Make Virgil Avenue Feel Safe for Families Again: A Note for Sqirl, Melody, and every White-owned Business Along Virgil Avenue

I know I’m not alone in feeling like I’ve been able to breathe a sigh of relief over the last few months when walking past Virgil avenue and Marathon street, where the so-called Sqirl restaurant is located. Given the protocol to socially distance, Sqirl’s reduced services have meant a slight reprieve for more than a few local pedestrians from hordes of strangers, overwhelmingly white, whose clustering at the intersection often literally embodies another white wall encroaching upon another once-predominantly immigrant neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Before L.A.’s stay at home orders, the restaurant’s lines were a frequent reminder for local immigrant communities of just how many people in Los Angeles could still afford more than $15 on a salad, even while on the same block families struggle to make $15 an hour to keep up with the rising cost of living each year in increasingly home-starved Los Angeles.

At the same time, despite the absence of Sqirl’s lines, so much as passing through the area still imposes a mental tax on long-time residents due to the mental prospect of further displacement by only more boutique shops, more wine bars , and more white patrons, who collectively create more anxiety for a growing number of non-white bodies in our community. Even a visit to Rick’s Produce, which is across the street from Sqirl and owned by Latinos, can still feel odd for Brown folks in the area nowadays, most of all because of the white bodies that frequent Sqirl, Rick’s, Melody, and the other strange, white spaces nearby where white people can easily spend twenty dollars on a smoothie, a handful of avocados, or an “horchofee,” which is horchata mixed with coffee, according to Sqirl’s menu. 

“White people are exhausting. That’s what they do, exhaust others, exhaust resources, exhaust themselves in their obsession with dominance. Whiteness is exhaustion.”

Dana White, Twitter

This makes it so that even if Brown folks nearby can appreciate Rick’s Latinx ownership, not to mention the shop’s support for small business farmers, the encroaching white wall still seems to close in on the shop, making it so that the only time you’ll see Brown folks lining up for Rick’s en masse is when the store gives the produce away, as in, without discrimination, the way it’s done with the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council the last few Sundays. Bravo, Rick’s!

The rest of the time, walking into the shop tends to feel like it’s a place where white patrons are the true customers that the shop’s succulent, yet pricey fruits and veggies serve. At the very least, the space feels contested, as the overly bright specs of Sqirl across the street remind Brown bodies. Standing in line at Rick’s for a smoothie the other day, I asked myself:

“Is my money really good enough here? Or is supporting any new business on Virgil supporting my own displacement, or the displacement of my people?”

If memories of 1992 still ring fresh in the minds of many Black and Latino residents through South Los Angeles today, then for Latinos along Virgil avenue so do memories of a humbler, more sustainable way of living in the area before the onset of white wealth. In other words, for many long-time residents, whiteness just got here, and it was only the other day that the area wasn’t as heavy with chic stores, or galleries, and the awkward placement of those stores and galleries, and this great white silence as more such spaces proliferate on top of the area’s historic immigrant culture.

Consider that the former Super Pan Bakery on Virgil avenue, owned by Doña Elvia and her family, was the last panaderia standing along the avenue for residents in Virgil Village, offering bread, tamales and more for residents at less than $5.00. When in late 2018 the bakery was displaced in a deal with some new developers in town, it was made clear to the community that Doña Elvia’s only fault was having migrated to Los Angeles without the privilege of whiteness and white wealth to her name. 

In 2019, a small bagel company based out of Silver Lake took the reins to Super Pan’s former space, adding to the further whitewashing of Virgil avenue, and demonstrating how violence against non-white communities is not just inflicted during the literal disembodiment of Black and Brown bodies at the hands of police, but also in the repeated trampling of Black and Brown cultural hallmarks, including their homes, their bakeries, and more for the erection of white-owned, white-catering thoroughfare. If the new Bagel shop’s owners set up tables for the shop along Virgil avenue, do they even know how much further they’ll be hemming in little Brown kids and their families nearby?

If, as city budgets across the nation reveal, whiteness wasn’t so invested in hostility towards Black and Brown bodies, perhaps all their new brands entering Black and Brown communities wouldn’t have to be a big deal. But Super Pan’s displacement for the sake of another more posh, more white bakery is only the latest example of whiteness equaling the displacement of Brown bodies. So let it be clear: whiteness along Virgil avenue isn’t just a privilege. It is a continual pressure on Black & Brown folks spatially, socially, and psychologically. This Side of Hoover has documented this process for years.

On the other hand, the movement for Black Lives is calling for an end not only to police violence, but for an end to white supremacy in all forms. This makes it so that Black & Brown communities everywhere can only further consider and call for what we want from our tax-dollars, from our schools, from our neighborhoods going forward, and more.

WHAT TO DO (THE RIGHT THING)

Here’s one picture I know I’m not alone in no longer wanting to see through my neighborhood and that of my people’s: the racism permeating along Virgil avenue like a rotten stench, wreaking most heavily from Sqirl’s overbearingly white, classist lines, which are not just offensive, but which create anxiety for our communities, especially in the heightened police state through Los Angeles. If Sqirl, and Melody, and each of these newcomers insist on staying, however, as indicated by the former’s recent expansion, then it’s time to diversify patronage and increase access for the surrounding communities, whose backs the “Virgil Village” has been built on for decades.

Consider just a few ways that Sqirl and other new business nearby can show up for their neighbors:

1. Offer healthy, pre-made, carryout meals at different prices for patrons with different budgets. This is literally already being done at Everytable in South L.A. After all, if the owner at Sqirl can afford to expand the restaurant and open more chains, what is it to break even in supporting a major segment of the neighborhood where it’s based?
   
   
2. Donate meals to the local community or nearby farmers, not just to “restaurant-workers,” which overlooks labor from farm-workers and their families. At Zambrero restaurant, their Plate 4 Plate program sees to it that select items purchased from their menu donate a meal to underprivileged communities nearby; what better way to show some gratitude to the families of folks who pick the juicy greens and avocados that make their way to Sqirl’s kitchens and grocery stores all across Los Angeles?
   
   
3. Partner with the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council to get meals to children, moms, and the elderly close by. Because if Plate 4 Plate seems a little too far out there, I’ve got evidence that one local organization is more than ready to serve the community in a fruitful partnership. Find that evidence HERE.
   
   
4. Offer student discounts, or even prepaid “family passes” for students and families nearby, year-round. In other words, ACCEPT EBT CARDS. Because what can be more inclusive than literally ensuring that your neighbors know they’ve got a special seat at your tables when they’re up for it? Isn’t that what inviting Wah’s Golden Hen owner Lena Louie to lunch was all about? Not including LACC’s student body, I can think of many students and families nearby who would appreciate such passes, and who deserve them.

SERIOUSLY, THINK ABOUT THIS (OUR LIVED EXPERIENCES MATTER)

In the days following national mobilization against the police state led by Black Lives Matter, the movement’s insignia became an overnight sensation. In the Virgil Village, signs of “BLM” support could be seen on white gentrifences, on white storefronts, and in those stores’ hashtags, purportedly in solidarity with the fight for Black dignity in this country. Let this note thus serve as an article of solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and people of color everywhere fighting all forms of violence, including displacement from our neighborhoods because we know–as in, we’ve seen for lifetimes–how displacement is intrinsic to this country’s cycle of violence against our bodies.

And since white folks throughout Virgil Village and Silver Lake have stated their support for Black Lives, it’s clear that because so many of them are occupying space in predominantly immigrant communities, their support for racial justice needs to extend to neighboring immigrant families, who build, serve, clean up, and allow these neighborhoods to live and prosper, even as their livelihoods are at greater risk each day in the current political environment.

Along Virgil avenue, such support means making and holding space for the mamas, papas, abuelitas and the rest of the familia with a few simple, practical ideas to apply now. Don’t lament over its call out. Play your part to Make Virgil Avenue Feel Safe for Families Again.

J.T.