Losing Los Angeles

AS I SEARCHED searched Yelp for the hours of a frozen yogurt place in Culver City that I always have wanted to try, I saw a comment that caught my eye. Yelp user Robert H. writes, “Culver City is officially gentrified.” Though this is an area I have frequented over the past two years, I admit that at one time the only thing I knew about Culver City was the Fox Hills Mall which before the remodel, I was told, was not a good area.

On the surface, it’s hard to believe that gentrification is not always positive as it results in the cleaning up and modernizing of areas. For example, I live in an apartment complex in Playa del Rey that I love. It’s new, has wonderful amenities and is close to the beach. Yet recently I learned that my own area was a center of gentrification and many people were unhappy about this change.

Looking deeper it makes sense. Bringing in popular chain restaurants pushes out small family-owned restaurants. Building large infrastructures changes the view that residents loved about their home. Tearing down old apartment buildings to make space for new ones removes thousands out of rent-controlled apartments.

Although these changes may be good for some, mostly the more affluent, what happens to the rest of these Angelenos? After being kicked out of their homes and losing their neighborhood, they are forced to move somewhere that is often dramatically smaller and further from everything they know because they can no longer afford their area. Gentrification also means that Los Angeles is quickly losing its character and history. By ridding L.A. of establishments and housing that show the real L.A., we end up with track homes and apartment complexes and a general world that all looks the same. Yet, as someone who lives in a gentrified area and frequents Culver City establishments, I’m certainly not the poster child for saving historic L.A. But I am one citizen who is starting to see that I don’t want to lose the things that I love about my city.

-- Emily Day

(photo caption top: "Art Tower," Hayden Tract, Culver City, photo credit, lavocado; bottom caption, "Ghost Phantasim -- "Boo Yuppies" Traction Avenue, Omar Omar flickr creative commons)

One Stop: Pain, Joy, Wanderlust

SINK DEEP ENOUGH into Los Angeles and uncanny vibrancy will arrest the mind with outlandish fantasy. Curiosity pulls one deeper into the unforeseen. The depths of this rabbit hole mystify and the marvel of discovery compels one further. Down the quiet Washington corridor of Culver City the stylized neon beam of a Victorian crown welcomes curiosity—the Royal/T presents its guests to the splendor of the L.A. art scene. Culver City’s manga-spliced J-pop anomaly housed “The Never Ending Story: Fairytale, Fantasy, Obsession” exhibit on the fourth. New York-based curator Laura Hoptman designed a space where the mind-altering aesthetics of surrealism, an acid-trance through “Alice in Wonderland”, and the animated silliness of Akihabara culture could legally find its way into the imagination.

Elegant hors d'oeuvres were balanced by tiny Japanese women dressed as French maids who made their precarious rounds through the evening’s frenzy of “wonderland” cos-players and art house junkies. Stylized blank smiles followed trays of unpronounceable French delicacies as they presented themselves to multi-faceted crowds of “Alice” impersonators. Each costume featured a personal Goth sensibility—pale blues, matte-black lace, and death metal eyeshadow accented curious conversations throughout. This mob of steam-punk psychedelia bridged the boundaries between the life in this L.A. art scene and the contorted displays of surrealist abominations decorating the walls.

The old-world class from steam-engine romances was celebrated in the hand-crafted collections of Jared Gold. A corner of the Royal/T was devoted to the designer’s rich composition of contrasting pastels and 19th century luxury. Gold blends history and modern ideals into a signature—his stylish sense of nostalgia seems to recreate the romantic notions of individuality and expression.


Anthropomorphic phantasms from the most primal reaches of Wangechi Mutu’s day-dreams frolic and haunt the walls of the Royal/T. The divine dreariness of a purgatory creates a space of uncomfortable self-reflection in Mutu’s “Your Story, My Curse”. This mixed media cerebral assault invites the psyche to relive past jealousy, lust, obsession, and fruitless romances. It’s a living nightmare that no one wants to leave. Mutu’s color palette is deceiving—brilliant patterns scattered across each figure recall Gustav Klimt’s charm, but their appeal undermines the menacing drama and growing tension running through the canvas.

Susan Hancock has spent the last ten years bringing together a culturally diverse cast of contemporary artists into a respectable collection of eclectic style. She has spent the last five owning and operating the Royal/T as a means of immersing herself deeper into the art world. The pieces of her collection on display at the Royal/T represent the human facets of suffering, vulnerability, wanderlust, joy, pain, and love in a vibrant dreamscape of vivid ferocity. The fortunate wandering souls that make their way into her gallery have the opportunity of traveling through unique visions—those projecting an aura she takes to, may even have their spirit cards read.

This city grows curiouser and curiouser. For those looking to appreciate the space royal-t.org has everything. The show will continue its outlandish parade through August fourth and can be followed on Twitter and Facebook at RoyalTCafe.

-- Jesse Alvarez
(photo credit: jslander, flickr creative commons)

Sense Memory: The Mid-morning Snap

THERE'S A QUALITY of morning light in Southern California where you can almost feel the increasing intensity of brightness in the mornings. It is the sibling of that late afternoon time known by photographers and filmmakers as The Magic Hour, the hang time between sunset and dusk where the quality of light is both bright and indirect, often orange and blue bleeding its last ember of watercolor brightness into evening. But it's morning sister is more ephemeral, fluid, a flash-paper of heat and light that lasts only long enough to evaporate the dew and charge the cool morning air. It's the first tickle of a warm day getting itself up to speed. This is the Mid-Morning Snap.

Two blasts of a horn, two or three metallic reeds bleating out of tin cones atop the van, and the Helms Bakery Truck compliments The Mid-Morning Snap of my childhood. Twice a week the pale yellow box-on-wheels with blue trim would park itself on the corner of our block delivering fresh breads, donuts, and custom cakes to the housebound homemakers of Southern California. Drifting down the path from our apartment building to the curbside wagon, the honeysuckle air of The Mid-Morning Snap would mingle with a scent I would forever only call crust. The Helms Bakery Truck smelled like warm, brown, hearthy crust.Standing near the open doors, I would wait for driver to open the wooden drawers that held within them the various baked goods so fresh from the Culver City bakery that they were still warm. Inhaling these smells was how I learned to distinguish a good donut from a bad without having to taste it. A steamy aroma of fresh oils that was anything but heavy, it was the promise of lightness and cakiness and spongey yeastiness, an education is baked goods that bypassed the tongue because my mother would rarely by anything but the most basic loaf of bread.

The truck itself was the one vehicle most like the toy trucks I played with. Its utilitarian design stood out from the clean lines of American cars and the curves of Volkswagen beetles that surrounded it. Later in life I'd have pangs of Helms truck memories whenever I saw seaside fish-n-chip trucks in British films, another boxy vehicle that promised nourishment from the faint whiff of cooking oil in the air. As housewives began to buy into the corporate supermarket ideal, the trucks disappeared and with them the promise of something good in the air. Without warning or notice,The Mid-Morning Snap became nothing more than a transition, easily missed once we were in school and caught up in learning to write cursive. It was a sensation that disappeared with the last Helms delivery trucks in the late 1960s.
-- David Elzey

photo credit, top, helms bakery district
middle: curbside delivery, tlc, picasa
photo credit, bottom, reseda bear, flickr, creative commons