Modern travelevers and commuters flying the EAST LOS ANGELES DIRIGIBLE AIR TRANSPORT LINES (ELADATL) send us your favorite snapshots and pictures of your trips! You will be entered in our sweepstakes to win a free ticket to the Annual Fried Chicken & Wine Aerial Picnic over the San Gabriel Valley!

Remember to take advantage of our lower "Spring Evening Seabreeze" fares!

Irma Loya, resident of Happy Valley, East L.A.

Floating like bumblebee, stinging like poison oak on the warm breezes of the comfortable San Gabriel Valley luxury yet affordable urban flight experience aboard ELADATL.

http://globalgraffmag.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/beautification-proposal-east-los-angeles-dirigible-air-transport-lines/

Paste this URL (above) into your browser.

Proposed artworks by the East Los Angeles Dirigible Airport Transport Lines for the beautification of Los Angeles municipal region and Los Angeles county to provide for spiritual guidance, moral uplift of citizens and future generations, and ELADATL propaganda for the glorification of our dream apparatus and our financial schemes. This metal data streams via wafting genital wind.

In our long-awaited sixth issue of Global Graffiti Magazine, we are excited to present an array of features (by artists, poets, and authors) which broadly consider the theme of street art and graffiti throughout the world. While many of the pieces presented in this issue directly consider tangible public zones perceivable to any onlooker, others instead reflect on the realm of private and invisible spaces as well. We consequently envision this issue to be a thoughtful meditation on an often nebulous distinction between exteriority and interiority, public and private spaces, the realm of the visible and the invisible, and the nexus between these different spheres that is not always apparent upon first glance. As always, the melding of local and global culture again moves to the fore, as these pieces continually illustrate an increasingly diasporic world where ideas, histories and cultures intersect in fascinating and unexpected ways.

In “Beautification Proposal for the City of Los Angeles and Other Incorporated Cities of Los Angeles County from the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines,” a collaboration between writer Sesshu Foster and visual artist Arturo Ernesto Romo-Santillano, the duo imagines a city where tribute is paid to historical iniquity, suffering, and violence observable through communal displays of visual imagery and text. This beautification project proposes a union between the past and the present, imagining the streets of present day Los Angeles as a literal crossroads, an energetic site that owes its current reality, as well as its cultural and social fabric, to an active and sometimes unperceived process of migration, movement, tragedy and displacement….

research documentary video

Swirling Wheelnuts and Jose López-Feliú discuss the role of Dirigibles in East Los Angeles, the history of La Raza Newspaper, murals and destroyed buildings and the best grilled street chicken in ELA. Along the way, they meet someone looking for a ride to Downey.

Question
Dear Botanika Poder del Mestizo, we fall further and further behind in America without new inventions in Health and New Ideas for Imaginary Well-being: “Sharry Edwards has provided the leading-edge research to show the frequencies of our voice can be used to create a holographic representation of health and wellness.” How can these innovations be broadcast over the radio to broadcast people into BETTER HEALTH?

Just asking.

Answer

Thank you for your timely question. Botanica Poder del Mestizo has advocated new technology as a concept for healing since we first introduced the Underground Garden of Earthly Delights which was originated as an actual subterranean garden with a holographic (circa 1986, like all red and blue and green) component. In the early days of the internet, we uploaded short video clips showing how plant energy could be used to lift immense boulders. It is true though that since 2008, we’ve been without a storefront, and as homeless roving curanderos, we’ve been concentrating (paradoxically) on the transformational potential of well articulated plant imagery–namely in the form of murals. Many of these murals have successfully converted color to healing sound with the help of essence ergot. So, to answer your question, yes.

Q: I’m always thinking of things before they happen. For instance, I  had this idea to stuff frogs, like real frogs, stand them up like people, put miniature instruments in their hands and cover them in a  coat of lacquer. Then I was in Mexico and saw someone selling those  same frogs. Am I a genius?

A:

Q: What was the first dirigible you made?

