bootleg nation: gentrification bluez

1.
SATURDAY NIGHT, ROOFTOP BENEFIT SHOW, DOWNTOWN L.A., MEZKLAH AND AZTLAN UNDERGROUND PERFORMING

(Annoying, drunk white hipster girl in clone-clump of smoking, asymmetrical hipsters (far away from stage, friends of other building residents, not here for the show)):
“Hiiiiii! welcome to ‘our' party!!!”

Me, walking past:
“What'd the white girl say? Whose party?”)

Later, sitting on the roof with LN and J, waiting for the music to start, talking about gentrification.

LN:
“What I want to know is, where are they coming from? Where do they get their money? Who are these people?”

Me:
“San Francisco, places like that. They did the same thing there first, priced out the whole Bay Area and so all the hipsters moved down here when it was still cheaper. Silver Lake, Echo Park. Now Boyle Heights.”

J:
“I think they're like Midwesterners or something, too. I've been all my life in El Sereno. Recently I saw this white guy buying a taco on Huntington Drive, and I was so fuckin upset to see that. I was like, What the hell are you doing here? And now I see them in Antigua Café all the time. It pisses me off. What are they doing there? Just gonna make it all the same as everywhere else.”

Me:
“It's the new wave of colonization, it's the same ongoing shit, man. They provide all these incentives for them to come here, it's a kind of emotional/psychological/economic support system designed just for them. But you know what drives me nuts is how they market it all, they build loft spaces from scratch and then market them as fancy, expensive ‘Artist Lofts.' They're selling this image, this proximity to a certain lifestyle—to life . They say, buy this shit, and you can be like an artist, like a creative person, like somebody who is actually alive and creating and not just dead and wandering around sucking up life and consuming, expending waste products. And meanwhile, all the real artists leave, all the families leave, all the alive people leave. Because they can't afford it. Because now it sucks, it's empty, ugly, hideous, and they want to get away so they can hold onto their humanity. It's just an updated version of, like, in the early part of the 20 th century, when they seriously promoted the region to Midwesterners to get them to come out here. And it worked, they managed to shape it a huge chunk of it in their image, and what they ignored back then, they're now zeroing in on to finish off. It's a serious import/export system. They import homogeneity, Jamba Juice, shitty architecture, inane conversation, shallow, meaningless life ‘styles'—and they export undesirable elements, anything that looks feels sounds tastes smells like life living . They're bringing in a certain kind of citizen, and it's one that is for the most part ready and willing to reproduce and clone itself to infinity to fill in the nice, comfortable tombs being prepared for them. Last time, they marketed fruit orchards, sunshine, and then nice, clean, new suburbs away from city life. Now they market ‘edgy,' urban pseudo-artist lifestyles, because that is what sells, because that is all that they have left available to sell now—all the bombed out inner cities they abandoned to create their suburban product back then. Never mind that you are a dead, empty husk of media images and software preferences. It's all the same shit. Fancy, expensive tombs for all the scared shitless zombies who are so afraid to live, they would rather take out a mortgage on a million dollar condo to hide away in until the body finally gives out, then actually take a real risk and live.”

LN:
"You know, I remember thinking in the early and mid-90s that things were really starting to coalesce, you know? Brown strength was growing in this city. The numbers were expanding, the power base was growing in different ways. Arts, activism, labor. I don't mean to sound like a conspiracist, but jeez, man, it seems like that's exactly when all this stuff started to happen to pave the way for the kind of development we're seeing now. What we need is another big earthquake, more uprisings. Weed out all these people. I mean, where are we supposed to go, anyway?”

Me:
“I don't know, the Inland Empire? And you know, actually, that's why there's really great stuff happening out there right now with activism, arts, organizing. It's not unrelated.”

LN:
“Yeah, that's cool. But man, I grew up here. This is my home . I've got serious problems with L.A., but I don't want to leave.”

(Later, end of night, same annoying, drunk white hipster girl:
“Awww! are you guys leaving ‘our' party????”)

2.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON MATINEE, THE SIMPSONS MOVIE, VISTA THEATER, LOS FELIZ

Loud, annoying, immediately disruptive White Hipster Boy:
“Excuse me, but we have six people, and there's only five seats on this end, would you mind just moving over one seat?”

Me:
“Yes, actually, I would mind.”

WHB:
“Oh, great, tha—oh, you do mind?”

Me:
“Yes, I do mind. I'm just standing cuz I was about to go get some popcorn, and I'm picking up my bag cuz I was going to put it in my seat. So, you know, nobody steals it.”

WHB to White Hipster Girl (with snotty, sarcastic attitude; sense of expectation/entitlement severely disrupted):
“Huh. He does mind.”

WHG (to other people next to us who didn't mind moving—loudly, so everyone can hear):
“Well thank you for being so generous and considerate and offering to move…”

J (to Me):
“Thanks, I didn't want to move either.”

Me:
“Yeah well, you know, maybe if it wasn't for all the, like, I don't know…gentrification, colonization, genocide, sense of entitlement, privilege, superiority complex, bad fashion, you know… maybe I… might consider it. Maybe .”

J:
“You know what, I don't know any body who would even do that shit. You just don't do that. We would just find other seats, or sit separate, or whatever. You come in late, you don't go around expecting everybody else who got here early and stood in line and shit to get up and move, especially with a big-ass group like that. I mean, come on, six people ?”

Me:
“Yeah, what the fuck? What do you need to sit six people next to each other for, anyway? What, they all need to jerk each other off or something? And then , they want us to move to worse seats. You know what? I'm already on the edge of the center, fuckers, and now you want me to go even more to the side. This is the only theater where I can stretch my long legs out without having to sit at the end. Fuck them.”

J:
“They just walk in everywhere with this sense of, like, of course everybody's gonna move or do what we want.”

Me:
“Right, that's why they're so surprised when you say no, I would mind.”

J:
“And then they're all, ‘Oh thanks, you're so cool,' to the black guy and his date next to us cuz he was willing to move. Like, oh, you're the good minority, not like that asshole.”

Me:
“Yeah but I bet he felt similar to how we did. But we just automatically always say, ‘Oh, hey, no problem pal, do whatever you want,' cuz everybody knows that's what they expect, and nobody wants to cause problems and get the guilt laid on them of being the asshole in the situation.”

J:
“Which means, really, turning it back on them and pointing out how they're the real asshole here. I mean, I would have just said yes and moved, but I would have been pissed at them, and pissed at my self for doing it and not saying anything. That's why I looked at you.”

Me:
“Oh, yeah, right. Cuz we all know what an asshole I am.”

J:
“Ha ha. Yeah. Fuckin asshole!”

Me (pointing to a Latino family down front trying to find seats together):
"See now, there—I would totally move in a second.”

J:
“Yeah, and you know why? Cuz they wouldn't ask you to, and even if they did, it wouldn't be with this feeling of expectation, it would be sincerely just asking, not demanding. They would just be looking around like right now with their kids and shit, and you would see them looking around, and you would just offer it. They wouldn't walk in all demanding something from everybody immediately.”

Me:
“Yeah, exactly. They're the family, they're the gente, they have the right of way here with all their kids at this cartoon movie on a Sunday matinee, I mean come on. With the fuckin gentrifiers, it's that sense of superiority, expectation, entitlement. No humility as equal human beings, not asking, but instead, demanding , like you said. It's all about, I walk into a space and it's my space. Not, we all walk into a space and it's our space, together…”

J:
“Yeah.”

Me:
“Hey—stop eating all the popcorn, the movie hasn't even started yet!”

J:
munch munch munch.

(on our way back from the movie, this guy in a little white MR2 speeds past me at about 70 miles per hour on North Figueroa and plows into the back of another car, the guy on his cell phone even after he hits the other car, still with the phone to his ear, right there on that curve right before Avenue 50, after the park, dangerous spot, and when the victim car stops, this tough Chicana jumps out of the passenger seat immediately hey what the fuck man, what the fuck you doing, and a bunch of people already standing around and outside that big apartment complex right there several people already with the cell phone video cameras whipped out recording, one guy thinking the MR2 guy is about to leave shouting out HEY HEY HEY and making sure the guy can see the camera is rolling, and pretty soon, tons of people all over gathered around to see, and I'm like, “Dang, I think we were almost meant to be in that accident, that dude came up right on my ass and swerved to pass me in the other lane and that's why he hit that other guy.” And J says, “Yeah, I saw you watching something and slowing down, I was wondering what was going on…”)

3.
WATER—BOOTLEGS—GANGSTERS—MOON

Later that same night, just up the street from the little white MR2 accident, we were filling up J's water bottles at a water shop in Highland Park, across the street from the Food-4-Less. Twenty-five cents a gallon. Open 24 hours. Next to the shop is a big laundrymat. Driving up, I noticed how everybody was still out in the streets, walking around, kicking it, eating ice creams, tacos, sick heat all day finally cooling off. Fine older cholas in tank tops, thugs in cutoffs and chanclas, tattoos, little kids running around. The laundrymat was full. I said, “Damn, this place is happening , we gotta come here!” J laughed. “No, for reals ,” I said. “This is the spot!” Then, as we were loading the bottles into J's car, I heard some oddly familiar sounds and music. In front of the laundrymat, a big gray SUV, wide open, all the doors flipped out, back window flipped up, bottom laid out, a giant, fat beetle with all its wings flapped out, just chillin, cooling off in the night breeze, pouring pirate movie sounds out into the parking lot. “Hey,” I said, “It's the fucking Simpsons movie, they're watching The Simpsons in that SUV!” J listened for a second and laughed. “Ha! that's great! Hilarious!”

Then, back up the hill on the Avenues, we sit out on my car and look at the not-quite-full-anymore moon between some palm trees, fresh tags on the wall in front of J's apartment, munching on Flamin' Hot Cheetos with Limón. She tells me about some of the high school boys she's working with, how it's hard to reach them when they've reached a certain point of cynicism and nihilism. One boy is a tagger, smokes pot every day, bored, cynical. She's talking about taking him to an art store, buying him a sketch pad, some supplies. She loves working with them, but sometimes it feels hopeless. “Yeah,” I say, “but you're just one person. You do what you can. What we need is support networks, community spaces, places where you could take a kid like that and turn him on to some active shit. Like Johnny's space out in Santa Monica, the Pico Youth Family Center. They've got a recording studio in there, computers, counseling, graffiti art. Imagine if they had something like that where this kid lives, and you could take him there, help him plug in.”

We talk about gentrification, how it's the gangsters and proto-gangsters who are on the frontline, the first direct attack by the state, harassing, profiling, getting the youngsters documented into the system as soon as possible in preparation for juvenile and then adult detention. How the state sets up a situation where the only visible alternative is to send in the cops with the gang injunctions, how they set up this dichotomy of the “bad” gangsters and the “good” families. Like all these families live in one apartment or row of houses, and then the gangsters all live in separate gangster houses and apartments. Like they don't come from those same families. Like they're not all connected.

“But in the end, of course, what happens is that they're really clearing the way for the gentrifiers to move in eventually, getting rid of the gangsters and their families,” I say. “That's why all the gang injunctions and ‘crack-downs' in Boyle Heights right now and other places like that. They did the same shit in Echo Park.”

J says, “Yeah, but you know, I remember when I was younger, still living back home, there was this one cholo who lived on our street, and I remember feeling so mad cuz they were starting to do drive-bys on my street because of him. I thought, any of us could die, because of him, my nephew, my nieces, my mom. And I wished that he would just leave. I never thought about ratting him out to the cops, but I did think about ratting him out, you know? To the ones who wanted to get him? I feel really bad about it now. But it's hard.”

“Yeah, yeah, for sure. No doubt, I'm not trying to romanticize gangs or anything,” I say. “Just trying to connect the dots, find other ways. It's hard.”

4.
SLV—ANARCHY—SPECTACLES—SEE

One of the funniest, most complex and brilliantly composed texts/images/political statements that I've seen in L.A. was on a wall in south Silver Lake. At the time, I was living there by the 101, and there were mad turf wars going on. Every morning there was fresh graffiti.

Anyway, what I saw was a short, “political” graffiti message followed by a circle-A anarchist symbol. I don't remember the message, but what blew my mind was that the message, and symbol, were scribbled over with a single crossout line and an SLV Silver Lake Varrio tag.

Recently, I was thinking about Nike's “Just Do It” trademark, how it was originally a Situationist slogan that helped spark the '68 Paris uprising. And now it sells sweatshop shoes, and so much more.

In Highland Park, on York, there is an eyeglass store called “Society of the Spectacle.” They sell Ray-Bans there.

In the 1980s, I remember Ray-Bans were the hot shit to get. I wanted them badly, those bug-eyed kind with mirrored lenses and little leather pouch things around the side. They were made for skiing, a strange, alien activity that played absolutely no role whatsoever in my life, nor in the lives of my friends and family. I remember my dad got me some knock-off ones at the flea market. I don't remember much beyond that.

(In the evening, L calls and says, “Hey, chonch, are you awake ?”

Because this is our standard greeting.

Because this is our daily reminder.

Because I open my eyes
blindness
I get a new prescription
blindness
I open my
blindness
I look for the
blindness
look for the living
blindness
I look for the vision
blindness
love hope desire
blindness
I am moving I am in motion
blindness
it is the I it is the opening by I
blindness
it is looking out from the I
blindness
it is a composite I like a fly's mosaic
blindness
fragmented jagged
blindness
it is a lack of vision hope imagination
blindness
it is a punched out suckerpunched I
blindness
it is a cardboard punchout tickertape I
blindness
it is a punched out white paper doll cutup chain stretching
blindness
stretching to infinities of
blindness
the illusion of an I
blindness
screen of false identity
blindness
dead memory like dried bits of skin clinging to
blindness
it is looking into/through an endless mirrored lens of IIIIIII
blindness
it is the Unknown Variable
blindness
it is the seizing of
blindness
it is a moment
blindness
of itIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
blindnessIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIzIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIxIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIxIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIInIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIyIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIInIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIxIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIyIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIzIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIInIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIxIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII