The Second Obama Mural

A second appearance, appropriately close to USC, with a third on the way?

I spoke to "Zeke" refurbishing The Family Tree in Shaw Park.
"Will Obama be included," I asked.
"Yep."
"Will he enjoy a good position, say next to Bill Cosby?"
"Better."
"Oh yeah," I continued, "next to Malcolm X?"
"Better, next to Magic."
"Next to Magic," I exclaimed.
"Yes," Zeke responded, "next to Magic, 'cause it's winning time!"

The First Obama Mural

Los Angeles has been called the mural capital of the world, counting nearly 1,500 artworks.

Over 100 wall paintings devoted to the African American experience decorate Los Angeles. Many have been maintained, but a few have badly faded or suffered other abuses.


The community mural movement sprang largely from the massive social movements of the late 1960's, though L.A.'s oldest African-American themed composition is likely "The Negro in California History," commissioned by the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1949.

A good number of murals are located near Crenshaw Boulevard, often characterized as the (post Central Avenue) center of African American cultural life. A few of these are inspired by the William Walker Wall of Respect model, depicting a range of African American idols.

Barack Obama has just joined the gallery.

Muffler Monsters

Auto related industries dominate commercial uses along many of L.A.'s service corridors. Examples include salvage yards, auto parts stores, sales lots, mechanics garages, tire and rim joints, and muffler shops.

The muffler shops, at least, spare a little public art now and again.


Some of these businesses, objectionably, occupy a grey area between typical commercial use and light manufacturing, owing to their characteristics: site design, outdoor storage (and subsequent fortification), environmental impacts, and noise.

Where there's a welder, there's a way.

I learned to weld once (maybe just solder?), as a high school student in a metal shop class. When the instructor was called to the office, we the welded the metal door shut.

Barrio Services

As wholesale sections of Los Angeles continue to undergo demographic change, from chiefly African-American to chiefly Hispano-American, commercial corridors are transformed.

Panaderias emerge, wig/braid/curl shops vanish, and Party Suppliers proliferate. Si, fiestas! The Mexican Bureau of Popular Cultures has identified at least 10,000 fiestas that are celebrated by different communities in Mexico. Many are now celebrated here, along with other Latin American festivities, and near-universal social-gatherings like birthdays, sporting events, and religious occasions.










Jumpers or Bouncers (inflatable play structures) are very popular. The word "jumper" hasn't a spanish language equivalent evidently, whereas other items--sillas, mesas, pelotas, are often billed in Spanish.










So prevalent are party rental stores, that more than one may occupy the same block (Vermont and 30th). Some, like the all-purpose pharmacia or versatile cafeteria, reject the specialty model, and operate as a defacto florist or confectionery.

The Pinata, which probably derives from Pre-Columbian Aztec ritual clay pots, is another staple (and one of Mexico's greatest cultural cross-overs). Pinatas, filled with toys and candy--traditionally sugar cane--accompany more than just kiddie fests. In the Mexican Catholic celebration of Christmas a seven-pointed star is featured, representing the seven deadly sins. That which the devil is witholding--the contents of the pinata--are released by striking blindfolded, a display of faith. Neighborhood food markets, like Mercado Uno, sell pinatas as well.



Ellen's Party Supplies operates a virtual compound on King Boulevard with dual storefronts. Ellen's offers vending machines of all kinds, floral materials, and audio gear. An employee said the business depends most on theme-based birthday parties for boys and Quinceaneras, which celebrate a young woman's fifteenth birthday, or coming of age. Because Quinceaneras are such a large event, the celebrant holds a court composed of fourteeen girls (damas) and fifteen boys (chambelanes), with dancing, and props (the throwing of the quince doll), they tend to be the most profitable.

Growing up in Oakland California, I attended plenty of birthday parties, luaus (I have family from Hawaii), and Bar Mitzvahs, but never a Quinceanera. I kind of feel like I missed out on something.

The Alley

Sooner or later it has to rain (doesn't it?); and, sometimes in Los Angeles it rains very hard, without interruption, and where is all the water to go?

In heavy rains, the water flows from my rear yard into the alley.

In preparation (of impending storms!) I cleared the leaves, deposited by my arch-rival the bouganvillea, and trash along the alley side of the run-off, anything that might interrupt or impede my serviceable grading. With regard to fluid dynamics, I was eliminating turbulence, or so the applied science reads.

My alley is ungated, backs a moribund commercial corridor, a pocket park, a library; and, increasingly disused, serves only to access a few garages. Open on both ends, it is prone to dumping. Richard the metalsmith who lives in a twenties warehouse behind me has furnished nearly his entire space in alley cast-offs, even window treatments.
"If I'm willing to wait", he once proclaimed, "it'll show up."
Some houses on my block/alley lack garages altogether. Some have converted their garage (illegally) into an in-law or rental (which makes street parking more scarce). Yet most prefer to park on the street which is less desolate and therefore feels safer. In many places the alleys are gated. By doing so the city abdicates their maintenance responsibilites. The gates are padlocked and only the residents have keys. This tends to discourage their use even further.

One elderly neighbor, exiled by his wife, uses the alley as a place to smoke. He doesn't seem the least bit concerned about fluid dynamics.

The 10th Wonder of the World

The sign says it all. A front yard art project, part folk genius, part busybody construction, part badass mysticism.



Lew, a former truck driver, began the ever-evolving installation in 1982, aided by his sister Dianne. Surf-board sized chunks of acrylic encircle mountains of metal painted black and race car red. A zebra surveys all.



The Harris's are friendly, go take a look, and drop a quarter in their donations tube:
1145 W. 62nd St.
(Two blocks West of Vermont)

Mole City

Markets and Migration

Despite an increase in inventory levels, an accumulation aided by a purchase volume deduction, housing inventory remains low throughout West Adams and South Los Angeles.

Inventory, in my recent experience, has been most commonly generated by death, departure (persons leaving Los Angeles for cheaper housing markets), and divestment (the liquidation of "Single Family" rental properties).



Chief among the departing, African Americans are leaving Los Angeles, some for the relatively inexpensive exurbs like Palmdale and Fontana, many for the South.

This "reverse migration", largely attributed to an improved racial climate, family ties, cost of living factors, cultural identity ("kinship") and the African American college system has made the South the country's only region with a growing African American population.

Between 1996 and 2000 alone, according to Black Enterprise magazine, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles each lost between 3 and 6% of its African American population. Conversely newcomers made up 5.5, 7.6, and 9.6% of the growing black populations in Dallas, Charlotte, and Atlanta respectively.

According to an analysis by Manuel Pastor, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, the city of Compton in 1980 was 80% African American and 20% Hispanic; and, by 2000 had become 60% Hispanic and 40% African American.





In Los Angeles, one Rand Corporation study suggests that African Americans have been unable, possibly displaced by immigrants, to infiltrate the growing service economy.

Derek and Jay, who asked to be described as "black businessmen", were willing to speak on the subject:

Jay: "African Americans moved/are moving to the suburbs and elsewhere for the same reason whites did, concerns about gangs, schools. It's more unsafe for us here than it is for you."

Derek: [Regarding Reverse Migration] "Sure there's concerns about a loss of political influence too, but a lot of it is business."

Jay: "There's a "roots" thing. Most of our families don't come from here and are only here in part. So there's a social network which we can easily tap into elsewhere."

Derek: "The poor can't afford to leave and the rich don't have to, but the middle class--our entrepeneurial backbone--is going."

Jay: "It's an immigrant city, and the opportunities in business are here for the immigrants. Not just the Hispanics, but the Chinese, the Persians...."

Derek: "It ain't no Chocolate City."

Jay: "It's a Chocolate Mole City."

Gebhard and Winter are Sissies

Ever read any of the so-called Los Angeles Architectural Guides? They're more interested in bland Monterrey revivals in Brentwood and miniature golf courses in Encino than detailing the mother lode that is South Los Angeles. East L.A. often gets shorted too, particularly on beyond Soto.


In Bungalow [Arayan] Nation, errrr, author Diane Maddex touches down in Pasadena, and then--overlooking the greatest concentration of Arts-and-Crafts houses in the United States of America--profiles a pair of shamefully mediocre abodes in Santa Monica.





Gives you greater respect for someone like Jose Camilo Vergara, a photographer/sociologist who has visited and re-visited many of America's most squalid urban epicenters, what he calls "hyper ghettoes", detailing significant architectural casualties and alterations.


Vergara's most recent book is entitled, How the Other Half Worships, and it features extensive depiction of Los Angeles area storefront churches and other unexpected adaptations.




His style, often simplistically referred to as stark, is respectful and pensive.
Perhaps most evocative are his "time lapse" sequences, like the sort I've crudely rephotographed here (from The New American Ghetto)





Vergara's L.A. photo musings appear occasionally in the Times Sunday magazine, most recently with a piece on abandoned autos. Currently, he is working on a photographic survey of Richmond, California and Camden, New Jersey.

The 5th of July

Is it the 5th of July yet, and will people then quit blowing crap up?

Maybe there's a secret countdown, starting some time in June. A few firecrackers at first, then a few more, louder, louder, later. Some can be nice to look at, pinpoints of deep, swirling color. Only nobody's looking, we're all trying to fall asleep or calm our petrified poochies.

Christmas celebrants don't open presents on December 19th, or 22nd. It's the whole kit-and-caboodle on the 25th. Fireworks abstinence, please people!

Yeah I'm sure it's all harmless. They used to say that about New Year's gunfire.

Door flyers

I am annoyed by door flyers. Can't we pass a city resolution to ban them?! I understand that advertising is expensive and that the ol' USPS doesn't give many breaks, but I am being flyer-ed to death. Pizza delivery, month-to-month auto insurance, gardening services, home remodeling, you name it--I get it, slipped beneath my wiper blade, my welcome mat, rubber banded to my door handle, or just left to lie in the walk.

Funny how the flyer 'handers-outers' never come back by, to pick up the discards, those blown by the wind, soaked by the rain, tossed in the gutter.

I want redemption values attached to flyers, just like used-up drink bottles. I wouldn't mind at all if a guy came by on Saturday mornings pushing a cart full of crumpled pizza chain door knockers, hittin' me up for my rug cleaning notices. "Hey man, I'm on the way to the recycling center, you got any of those green slips I can take off you--you know the ones that say 'Alfombras'?"