And it was with you, Jesse.
J.T.
Los Angeles Was At its Finest Yesterday
Housing, Climate Change, California
Most Angelenos today can see that we’re at an historic juncture with the city, as housing is at the forefront of social issues facing Los Angeles and the whole state of California. I can appreciate my personal position within the dynamic: I’m 27 years old and still living at home with my mom, where the two of us halve the rent in a rent-controlled unit within an area that’s only recently been dubbed as “East Hollywood.”
The situation is precarious; like millions of Angelenos, my mother immigrated to the United States from south of the border in the 1980s with virtually no wealth in assets, and although in a few years she’ll be able to claim social security benefits and plans to apply for housing assistance based on her income, she also understands that there is virtually no guarantee she’ll be able to secure anything.
She is one of millions of Angelenas on the state’s MediCal system whose future is not exactly accounted for, and I’m one of a generation of millennials whose opportunity to build a home as it’s traditionally thought of is at an historic low. The question is obvious, then: where are people like my mother and I going, exactly? And in the case of a disaster, how could people in such circumstances possibly survive?
At the same time, during the past year the state’s wildfires and subsequent mudslide tragedies showed any Californians reading their papers how the fiscal and logistical burdens placed on the state by more extreme weather patterns are only growing dramatically in cost, size, and frequency alike. The events also revealed how regardless of where people fall on the income ladder, the state is largely under-prepared to help.
So then, where are all of us Californians going? One way or another, we’ve got to find out. Then we’ve got to share that information, and move on it, Los Angeles.
J.T.
Rock Steady Los Angeles
It’s 10:40 pm on a Thursday night, and I didn’t make it to the night’s writing circle, instead finding myself splattered in bed after a gracious nap which my body apparently needed. I woke up and rolled over to read a text from my friend, who said her favorite picture from the other night was the one I took of the Wiltern’s display menu, which on the night that I photographed it was featuring Kendrick Lamar, who was performing at the venue that very evening.
I then rubbed my eyes for a second, and thought about the photo-walk. I took a look at the pictures on J.T, and saw that my favorite was the first one, which was a photo of a mother and her son as they walked holding hands through the dimly lit streets of Koreatown.
The truth though, is that the whole series was my favorite. I went through about 178 photos to get to the 12 that I’d publish, which itself took hours of sorting long after the shoot, and when I finally selected the dozen, I edited each photo into the night, even as I knew I’d lose sleep for the next day’s work schedule.
Less sleep was worth it; it was a matter of survival: JIMBO TIMES’s survival, man.
As the month has passed and the year comes to an end, it’s become more difficult to devote and honor time to J.T.
If I’m not working, I’m eating after another day at work, and if I’m not eating, I’m lying on the floor somewhere, taking it all in. On the few days I get to myself, I fight for my art — for J.T., but it’s an incredibly demanding fight, and there are a million and one reasons to give it up and kick it to the curb.
The honeymoon phase is over, after all; people have heard of J.T., ‘liked’ it, and moved on. I’ve moved on as well from the initial phase, in my own way.
It’s not like last year when I was fresh out of college, and when I was just looking for a new foundation to immerse myself in as I rekindled life in L.A.
Today, I’ve got the foundations I was looking for, including my family, a solid group of friends and colleagues, and work. But now it’s a matter of keeping these things, and who knew it takes so much work to hold steady in a world that keeps moving, as if the wind itself is ready to whisk it all away the second we let go?
Who knew that every day is planting another seed for our dreams in a city that’s filled with them already, and which makes no guarantee that ours will be the exception to the endless waiting everyone else has to bear?
JIMBO TIMES is the seed, and the foundation that I fight for. No matter how worn down I might get along the way, every new day I stand up for it again.