CicLAvia Met South Central Today
And it was oh so beautiful.
</:)
South Los Angeles, California
People Watching in Los Angeles
/Looking away.
Larchmont Village/La Brea area; Los Angeles, California
Dear Duarte,
Thank you for being here. Thank you for showing up. If your education now is anything like mine was back in the day, then it’s tough to go to school and do the work sometimes. The toughest thing in the world, even. And truthfully, ‘tough’ only begins to describe it.
Some days –when I was in your shoes– getting up in the morning to face the day felt like the chore from Hades, making me Sisyphus. Even now I can still remember what it felt like when my uniform seemed too worn out for another day of periods one through six, or what it felt like when my hair seemed too off for me to show up alongside my classmates with it. Similarly, I can still recall what it felt like when my stomach was grumbling too loudly for me to hear a teacher instructing me about the day’s lesson, or what it felt like when nothing major was really wrong, but when I just wanted to put on my earphones and listen to some music instead of roll call.
Most of all, I remember how unfair it felt to have to show up anyway, despite these things. And yet every morning, there my mom stood, ready to take me to school before the bell for homeroom rang.
In the same way, as the day went on, there Mrs. Weiss stood, ready to offer her guidance through fractions, divisions, exponents, and more. I didn’t quite get it at the time, but both my mom and Mrs. Weiss had plenty of other things to worry about then too. They may not have been concerned with haircuts or uniforms, but their problems were just as vivid and pulsing as mine, and their lives just as complicated. And somehow, despite these things, they still got up each morning as well. Why?
Where to Start: The Mutterings of an Angeleno Out to Discover his Homeland; Morning Edition
I’ve found my trade and no matter what line of work I pick up over the next few years, I know what I’ll be doing on the side, while I prepare my platanos fritos for breakfast, as I wait for the train underground at Vermont and Santa Monica, and during the minutes before I go to sleep: I’ll be working on my stories. In fact, I’m already doing this, and I’ve been doing so since the moment I first picked up a pencil to write about the city of L.A., when it was a cruel place for a frustrated teenager such as the one I used to be not all too long ago.
Nearly ten years later, every other moment I don’t spend job hunting is a moment I spend researching the latest arrivals on the scene. Whether it’s a farmer’s market in East Hollywood, a free concert in Downtown L.A., arts and craft in Boyle Heights, food-trucks in Koreatown, weird and wacky meetups at Venice, or anything else in between or beyond, I’ll be there.