Wattsup

So a couple of days ago I read a neighborhood breakdown about Watts at LAist, which rightfully recieved a lot of flack. Personally I give the author "anti" some props, I welcome the cross cultural transactions that may occur when white (or non watts locals) intermingle in a community ostracized from general society and secured as a concentration of poverty for decades. As a muralist and community worker in South LA I have spent too much time simply explaining to kids that white or middle class people are not green skinned aliens filled with hatred towards them, a bit of positive interaction, in my personal experience, seems to undermine this prevailing sentiment (which is played out in reverse in enclaves of wealth as well). So good for "anti", he gets an offering of my personal hood pass (a joint of some good kush and my street cred) if he's ever willing to take it up and I have the time.  One thing that bothered me, during the response to angry comments was this:  but i dont see any other blog going to Watts even to just take ONE picture

If this is so then the blogging world is fucken lame and I must change this. Like many other aspects of proffessional american society, it seems as if the folks actually living the experience are left out of the picture:  barrio planning is the new big thing but god forbid any consulting firms hire too many planners from the barrio, movies and music from the ghetto are cool but 95% of any film crew are hipster whiteboys from orinda with coifish tattoo sleeves, and the bulk of blogs about the barrio are from white kids riding their bikes through the hood as if they deserve a medal of honor for doing so. Fucken bullshit.  The truth is these ghetto people/minorities are still seen as threatening to whatever pathetic establishment mentality folks still assume holds the earth under their feet together, but in reality these mud people ARE the goddamned ground from which they stand on and hold their balance. A lot of folks make up excuses about "technical training or capacity" , but if you set up a world class studio or planning program (or whatever) in Compton or El Sereno that shit would churn out products beyond the whiteboy asslicking junk that spews from our institutions to this day. The entire rich and generally blue blood anglo movie/music/art/hipster scene is now based on these priveleged proffessionally trained brats trying to be "kitschy" by living the poor hard ass life that millions of people exist in any day. But I digress....

So anyways, I work a lot in Watts and my family has a deep history in the area. I am not from there, I am from Boyle Heights and Eastlos, but I understand the shared struggle of having to hop fences when a house party gets shot up, or the humiliation of gangsters putting their hand in your pockets and there is not a damn thing you can do about it because no one is around or the bus driver is acting as if it aint happening. Those kind of insider perspectives are needed now, so I will give it.

Both of my grandparents first came to Watts during the 1930s, as the life of indian-mexicans in the southwest US did not provide much beyond being an outdoor maid to gabachos. From what I heard, Watts back then was pretty ethnically mixed, and many of the areas that abut rivers or are now housing projects used to be dilapidated shantytowns that were purposely razed in the 1940s/50s as part of urban slum clearance programs (the same happened to my old hood called the "flats" in Boyle Hts.). Sometime around the 1950s both sides of my mom's family "moved on up to the eastlos side" to the flatas, where many of them still live today.

One thing I love about Watts is it's layered history and artistic depth. When I drive through the area I either hear my abuela's old Mingus albums (which she used to see in jazz clubs on central, back when cops would set up road blocks to stop whites from entering, luckily she was brown) or that west coast beat origin anthem whose name I forgot ever since my Thump Old Skool Volume 8 cassette died years ago. You know the one, with the beat and chorus remade by Zapp years late in "more bounce to the ounce" and whose beat is the background to about 1/5th or all gangster rap songs ever made, it goes: "Califonia knows how to party, Califonia knows how to parrtay. In the citeeee of LA, in the citeee of good ol Watts, In the citeee, city of Compton, they pop lockin.....So rough, so tough, out heeeere baby, so rough, so tough, out heeere baby". Okay, so I'll stop being cheesy, I feel like one of the annoying mecko parque hipsters that I abhor now, but if anyone knows the song name or can send it to me I'd be thankful for days

The bulk of these photos were taken by me for an urban planning project I did on public housing, so they are kind of crappy. But my limited experiences with this area or the past decade has manifested several good stories.  The first time I went to a party in this area my homie monk was shot (RIP) by guys from Florencia while pissing in an alley behind the party, it wasnt their hood but they were looking for a victim.  In the ensuing chaos, no police showed up and a consortium of black and brown local gangsters got him to killa king hospital just in time to die. But I dont want to stereotype the area, we were shaved headed teens at a cholo houseparty thrown by gangsters, and my homeboy got caught by their enemies. Life sucks sometimes. On the flip side, I used to drop off one of one of the kids helping us with some murals in the Imperial Courts PJs, and I met many locals in the parking lots. I always had between $2-500 and never got robbed or even tripped on because they were all cool with me, even though the bullshit media claims blacks and mexicans hate each other round here. Totally false, this area is ground zero (beyond Duarte and Compton) for black-brown mixed race families, I even have some mixed cousins who lived nearby on Homes Avenue, that was the greatest barbecue EVER!

This area is also home to several interracial (or once) neighborhoods that defy the whole black/brown hateration stereotype, Namely Grape Street (13 and crips). It is also home to a vibrant music scene that has existed since the jazz era and now comes alive in rappers like glasses malone and jrocc. You can also find old folks playing checkers and dominoes at nearby watkins county park (of whom I made several friends and all about the community history and "sons of watts" genre, props to lewis from defiance street), little girls selling homemade perfume, and about 10,000 kids playing in front yard or communal sprinklers on any day when it gets above 84 degrees. Watts is a great place to live if you dont enthrall yourself in all the negatives, and is truly the exemplification of close knit community of folks who are truly proud of their neighborhhod. I remember being seriously inspired with the "no one will fix it unless we do from within" doctrine of reverand Rodney down by 103rd, which resonates in my head to this day.