A: …methane extracted from Eastern Hill, site of first city dump of  Los Angeles… hybrid balloon using hot air and lighter than air  gasses… gas bags sewn from salvaged vinyl banner advertisements  along Huntington Blvd… unfortunate accident over El Monte

Q.When I was a pornoconsumer, those people just looked like fake enjoyment. When I was a war-consumer, all those people didn’t appreciate me killing them. When I was a vehiculo-consumer, I was trapped inside machines. When I was a lifestyle consumer, I saw a possum turned inside out in the street.

A. So?

Q. I saw a rain of fire from the sky, I saw buildings crashing on people, I saw avenues and streets split open and gush fire and water, I saw everything in the world very shaky, I saw the tsunami racing toward the city, I saw devastated countries and immaculate empty houses on hill tops, I saw people swept up with all the debris and discarded. How long does it take it take for the dirigible to get here again?

A.

It’s no wonder at all, not wondrous or beautiful
it’s louder than sleep and dreams
like overpasses arching over a car on fire overnight
so CalTrans uses their community service workers to cut all the
flowers and trees down to concrete

“My chicken shit encircled the fuckin bucket,
My soul never to return any of YOUR calls.”
“These enclosed forms, sprawl in a circular edge,
glistenin on edge, tossed the books on the upside over.”

Who decided to walk onto the freeway like the traffic was hypnotic
I couldn’t stop looking at the cars zoom by louder than bombs
I drifted into the edge, which was loudest

“Eat your bread Peter”

Don’t assume in your hyperactive state that mind isnot
sliding over body in funny ways like
eyeballs rolling eyes sarcastically

I won’t be cutting you any breaks today Crushing Nausea.
my body will continue moving until you have left.

Crumple your hat,
into your bag
Use your key
open the restroom for me

Ten minutes ago,
rubbing alcohol and nitrogen swept into the gutter
step aside from the smell

see also

LOS ANGELES ATLAS

LOS ANGELES ATLAS PROJECT TIMELINE
November 2012- LOI guidelines posted
December 31, 2012- LOI deadline 5 p.m. Both digital and paper applications must be received by the project director by this date.
February 1, 2013- Announce first round of proposal invitees March 1, 2013- Full proposal deadline
April 1, 2013- Announce final writers. The final selection of writers will have six months to complete their essays, due October 2013.

COMPLETE LETTER OF INTENT PACKAGE:
____ Applicant contact information form (see below)
–––– Work sample of relevant recent work that demonstrates your capacity as a researcher and writer
____ Resume or CV

LOS ANGELES ATLAS APPLICATION PROCESS
This is a two-part process. First, you need to submit a Letter of Intent that will be reviewed and evaluated by an advisory committee of leading Los Angeles writers, scholars, and thinkers. Selected applicants will then be invited to submit a full proposal to the committee, which will allow you to more fully develop your idea for consideration. Please direct your LOI and any questions or inquiries to losangelesatlas@gmail.com.

Please attach a letter of no more than two pages that addresses the following questions:
• What are the core themes or questions are you seeking to answer and address through your essay? What special skills or perspective do you bring to the investigation?
• What makes this a quintessentially Los Angeles story, something that couldn’t be replicated in any other place?
What kind of research will be required to tell this story? • How do you envision mapping your essay topic(s)?

Dear Patricia,

This letter addresses the following questions.

Question #1: What are the core themes or questions are you seeking to answer and address through your essay? What special skills or perspective do you bring to the investigation?

Answer: Core themes and questions addressed through the essay are as follows:
+ What are the mysteries of East L.A.?
+ How do the mysteries of East L.A. rate? Are the mysteries of East L.A. (such as, how do the people survive? Mentally, spiritually, partially?) of importance in a World of Mystery?
+ Which are the first rate Mysteries of East L.A. and how were they discovered?
+ High Low Radiance Corridor
+ Geysers of El Sereno
+ Walls of Mystery: The Wall That Broke Open, The Erased Virgins, Paul Botello Murals That Appear and Disappear, Floating Murals
+ Lost records and evidence of The East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines
+ Unknown Famous Strangers of East L.A. History, the Virgin Defacer, Juan Fish, and other strange individuals
+ The Indian Mass Grave of Cal State University at Los Angeles
+ The Vex: Now You See It, Now It Exists in Your Ears—and other Musical Mysteries
+ Botanicas of Mystery
+ Stairs to Nowhere
+ 17 Lane Freeway Interchanges and Heart Infarction Vortexes

Special Question #1b: What special skills or perspective do you bring to the investigation?

