The Sound and the Fury…
Ξ May 7th, 2009 | → | ∇ 90041, 90042, 90065, Beyond Northeast, Drinks, Glassell Park, Highland Park, The Arts |
Los Angeles Times columnist and Mt. Washington resident Pat Morrison has again opined on the eastside debate that is tearing our city apart (at least on the internet). If you’re passionate on this subject, Eastside Luv is hosting “Where You From?”, a poetry slam aimed at checking those pesky Echo Parkers who dare to refer to their neighborhood as the eastside. What I’m envisioning tonight is two groups of conceptual artists blocking off 1st Street and parking their scooters in a circle. By the dim glow of the headlights, the opposing camps will throw their checkered kaffiyehs into the ring and play “Quien es Mas Macho?” with a no-holds-barred dodgeball tournament. On second thought, a poetry slam at a wine-bar is probably more apropos.
I have one small gripe with this however: I’m very uncomfortable with a phrase that usually precedes a gang shooting being used in a comaratively trivial matter. For the poets, I suppose that’s why they call it poetic license, but why does Pat Morrison find this so cute? I’ve never met the woman, but her writing conjures KPCC’s Sandra Tsing Loh whose cutesy ironic tenor makes me want to swerve into oncoming traffic.
Yet I digress. The point of this article is to ask our local readers where they stand. Are we eastsiders whose unique neighborhood and cultural identity is being appropriated by transplant hipsters from Echo Park and Silver Lake? Do we have no claim to that part of town? Or are we something in-between? I know where a few of the local blogs we link to stand (LA Eastside will be meeting Eastsider LA at the flagpole after school), but what’s your opinion?
See you there, michilada in hand.
UPDATE: LA Eastside’s El Chavo has posted a nice defense of the event’s title along with a video from Rueben Tafoya’s reading last night.
11 Responses to ' The Sound and the Fury… '
on May 7th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
i’m with you 100% on this one (including the part about Sandra Tsing Loh, whose voice sounds like nails down a chalkboard to me). but this whole argument smacks of a “how dare you encroach on my space?” gang mentality that is just counterproductive.
i don’t see why branding is so important, especially when you know the truth about your own neighborhood. when i tell people i live in highland park, i often hear, “that place is so ghetto! you must get shot at every day! how could you live there?”
to me, that signifies the end of the conversation. it tells me that person is an idiot who isn’t worth anymore of my time. but i don’t feel compelled to put my finger in their face to make them take it back, and i certainly don’t threaten them with a poetry slam, because it just doesn’t matter. and to make it important just makes things more needlessly divisive. time to move on.
on May 8th, 2009 at 11:27 am
re: the name. It is brilliant.
1. it got your attention. when was the last time poetry was so obviously a strong part of the discourse? 2. it precedes a confrontation and necessarily a gang shooting. don’t be so dramatic 3. there is a confrontation at hand that has to do with history, identity and geography.
the name is absolutely appropriate and clever, too.
on May 8th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
There were no scooters parked outside of Eastside Luv last night and the transplant hipsters were hard to identify. My road bike was the only one parked there - a 5 min ride from home - and it wasn’t stripped or messed with. The event was a familial gathering of neighbors and friends, many who grew up together in the neighborhood. Poets spoke about the Eastside plainly and simply - that there is a difference between the lands that lie east of downtown and those that lie west. Rafael Cardenas said simply in his piece: “If you see City Hall to your right, you’re on the Eastside. If you see City Hall to your left, you’re not on the Eastside.”
on May 8th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
What if you’re facing North?
on May 8th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
So it sounds like Silver Lake and Echo Park didn’t show? Too bad, that would have made for some fun video. As for your bike, don’t worry, I never insinuated Boyle Heights was unsafe. So, as a group that is very passionate on defining the Eastside, where does LA Eastside classify Highland Park, Glassell Park, Eagle Rock, etc.? An extension of the Eastside, Northeast LA, something else? We’re looking forward to Chavo’s more detailed update.
on May 8th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Those communities I consider Northeast LA, as a grouping. But even then, they don’t need some other name other than what they already are. Because Boyle Heights and unincorporated East LA are so intertwined, with the Lorena division seeming completely random, Eastside has been used to define the whole of the region, geographically and culturally. I don’t even really consider Lincoln Heights part of the Eastside, not really, since it has it’s own unique identity and history and geography. I just call it Lincoln Heights, and proudly so. But I don’t make an issue about it because it could be the Eastside, just as it can be part of Northeast LA. Same with Highland Park, it could be the Eastside, though I don’t really think so. Like Patt Morrison’s Mt. Washington, it could be the Eastside but I REALLY doubt it. NELA seems appropriate. My main gripe with this whole thing has been about areas that used to be clearly defined as the westside taking the name to define themselves as different from the other newer more west westside, which basically writes Boyle Heights and East LA off the map.
I have my opinions but I can’t say where exactly the Eastside is. But we know where it ain’t.
on May 9th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Like pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it?” Fair enough.
on May 9th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
There is a difference between the terms “East LA” and “the Eastside”. East LA -as immortalized in Cheech Marin’s song/movie “Born in East L.A.” - is the area around Boyle Heights. Cesar Chavez (not Sunset) Blvd. cuts through it. The Eastside as a title has only recently entered the debate because it has come to define for many the post-90’s gentrified neighborhoods east of Vermont. As Hollywood renst went up - twenty-somethings (some of them indeed “hipsters”, but many others just trying to make it in Angel City) settled in pockets of urban activity and affordable rental apartments moved east of Vermont (starting in Silver Lake and now cresting in Hghland Park). The debate is recent - the devil makes work for idle hands on a cubicle laptop - and in these sad days of lax journalism, the MainStream Media, here the LA Times, raids the blogs for content. At the end of the day, if you have Eastside pride - regardless of your race, creed, color or economic status, no matter whether you go back decades or moved here last winter - then let’s channel our energy into ever improving our neighborhoods. What happens in one corner of the eastern edge of our city impacts and affects all of us. Let’s work together and make the term Eastside synonymous not with location, but with quality of life. That’s an Eastside I think everyone can get into..
on May 10th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Like pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it?”
Ok, if you don’t want to engage with the nuances than I rescind that comment and state that Highland Park is not the Eastside. Is that better? Or easier?
on May 11th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
woah there EL CHAVO, I believe YORK was just making reference to the famous supreme court quote referring to hard-to-define subject matter (obscenity, not pornography, to be exact). Seems quite apropos in reference to your previous post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
Maybe you shouldn’t engage in nuance if you can’t adequately define or justify it.
Besides, I’m with eaglerocklobster. People need to get over the nuanced differences and focus on making every part of the “Eastside” a place we can always be proud to call home–and hopefully a place where kids won’t have to worry about getting shot if they answer the nuanced question wrong.
(ps I hate linking to wikipedia, but it seems context was needed)
on May 11th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
This is veering into irrelevance, but suffice to say that Socrates is correct. I was alluding (apparently somewhat inaccurately) to the supreme court ruling.