And yeah, my camera sucks and some of the shots are from within my carucha. Call me a poser to my face and see how quick I drop you, I'm still a project kid leva (Aliso Village, y que?). This is just a taste of my trove of pics of the area.

You can find out more on Watts by getting off the blue line at Rosa Parks station and walking north along Wilmington, Comtpon or Mona your damn self. Hope you enjoyed!

by Art

Comments

[browne]

Great post Art. I have to say I chuckle a bit at your 1989 camera.

Do you know I'm banned from LAist owing to my bitching on that WATTS piece?

Seriously I'm banned, is that not some bullshit? Well that's obviously a rhetorical question.

I'm living proof of brown and black love. My father is Honduran and my mother is Nigerian....lol...ok that was really cheesy, but it's true...

Browne

[Art]

You were not banned for bitching, you banned for telling them the truth. I cannot count how many planning forums have tried to ban me for setting people straight, which sucks becuase it solidifies the stereotype that "they" (you know who I mean) can't play fair if their life depended on it. But yeah, that sux ass.

Coolio, my compadre (oldest son's godfather) is hondureno, and actually looks pretty much black. You dont know (or maybe you do) how much shit SGV cops in asshole towns like Covina gave us flack for driving thru their city together, I mean how dare we defy convential stereotypes!
We should send LAist this topic.
Thanks for the kind words, Im trying to get someone ot buy me a better camera since I just graduated from college.
And you dont want to see my 1989 camera, you have to wind it up and the flash gives you sunburn.

[Felipe]

the song you're looking for is Ronnie Hudson - West Coast Poplock. Nice site btw

[chimatli]

I'm glad you are making the attempt to dispel the notion that all black and brown people hate each other. Ugh, the media has been so simplistic when covering this "Black vs. Brown" war. If blacks and browns hate each other so much, then why are we always living in the same neighborhoods? It can't be due to just poverty. There are some real connections and lots of intermarriage going on in South LA. Not to say, stuff doesn't happen, cause it does but it happens between lots of other groups too. How come white folks don't talk about all the wars THEY started against Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people right here in Los Angeles?
Very nice post!

[EL CHAVO!]

Excellent post Art! This is the kind of stuff that has been missing from the LA blog world, real voices from those that really know the city, for it's good and bad parts. I think the problem with Anti's post was that though he didn't get out of the car, he also seemed to glamorize the gang culture, which is pretty easy to do when you don't live or work around it. The context is everything.

[e-vet]

i can relate to this post. as someone who live in south la and commutes to long beach for school (on the metro) i see this all the time.
i once had to do a a research project on my community and it amazed me how people would readily judge it without ever setting a rainbow sandaled foot in it

[BusTard]

I am as white as anyone can be—providing they ain't australian. (Having a sliver of scottish in me—to state the least—grants me but one white tier on which I might heap abuse, and lemme tell ya: "Bruce" and the eaters of sheep dip ain't much when one is truly indignant!)
But I know the Florence Ave. area (I have schleped more bins of newsprint from the Blue Line—and twice back, owing to the then-new rules of the bulk rate instituted by the PO way back when, than most angelinos have to convey when "walking" from the fat fucking house to their newly resized big-arsed bucket seat-laden SUV)and I can tell ya which of those lines can take you where, what with my intimate familiarity of the *11 line. (Seeing as I have spent more than a little time in Atlanta, Harlem, the Bronx and Okinawa in the small hours, I think I know about racial danger; I still wonder why some schmo such as "anti" thinks that he can do what he did from the upper-middle enclave that his half-baked arse happened to happen.) Moreover, I am not happy with the aforementioned area (churches? fuck that noise!) nor am I happy about the blatant neglect the MTA's waste by way of CBS/Decaux' ad revenue. (I have video and photos of $3 day passes that are to this very day present on the bus bench adverts along Florence as well as the questionable fashion of TransitTV on the Florence lines.)

Art, you are an angry writer, but you know what the fuck is up. I contend with your acknowledging "anti"—he is a schmuck who has no balls, brains nor the ability to even wield a crayon, as I have made clear many months ago on this very blog—but yer a better man than I, and I look forward to reading what you grant Browne's blog.
I just picked up another recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle, which means I plan to spend the next seven or eight hours taking in opera. Pardon em if I have been short, harsh or not entirely comprehensible.

[Art]

Orale, Bustard.

I agree with you, but I work for a state agency and have learned that angry mexicans get nowhere in life but heroin addiction and alcoholism(my father the example). So I tend to stray from outright shit talking lately, "they" tend to peg you outright when you get as angry and malicious as them.

And for the record, although I feel race is a big thing, I see no color in terms of people knowing what's up. When i tend to speak of "them" or whatnot I am not grouping all white folks in (or excluding uncle tom/tio taco minorities) one category, so I often use the term americans instead. Folks all up in the ignorant BS who claim "race isnt an issue" in defense of eurocentric stupidity. Folks like you counteract the stereotype most anglophilic americans are an example of, and i appreciate it greatly. from a project kid who had to literally whipped the sterotypes out of my head from a lifetime of mean white people.

[Jerard]

Hey Art,

What's up it's good to see you post these things. Eradicate bad stereotypes one post at a time.