We have conducted numerous walking surveys of varied night terrains and Eastside neighborhoods saying we were writing a book about this stuff for many years and we even wrote parts of it already. As if we were special agents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints without skinny ties or even bicycles going here and there through the streets and alleys or standing on doorways. We have conducted countless interviews of dozens or hundreds of secret hipsters of East L.A. such as Ruben Guevara of Ruben and the Jets, Oscar Zeta Acosta and Juan Fish, and we have collated this information with locations of birria joints and taco trucks. (Our work sample is available for view 24/7 on-line at http://www.elaguide.org, be sure to visit, for example, the People’s History Tour and download the PDF maps and click on musical and auditory links for the full effect.)

Special Question #2: What makes this a quintessentially Los Angeles story, something that couldn’t be replicated in any other place?

That’s a hard question, but I can answer it. We actually tried replicating parts of this study and some of this research in Amish villages and Mexican meat packing plant towns of Central Iowa, Rock Springs, Wyoming, the Nez Perce Reservation, Lapwai, Idaho, Canyon de Chelly (Navajo Reservation), Hopi Third Mesa, AZ, Managua, Nicaragua and barrios of Mexico City, but only met with limited success. Therefore, we can safely say that the answers to questions related to East L.A. and Northeast L.A. can only be answered by the strange famous unknown individuals involved, some of whom have been erased or mostly forgotten in official histories (when we contacted him in 2009 for this study, Antonio Villaraigosa, Future First Chicano President of USA, refused to publicly state exactly where in City Terrace he used to live and the Roybal family likewise wishes to keep their unknown famous family home in Boyle Heights an official secret), but we know for a fact that generations have survived here in these locales, but who knows how they did it?

Other Question #3: What kind of research will be required to tell this story?

We must continue our interviews with characters involved, including the reluctant (Oscar Zeta Acosta), or disappeared (The Body Doubles of Antonio Villaraigoza and Gloria Molina), or relatively unknown (Papier Mache Harry Gamboa). We muzst collate information from vast lost files of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines with site specific knowledge that proves the existence of anything we say, like photographs of stuff and holes. We cannot forget California Brittlebrush and Wild Rye and what do they have to tell us, it has to be asked.

Special Question #3b: How do you envision mapping your essay topic(s)?

We will map it out graphically on maps with related web page where people can go for more information, including downloadable PDFs of informative indoctrination and pamphlets or propaganda to get their heads oriented right. Cuz sometimes when we want people to view the materials we want it to change their lame-ass ideas, as one of our sources puts it. (We will change what they say to make it sound better or like more polite.)

Sincerely,

Sesshu Foster and Arturo Romo-Santillano
revumbio@yahoo.com

(Our work sample is available for view 24/7 on-line at http://www.elaguide.org, be sure to visit, for example, the People’s History Tour and download the PDF maps and click on musical and auditory links for the full effect.)

hello friends!!

juliette lee tagged me to be part of this wild zig-zagging self-interview process titled (somewhat unfortunately) the next big thing. i’d resisted participating but was lured by juliette’s invite, which is below (and which i pass along to you, from me, and mean every word of it!).

Right on 50

left on El Paso

Greek Orthodox Church

over the hill past the hill

Stop sign, left on Cleland

over the hill

T intersection

left, right on Rome

first intersection right,

stay right

dead end

Where & When
826LA in Mart Vista
12515 Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90066

dA Center for the Arts
252 D South Main Street
Pomona, CA 91766
Phone: 909 397-9716

ADMISSON FEES:

Admission is free for all visitors.

for more information see http://daartcenter.org/location.html

dA Center for the ARTS proudly presents
Recent Rupture Radio Hour on November 16th at 5 PM

The Recent Rupture Radio Hour is a fake
radio show performed for a real audience.
It’s a collaboration between Arturo Romo-
Santillano and Sesshu Foster, who act as
co-hosts of the program. Primarily
concerned with presenting hidden facts,
secret histories and creative bursts of
fiction concerning neglected and ignored
communities of Los Angeles, the show
takes its format from the traditional talk or
variety show, with opening banter by the
hosts followed by guests who interact with
the hosts or present work solo.
The Recent Rupture Radio Hour springs
from Arturo and Sesshu’s work with
ELAguide.org, a website dedicated to
treating and recognizing East Los Angeles
with both fact and fiction.

http://daartcenter.org/da_infor/event_flyer_3.pdf

CLOWNG DUMP

A.) Happy Crowd of Faces and Bodies

Pink face coughs up turquoise clouds and dust balls

Cleaved face allows direct looking into both of their eyes

The cleaved nature of their face means that skins of animals like gray squirrel and raccoon are the lining of their wounds (the inside part of their face)

Orange face, what orange on their face! Such cheer and good natured friendliness, a glowing orb chest

Ropes that look like twisted green, brown, red and yellow cloth are like borders around images, or snakes moving around them, but also like veins or roads or sinew

Some of them have been torn apart, those retain some of their cheerfulness but alarm also shows on their faces

“Wow, I’ve been torn apart, my natural state is to be devoured. You all should know that we spend most of our existence in a state of spread rather than a state of unity. Unity is brief”

Some might have grease stains on their embroidered clothing, capes, sarapes, tunics and shirts. Some of the shirts will be full of animals flying in all directions like cave paintings.

Some of the faces’ chests will be caves.

Some of them will appear to be wooden women and men; like their bodies are made of carved wood with multicolored sinew joints.

Some will have slippery and shiny skin, some will have skin that’s opened and full of pustules–their eyes will be open for you to look at them, or their skin will be made of eyes that will look at you

Some will have saffron colored handkerchiefs in their hands that they will stretch between their fingers, and their fingers will be stained green from holding and stretching the handkerchiefs

Many will have shades of sage grays under their eyes, like effluvium of glared vision sprayed out of their eyes

Many will have stone animals that they wear around their necks, others will be the things that others wear around their necks

Some will have fat rings of paint circling around their collarbones to their shoulder blades

Some will be painted bright colors, some will have bright colored skin

Some will have bleeding gums from disease or lack of care. These flares of pink and red will communicate smells

Some will wear bundles of bones and ochres, others will paint themselves with bone black and red ochre

Saffron, teals, oranges, vermillion, turquoise, corals, pinks, ultramarine, blueish whites, blacks, lime greens, simple greens, cerulean blues

Many will be disintegrating and incomplete. They will not ever complete themselves or their own meaning

Hair will vary greatly, most hair will be black or gray and straight or wavy

Some hair will be covered in clay, white clay or red clay

Some hair will have stamped images made with white clay by painting a design on their palm, then pressing the wet design onto straight hair

Some will have great jewelry made of silver shapes, some will have hard and sharp adornments and have their hands full of objects

Many will force you to look into their eyes or face until your own face comes into question

Some will have bent bodies, some will have straight bodies, some bodies will be run through with braided cloth in many colors, some of the cloth might actually be intestines dyed with plant stuffs like indigo, onion skin and madder root

Some of them will inspire some amount of terror because they will be the living manifestations of bodies ruined by violent acts

Others will be terrifying because they will be the living manifestations of what will happen to all of our bodies

Some will be terrifying because of our irrational fear of unpredictable behaviors, or our fear of irrational and unpredictable behaviors

Some will be so generous of spirit that they will give you energy to roam the room

Some will obviously be the hills of Los Angeles

Some will belong to the history of California

Some will have backbones as long as the continents

Some will recline across vast patches and tufts of land

Some will have hearts that open into yours

Some will be eating hearts

Some will split open, some will split you open

They will not be of a personal nature, or an allegorical nature, instead they will be of a gateway nature, one that allows one to pass through

Their attitude will be that of allowance, of invitation to take a step into

Some will have candles or lightbulbs, some will hold and light other types of lights

Some will sit in small burrows located inside others’ burrows

Some will have clothing that has folds where other clothing can be found

Most will be worlds unto themselves, hosts of all life

The room of their bodies and faces will be full of turbulence and stillness

No lyricism, no fanciness. Plain faced truth even if it doesn’t appear to be plain on the gross level, the faces will be easeful and presently plain

Some will sit and some will stand, some will be contorted by all types of things, boxes, caves, old age, deformity. The truth of bodies will be there for us to see

