I Love My Town

I love my city. With all its thriving communities and blighted corridors, sparkling cultural jewels and makeshift hidden gems, sunshine filled idealism and bipolar political realities the City of Los Angeles is my native land and I refuse to call another jurisdiction my home.  

The incorporated City of Los Angeles squats on nearly 500 square miles of land with neighborhoods and districts at either end baring no resemblance of each other. The neighborhood of my youth was South Los Angeles, an area often mistakenly referred to in entertainment industry terms as “South Central L.A.” I now call Eagle Rock/Highland Park home, the community my wife’s family has called home for 65 years.

So by L.A.’s terms I am a transplant.

Mash together Eagle Rock and Highland Park into a single description and you might rightfully be setting yourself up for an argument about the differences between the two neighboring communities. I take license for lumping them together because they are inextricably bound by a shared City Council District and my precinct sits squarely on the line that divides one from the other. My bride, upon seeing the map of Council District 14 during the election this Spring, shook her head and said, “You’re kidding me, right?” If you take umbrage with my consolidation perhaps you should take it up with the California Citizens Redistricting Commission—currently doing a listening tour in Southern California—Los Angeles County’s Boundary Review Committee, or the City of Los Angeles’ yet to be announced Citizens Reapportionment Committee.

Over the coming months it will be interesting to see the lines that define our land redrawn with such precision that they will appear to be sketched by the hands of infants. How true the districts are formed will be left in the so-called impartial hands of folks who will feign ever hearing the word “gerrymandering.” I, like you, will watch with a shaking head as Northeast Los Angeles will be poured into a cauldron populated with areas and Angelinos with whom they share both so much and so little. It isn’t so much that it is what it is but that it will be how it shouldn’t.

What I enjoy most about the duality of considering each side of the hill home is all that the conjoined area is and offers. One morning of the week I can tuck myself away with Eagles in a corner of on Colorado Blvd., plug in, and peck away at my keyboard as students, soccer Dad’s, the self-employed and the self deposed nosh and chat. On another morning I can sit in a booth at on Monte Vista Street chatting with Panthers of yore while I wait for the empty pot I carried in to be filled with piping hot menudo to enjoy later on my patio or even my front porch. On any day of the week I can count on meeting a Falcon from my wife’s cherished St. Ignatius of Loyola Elementary School.

I love my city and, more importantly, I love my neighborhood. I look forward to sharing my thoughts about it and us through this blog.