Universal City;
several miles from here.
Modern
gang activity resembles the public image of its irregular spokesmen. If
gangs 'hang out' at the malls, what have they become? Obsessed with commercialism,
cell phones, easy-living, electronic goods, Nike sportswear? When gangs
were all machismo, they had some good sense of taste; and the foundation
of LA's strange mix of neighborhood pride and funky cars.
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