Some of their bodies will appear mechanical or wooden, some will be puddles on the floor, soft jackets of skin

Some of their skin will be radiant, some will be smooth and beautiful, others will have beautiful skin of eruptions

Some will have fur on their skin and the faces of animals

Others will have masks of animal faces or twisted faces

Some will hold metal things, rusting in their hands

Stains will be everywhere in the happy crowd of all kinds of faces and bodies

The faces will be serene in the happy crowd

The happy crowd will have endless depth and scale

The flatness of the depiction will speak to the essential limited view of our own perceptions, painted food and painted hunger

It will also speak to the abundant spaciousness of our connection with painted images, that our perceptions are a flat gate to real dimensional realities

1.) YOUR FACE WILL BE LIKE:

Clowns or spirit types, portraits, in large hi res photo prints, buffered with drawings, maybe ceramic objects.

Large portraits evoking large ideas of emotional states, obliquely referring to outdated and old iconography of lost traditions and inaccessible feelings. Hidden feelings, hidden cultures, all layed out through a manifesto of portraiture.

Sacred plants, foolish or contorted poses, layered clothing that hides the body or exaggerates it. Dirty or messy organic backdrops, enigmatic or ecstatic pointings to.

2.) Like gray blue plants, crisp and ashy

Like self regulating storms, building and ebbing, waving like fingered oceans

3.) I (my shivvering plant self) came out of an offshoot of the root of my rhizome, which has often used personae to establish and unhide dimensions of the fringe, dark connections/metaphysical connections unique to Los Angeles.

These connections include honoring the natural fibers of los angeles and the original aesthetic of the basin as cultivated and invented by the tongva people, harmonic resonances established, invented and amplified by thousand year projects.

Mestizo overlaying projects also created their own harmonics

The project in this context is an act of reclamation of an aesthetic value system, not traditional but living.

It’s also a clown project though. XXXXXXXX the past with its emphasis on cosmologies peopled with saints or supernatural presences, point to this new thing. It’s these personae that anchor the place that’s really the subject of the photo.

Sacred clowning, like sacred sainthood is an exalted place in human perception. Clowns occupy a frige space on the opposite side of the spectrum of saints. They’re dirty saints, creative and fecund. Getting into things , messing shit up.

The interrelatedness of them all make them a society. The individual attributes of each, often contradictory make them deities. “You can alway tell a god by their hilaritas” they have multiple attributes but maintain both sides if the “hilar” derivation being both full of hilarity and being hilarious.

Sacred clowning is a Native American practice. One power is that they are irrespective and sometimes disrespectful though not ignorant of power structures. They disappear, they reaffirm “no-soul”

These clowns challenge power by pushing through older harmonics, older perennial patterns. The power structure that down trods these patterns of life is non-living–while the fringe society that acts and re-enacts these works is more powerful than power structures.

“Funny Soul makes this world.”

4.) Risk of humiliation as clown is target of laughter. Clown cracks open people as zen master cuts off student’s finger. “Now you understand”

5.) Archetypical and can be consulted as a living embodiment of ancient human harmonics. A refined body language that enacts the symbiosis between human and non human earth.

6.) Outside Society: The clown is a representation of the egoless non participating human spirit–that which is apart from social convention, whose personality is unformed and ego undefined by the desires and reflections and self judgements triggered by society. Clown reaffirms existence of turbulence.

from http://www.revumbio.com/CLOWNDING/CLOWNDUMP.html

No, it wasn’t a mushroom cult. It’s that we lived in a dome, a
geodesic dome that we called the mushroom. I arrived after it was
built. It was acoustically perfect, had its own atmosphere.
Occasionally clouds would form in the highest lofts of the dome.

I experienced life in perfect remove. People passed by me, and their
words and movements were sparkling and real. I laughed at the
funniness of all of our hinged movements, elbows and knees, jaws
opening and closing. We all moved like funny animals, like wooden
creatures–animated by energy passing through us. Our feelings,
opining, statements, desires all passed through us and my perceptions
of the others passed through me–they were like abstract creatures to
me. At a certain point, I couldn’t really even understand what they
were saying, and I only recognized the timbre of their sounds, the
colored forms of their bodies and my own inner life worming, inching,
cycling, pulsing, firing and shivering.

I remember Eufencio, green always wore green. Straight up East Los
Angeles character, maybe his parents from the San Gabriel Valley
though? We were the only two from LA I thought, maybe I’m wrong. He
knew Liki Renteria, and we both witnessed strange weather–him a
tornado that almost killed him in 1992 and me a frog-rain in April of
that same year.

Our study center was about 120 miles outside of Rancho El Consuelo,
Sonora. No, there was water, little streams with birds, the bosque was
lavendar at night. We were a little ways away from the water. Stupid
people of the east coast United States, they think that the Sonoran
Desert has no water–or they can’t imagine that the desert could be
blister-hot and have water, both still water and flowing water,
lavender water and brown water. Water that reflected clouds and
reflected only blue sky.

Our routine was the same every day. We woke up at 4:30 in the winter
and 3:30 in the summer. There were teams, water team, building team,
vision team, waste team, of course the lazy-ass art team. We worked in
teams until 5:30, when we heated the water and made mesquite and rice
gruel–saffron yellow stuff. That and coffee, always coffee. Ironwood
fire in the darkness was so orange but disappeared in the light when
the sun and heat rose and gradually all you would see of the fire was
black wood and ash, even though you could hear it crackling! Couldn’t
eat too late or you would lose your appetite in the summer heat.

After breakfast, deep silence and Tensegrity practice in the Dome
until 10:00. At 10:00, we got back into teams and worked on our
projects, with Castaneda making rounds. We never ate lunch, only drank
teas from plants around us all day. “Water, Water, Water, Running and
Laughing Away.”

At the sun’s apex, we would begin sweating ceremonies which lasted
until sundown. One hour after sundown, we would light another fire and
begin making dinner. Usually vegetarian, something boiled or roasted
on a comal. Occasionally, we would have someone on the vision team go
out after dark and come back with a few rodents. Kangaroo rats come
out after dark. You throw a stick at them, heavy stick, kill them,
then put it on a stick, singe off the hair over the fire. Then, you
grind the whole body up into a paste, bones and all, really crush it
down. Add it to the gruel or roast it flat on the comal. Luiseño
style. When I got back to LA, even the radicals looked at me all
disgusted when I told them that. Ignorant people are never very clear
on the fact that we are bodies too, and that seeing a small body
crushed and ground is itself a reminder that we are both crystalline
structures and rotting flesh. The rat’s blue crystalline energy
illuminates my structure before moving on, just as its small
pulverized body passes through me. All these thoughts, my achievements
and creations are made of kangaroo rat, coffee and rice, datura, dried
anchos, grilled nopales, mesquite seeds, fire, ash, water, sunlight.

Image by Arturo Romo-Santillano

4A:

i was hiding from security forces official and unofficial in some leafless chinese elm type trees that were clipped and pruned to bare nubs and stumps, where presumably the nightblind forces would have difficulty locating me in spite of the lack of foliage, but the trees were crawling with fat pale ants, and the security forces trampled the terrain below in their search, radios and voices coming from all points, i thought maybe i could drop to the ground and make a run for it, that there was a border nearby for escape somehow (dont we always think that?)—(sometimes it must be true)—

Image by Arturo Romo-Santillano

6B:

walking across minimall parking lot to storefront that used to be variously (?) a curandero botanica fake doctor’s office, next door to actual doctor’s clinic of some sort, and/or “health food store” of the type mostly filled with “supplement” pill bottles, but was now vacant (probably, or partly) due to current economic disaster of economy, i walked through group of martial arts students, young people mostly hanging around the parking lot as night fell, they were chatting and smoking and waiting for what, i don’t know, mostly led, via strength of personality by late 20s tall strong woman of pronounced character, i left them all outside in the dark parking lot with traffic headlights going by the busy urban avenue, went into the empty storefront purposely (i don’t know for what purpose, but i had some purpose, that’s the way i always am, it’s a dull aspect of my personality that i always know my purpose, i go DO something)—the place was perhaps being used illicitly, but was unlocked, all fluorescent lights on doors wide open, shelving and discarded fixtures remaining everywhere, signs of recent vacancy, recent economic spiral downward, maybe i was going in to practice karate which i used to do for more than five years, but when i went in the back to check out the practice space, it was an abandoned doctors clinic full of gurneys, scopes and computer screens, beds and stools and cabinets full of doctor stuff, cartons, bottles, papers and everything in place, and a group of people had taken it over, vaguely affiliated with the martial arts group—perhaps the martial arts group was sort of a front, serving two purposes (as does everything in the world)—(to train these cadre)—because in the abandoned doctors offices a group of young anarchist computer hacktivists was attacking government and specifically pentagon and nsa computers. they were going about it all casually as if planning a picnic or setting a barbecue. they sent off some viral mechanism and waited for some sign it was breaking through the firewalls of the target. the computers abandoned by the failed doctor business began ticking with suspicious regularity, a sign something was happening. “i think it’s working,” somebody said. i didn’t think too much about who were these people, they accepted me because i was purposeful and didn;t question them and they were anyway unafraid. except that they were watching their computer screens waiting for a counter-reaction, a sign that their targets had targeted them. they casually, silently, prepared to leave at the first signal. (which might be security force vehicles roaring into the parking lot outside the back door. or more quietly, an alteration of the number pattern on the computer screen.)

Hi Everyone,

I spent some time today walking on York between Avenue 49 and Avenue
56, the experience illuminated. This is a work in progress, something
I wrote because even though I don’t have the language yet to respond
to the situation, I felt I should respond as best as I could.

To use a term I heard first from my friend Sesshu, the US suffers from
“apartheid imagination.” Chipotle, the burrito restaurant, recently
commissioned artists and writers to design a series of beverage cups–
not one of those commissioned was Latino… this is a place that
serves carnitas, burritos, guacamole! All non-whites are routinely
cropped out of the picture by the apartheid imagination. But the
imagination is flexible–the people who are excluded vary. MTV did a
study that found young people generally feel that racism is caused by
acknowledging and talking about race and that racism can be ended by,
in essence, “not caring” about race. In the case of this particular
form of blindness, other markers are used to designate who will be
excluded by the apartheid imagination. In the case of gentrification
in LA, white and non-white are not the only delineations, although
they still seem to dominate. Class and aspiration can also exclude
someone from existing in this imagination. Immigrants are not seen by
the apartheid imagination, working class people, blue collar workers,
and people who don’t aspire to the gentrified/boutique model of
consumption also are cropped out. People interviewed for articles on
gentrification routinely say things like “it’s so great that young
families are now moving into Highland Park.” when they mean to say
that young affluent families are moving into the neighborhood. This is
the result of wrong perceptions, wrong ideas–the apartheid
imagination is crippling to those who use it, destructive and
degrading to those who it means to exclude. The apartheid imagination
also happens to be the frame through which many gentrifiers seem to
define and construct their dreams.

Walking up and down York, I watched the aesthetics of each restaurant
and vintage shop that has been opened in the last 5 or so years. It
felt a little like walking through two different cities at once:
Highland Park, where I spent my early childhood and have spent almost
a decade as an educator, and York Valley, an offshoot of other cities
defined by niche and boutique business projects. The two cities exist
so distinct from one another that I felt like I was walking alongside
an accordion-fold book of which pages had been torn and replaced with
pages from another story, the oscillation between the two was
rhythmic, uneven and disorienting. The aesthetics of the new
businesses were part of this disorienting rhythm.

What is it that makes an aesthetic choice so divisive? What do the
shared aesthetics of these businesses (The York, Ba, Art Grist, Shop
Class, Hermosillo, Cafe de Leche, Town etc.) mean to their owners?
Their customers? The neighborhood? There is an obvious difference
between the “new” businesses and the established businesses in their
style. I think that the aesthetics, like earth tones and neutral paint
jobs, sans serif, vintage or ironic fonts in signage, and a shared
preference for modernist bareness, are signals to shoppers that these
places are going to be expensive to shop in. They also serve as
markers that connect them to the uniformity of this gentrified world
in other communities like Silverlake, Los Feliz etc.

This is important because maybe many people shop to define themselves–
where they shop is who they become. Because shopping is a statement of
who you are in a consumerist culture, you need to choose correctly to
maintain a particular identity. The aesthetics of signage and
decoration let us know which shop to choose.

Because they aim for exclusivity, the aesthetics may also tell certain
people that this store isn’t for them–that it’s too expensive,
doesn’t offer them what they need, or that they might be entering a
social situation where they could be patronized, objectified or
ignored. Maybe they say to us “You are now entering the Apartheid
Imagination”

I think there’s another layer to these aesthetic choices though. In
many stories I’ve read about gentrification, frontier or pioneer
themes come up. People who are considered gentrifiers have defined
themselves as “urban pioneers” or will insist that Highland Park was a
cultural “wasteland” before they got there. Or, there will be a
tendency for existing residents to be treated as part of the
landscape, “lots of Mexicans”… This mode of thinking draws from a
deep US mythology of the Frontier, where the frontier is the empty
land full of the promise of progress–increased wealth for the
individual and the nation. In fact, the idea of progress can’t exist
without the frontier in the US imagination. On York, the “frontier”
mythology is put into effect–in this case, the uniformity in look and
services these businesses offer act as clear markers… they’re
crystal clear signals that these businesses are not of or for the
existing community and also that they are part of a larger trend of
“progress” because they share an aesthetic and purpose with other
business across gentrified sectors of the city. Their aesthetics mark
them as outposts on the edge of the “frontier” and also tie them back
to more gentrified areas that where the frontier has been “tamed”.
Now, I don’t think the effects of gentrification are the same as the
effects of the US’ colonization and pillage of America, but the
mythology persists and is operationalized in the process of
gentrification–the mythology is obviously alive and a motivating
factor.

I walked down York and felt sad to see the social topography of
Highland Park split. One set of businesses out of reach for the
majority of its potential and local clientele and broadcasting the
fact out onto the street. It made me feel disheartened that the
apartheid imagination defined York based on the desires of a few
people rather than the needs of the larger community. That consumerist
“business as self expression” has trumped “business as service.” The
proliferation of vintage stores and boutiques that serve as
expressions and advertisements of their owners’ world view wilted me a
little.

My family came to Northeast LA from Mexico and Arizona about three
generations back. There is also a large community of first generation
or immigrants to the Northeast. To me, it’s not as much how long
you’ve been in any one place, but why you came to the place.
Immigrants and working people have moved to the Eastside because it
was designated to them through racist Federal and local laws that
forbade them from moving into “white” communities. A historic,
national rhetoric of violence, and local acts of discrimination,
intimidation and violence reinforced this apartheid system where
Highland Park and more accurately, the industrial Eastside, (like East
LA and Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights) were created as redlined
ghettos for immigrants and working class people. And though we were
marginalized and routinely pushed out of power, we persisted in place
and built cohesive communities and political presence. We did this in
the face of discrimination and oppression from all levels of
government and mainstream culture. The cities we live in were left
disinvested, abandoned and left unprotected from predatory practices.
Still, art groups formed, civil rights groups made changes, people
worked and survived and built from the core of a community that bases
part of its agency in a specific place.

The threat of gentrification is real because it threatens to disperse
this community cohesion that’s been cultivated over generations by
immigrants and working class people. It threatens our political voice
as working people and people of color because it threatens one of the
things that voice rests on, which is our community cohesion. Whether
we came here in this lifetime or have roots going thousands of years
deep, the power of community is a resource that working people need to
hold on to.

That’s all for now, any thoughts would be great!

—Arturo

Not sure if these links will work:

Apartheid Imagination:

Swirling:  http://atomikaztex.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/the-apartheid-imagination/

First mention of it I can find comes from Albie Sachs, in reference to
post-apartheid South Africa  http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=10614163030&searchurl=an%3Dalbie%2Bsachs%26amp%3Bkn%3Dspring

Chipotle:  http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/05/19/chipotles-short-stories-cups-have-no-latino-authors

MTV:  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/05/millennials_racism_and_mtv_poll_young_people_are_confused_about_bias_prejudice.html

Identity in consumerist culture:  https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

Forbidden White communities:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/

In a country whose institutions historically fail or deliberately
erase us, community constitutes a central pillar in surviving hetero-
patriarchal white supremacy:

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/08/gentrifications_insidious_violence_the_truth_about_american_cities/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow