Out There archive: Dispatches from Southern California
Out There is a weekly series of dispatches, each one a postcard from a different community in Southern California. The articles will serve as a portal for readers to offer feedback, discuss their own communities and learn more about the people and places that make up our rich mosaic.
November 24, 2009
Chinese Americans find community on their radio dial
The caller sounded as if he had just won the lottery. After years of trying, he had finally reached the disc jockey at his favorite radio station, KAZN-AM (1300).
November 17, 2009
OUT THERE
Boyle Heights food vendors try to survive as city crackdown intensifies
Early on an October evening, their cars began filling a city parking lot on Breed Street, less than a block from well-lighted shops along Cesar Chavez Avenue in the busiest commercial corridor of Boyle Heights.
November 10, 2009
OUT THERE
El Sereno saves the Heavens
For a measure of solace in the city, Hugo Garcia climbs to the top of a hill crowned with walnut groves that El Sereno residents know simply as the Heavens.
November 3, 2009
OUT THERE
A training ground as beautiful as the front lines are hellish
For thousands of U.S. Marines, the road to Afghanistan goes through an isolated training facility here in the Eastern Sierra where they share the rugged Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest with civilian hunters, backpackers and skiers.
October 27, 2009
OUT THERE
A burning desire to save Van Nuys' Station 39
Station 39 is cramped and outdated. It's a tight squeeze getting the trucks in, and there's not enough room for the larger rescue ambulances that have become standard over the decades. There isn't any on-site parking, forcing firefighters to walk three blocks from another city lot.
October 20, 2009
OUT THERE
Huntington Beach dog ban a bone of contention
Nobody would ever call Huntington Beach anti-dog. Far from it.
October 6, 2009
OUT THERE
Raising plants, and hopefully cash, in Santa Barbara
When a wildfire swept into the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden last May, it left behind a smoldering mountain of debris.
September 29, 2009
Environmentalists torn up over Compton Creek bulldozing
Knee deep in Compton Creek's murky waters, environmentalist James Alamillo scanned the ripples for signs of aquatic life in a stretch edged with cattails and trash, between a Metro Rail station and heavy industry just north of the 710 Freeway.
September 22, 2009
OUT THERE
Piece of San Marino history a victim of the times
Which way to the Michael White Adobe?
9:21 PM PDT, September 14, 2009
How to secede without really crying
Denis came to the meeting in the community clubhouse with a four-page statistical analysis.
September 8, 2009
OUT THERE
Where newspapers thrive: Orange County's Little Saigon
In a dimly lighted warehouse at the end of an alleyway in Orange County's Little Saigon, five reporters sat side by side on mismatched chairs, talking on telephones and typing away on their keyboards. There was no air conditioning, and two large fans provided little relief from the muggy air.
August 25, 2009
OUT THERE
Concern in an unspoiled corner of L.A. County
Rustic, dotted with willows and cottonwoods and largely untouched, the tiny Leona Valley communities of Lake Hughes and Elizabeth Lake mark a slow and quiet corner of Los Angeles County.
August 18, 2009
OUT THERE
Southern California date growers scramble to fill Ramadan orders
In June, the calls to Dennis Jensen's Riverside County date farm began to pick up. By July, he said, the calls took on a more urgent nature: "Send me some dates; save me!"
August 11, 2009
OUT THERE
Long Beach Aquarium's tiger shark is a picky eater
Tiger shark. A voracious predator known for traveling the world's oceans and consuming everything in its way: smaller sharks, boat cushions, license plates, copper wire, shipwrecked sailors.
August 4, 2009
Do La Jolla seals have squatters' rights?
Summer Dunsmore, 19, glanced over her shoulder at the 50 or so harbor seals snoozing on a small horseshoe-shaped beach beside the Children's Pool in La Jolla.
July 28, 2009
OUT THERE
Tenant-owner discord where the 'Latin Lover' is mythologized
There's always been a bit of mythology behind the gates of the place they call Villa Valentino.
June 1, 2009
OUT THERE
Flat-tailed horned lizard is between a rock and extinction
As the sun rose over a wind-swept stretch of desert just east of Palm Springs, Cameron Barrows tramped over a series of dunes, identifying animal tracks in the sand -- kangaroo rat, shovel-nosed snake, cottontail, pocket mouse, sidewinder rattlesnake.
May 12, 2009
OUT THERE
Hidden in O.C.'s foothills, a gnarled reminder of California's past
Wildfires destroy, but they can also reveal. For years, a monument marking the site of one of Orange County's most infamous killings sat largely obscured amid a thicket of mustard plants a hundred yards or so from the Foothill toll road.
April 17, 2009
Ujima Village, a onetime urban oasis, closes down
Charlene David walked through her ghost town last week, past empty driveways, rusting playgrounds, abandoned basketball courts, the overgrown community garden, the management office that closed months ago.
April 10, 2009
OUT THERE
Trying to keep Oxnard's Wagon Wheel in place
It wasn't long after World War II that Martin V. "Bud" Smith, who was destined to become a legendary Oxnard developer, loosed 200 chickens on the city's downtown streets. Each bird wore a band on its leg that said: "I just escaped from the Wagon Wheel, where they serve the finest chicken around."
March 27, 2009
OUT THERE
Past, present and future reside in a Pasadena Craftsman
Maybe it's because a working model of the Mars rover is plopped in the nook of what was once a grand, ornate fireplace.
March 20, 2009
OUT THERE
Playa del Rey trying to make it back to the glory days
Time was when Playa del Rey lived up to its name: King's Beach. The hamlet's Toes Beach had a majestic break that lured the likes of singing surfer Dennis Wilson of Beach Boys fame.
9:45 PM PDT, March 12, 2009
A shave, a cut and please roll up your sleeve
Movies have been made and treatises have been written on the role of barbershops in African American life. In the pre-Civil Rights era, they were one of the first businesses that black men, especially in the South, could own, and, outside of churches, one of the few places they could gather.
March 6, 2009
OUT THERE
Tiny Latino neighborhood has resisted joining Anaheim
Even at 10 miles from the sea, they live on an island.
February 27, 2009
Inviting a Wal-Mart into Florence-Firestone
The little tortilleriatortilleria, hidden away in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood near Watts, could be mistaken for a thousand others in the city's immigrant core. It's on a mostly residential stretch of Nadeau Street, a few blocks removed from commercial corridors where the buildings that look newer than others nearby are the ones that were rebuilt after the 1992 riots.
February 20, 2009
Get Lit Players bring poetry's emotions to other L.A. teenagers
For as long as he can remember, Dario Serrano's life was all screeching tires and echoing gunshots, babies' cries and barking dogs, a symphony, as he puts it, of "hood rats and gangsters," of "vatos vatos and payasos" -- dudes and numskulls, loosely translated.
February 13, 2009
Just who is Cheeta the chimp, anyway?
The story does not begin in Hollywood, where it's possible, though by no means certain, that Cheeta became famous. It does not begin in Palm Springs, where Cheeta lives like so many other retirees, soaking in sunshine, bickering with relatives and, on occasion, treating himself to a drive-through hamburger despite his diabetes and advancing age.
February 6, 2009
OUT THERE
Small service makes big difference on L.A.'s skid row
The trappings of the lives of Krystle Marage and her three daughters are not unusual. There are hairbrushes and loofah sponges; Game Boys and skateboards; school books and Bibles; clothes, clothes and more clothes. These days, they have to fit it all inside four trash cans, which sit alongside 500 others in a dank warehouse, around the corner from a frozen fish distributor and a cheap hotel.
January 30, 2009
Civic activists in L.A. have growing appetite to curb medical marijuana clinics
The little clinic rests along a graceful curve of Eagle Rock Boulevard also occupied by a karate studio, a barber and a smattering of modest houses, one with a basketball hoop. The building, marked only by a metal placard that says "Cornerstone," is unremarkable, by design.
January 23, 2009
OUT THERE
Homicides plunge, hope rises in Compton
It is a Sunday morning and there is still dew on the grass outside Faith Inspirational Missionary Baptist Church. Already, God has received a standing ovation. The thermometer on the wall claims it's only 75 degrees in here, but congregants are dancing in the aisles, some with their shoes kicked off and stashed under the pews. Their sweat mixes with their tears, and for once in Compton, they are tears of joy.
January 16, 2009
OUT THERE
Working through hope and despair at Long Beach job center
On the second floor of a dated office building in Long Beach, class is underway. Fourteen people expect to emerge after three weeks, with safety training and "life skills" that could lead to construction jobs. They are men and women, black and white, Latino and Asian, young and "mature," as they say in the business of finding jobs for the jobless.
December 26, 2008
OUT THERE
Unique L.A. hospital undergoes complex operation
The old cottage was lost long ago to the folds of a hillside in Elysian Park, near Dodger Stadium. You do not need a key to get inside.
December 19, 2008
OUT THERE
New Pomona mayor faces a city in turmoil
Elliott Rothman, Pomona's new mayor, stepped into City Hall on Monday and shook off the dreary night. He had a round face and a comb-over, and his expression was no less dour after he took off his overcoat, revealing a tie decorated with an image of Frosty the Snowman.
December 12, 2008
OUT THERE
Peace and love cause a big stir in Atwater Village
Little Atwater Village pulled out all the stops last week at the ceremony to light its Christmas tree, a redwood that towers handsomely over the commercial drag.
December 5, 2008
OUT THERE
Solar plant could be savior to struggling Lancaster
They lined up for meatball sandwiches the other night outside the Lancaster Community Shelter, in the cold of the high desert. There was a man in a fedora who'd lost his house to the bank. A college student whose loans fell through. An older woman with curlers in her bag, who planned to do her hair after dinner.
November 28, 2008
OUT THERE
A family becomes collateral damage from the Sylmar wildfire
In one bedroom, there is still a stack of hand-written flashcards on the windowsill, where one of the twins left them: Anomalous. Antipathy. Assuage. On the floor, there is a little box of nail polish -- lime green, another called "berry framboise." On the wall, a calendar maps out a teenager's month: vocab quiz. mock trial. driver test.
11:16 PM PST, November 13, 2008
OUT THERE
Wiping away stains of a troubled past
One was a nice Jewish girl, born on Groundhog Day 1955.
November 7, 2008
OUT THERE
Cleared for takeoff: Aviator's friends give him a final farewell
They arrived for the memorial on a recent afternoon, filing in quietly under the steel trusses of a hangar, a motley crowd in suits, in flip-flops, in evening gowns, in pith helmets. Many were strangers to one another, their common thread a man named Griffith Lisle Hoerner. It felt, one said, like there was a hole in the sky.
October 24, 2008
OUT THERE
In Idyllwild, controversy crackles over fire department
Steve Kunkle gunned his cluttered pickup truck up the hill, toward the peaks of the San Jacinto Mountains, toward Tahquitz Rock, the granite monolith that looms over Idyllwild a mile above the valley floor.
October 17, 2008
OUT THERE
Redlands has turned into its own worst enemy
Paul Emerson stepped under the warm light of a chandelier hanging in Emerson & Farrar, his jewelry shop in downtown Redlands. His tie was dimpled, his linen shirt smartly starched. "I just got this in last week," he said.
October 10, 2008
OUT THERE
The Dunbar in South L.A., once a landmark, has lost its beat
In 1957, Jimmy Steward graduated from high school in El Dorado, Ark., which had piney woods and pretty promenades left over from an oil boom, but no jobs to speak of. Like many others, he looked west for work, and landed in South Los Angeles, where, like many others, "I didn't find no gold."
October 3, 2008
OUT THERE
Abandoned project doesn't fit in with Eagle Rock's progress
To those who live in the hills above Eagle Rock -- iconoclasts and eccentrics, many of them artists and "day sleepers" and people who drop Samuel Beckett lines casually into conversation -- the grassy lot at the end of the main drag was never much of a mystery.
September 26, 2008
OUT THERE
Gang injunction splits a San Fernando Valley community
Daniel, 15, lives on a tree-lined street at the northern tip of the San Fernando Valley.
September 12, 2008
OUT THERE
Bringing L.A.'s alleys out of the shadows
At the southern tip of Los Angeles, stashed behind railroad cars and fuel depots, is a pillbox of a community center called Mahar House.
September 5, 2008
OUT THERE
For L.A. man, 93, life is a walk in the park
The weight of time has bowed Sol Shankman's spine into the shape of a question mark. After 93 years, he is blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other. His voice, except for brief bursts of animation -- when he's imitating a mud lark, for instance -- sounds like a handful of gravel.
August 29, 2008
OUT THERE
Quest for a small park in Hawthorne turns tortuous
Viviana Franco stabbed the toe of her boot into the dirt. Behind her, the evening commute was underway on the 105 Freeway, a daily, numbing racket that is as much a sure thing in this gritty pocket of Hawthorne as the rising sun. In front of her was a barren lot, a sorry little patch of dirt, just a third of an acre, ringed with sagging concrete walls, covered with weeds. At her feet was a used condom.
August 22, 2008
In Santa Paula, a white minority blames the poor for the town's problems
Many people in Santa Paula, when asked what they do for a living, respond with the name of the fruit that they pick: "Naranja." "Fresa." Orange. Strawberry.
August 1, 2008
OUT THERE
Flybys hit too close to home in Hermosa Beach
Bob Dobry's little plane putt-putted over the coast. Below, three sea kayakers whirled their paddles in figure-eights; from the cockpit, they looked like water bugs scurrying across a pond. It was going to be a sunny day, and Hermosa Beach was already filling up.
July 25, 2008
OUT THERE
Chefs at Village Kitchen start from scratch
Not long after Felicia Cuellar started working at The Village Kitchen, she began to suspect that the purple potatoes she'd been roasting had been dyed. The red carrots, too. Aren't carrots supposed to be orange?
July 18, 2008
OUT THERE
Development threatens the funky life of Marina del Rey
All along, Carla Andrus' life seemed landlocked, literally and figuratively: She was born in Utah, raised in Watts and was scraping by in a tiny apartment near downtown L.A. when, one night, her husband came across a magazine ad for classic wooden boats being built in Marina del Rey. That, he told her -- teak decks, billowed sails -- looked more like the life he'd once fancied for himself.
July 11, 2008
OUT THERE
Gay online soap opera has a serious message
A young, muscled man named Edgar is flat on his back under a tree, clad only in camouflage-print underwear. The sun is well above the apartment buildings of West Hollywood.
June 27, 2008
OUT THERE
Gentrification divides Echo Park community in Los Angeles
In the span of three hours Tuesday night, the 21 men and women who form the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council found the time to accuse one another, loudly and publicly, of "whining" and "bullying," of racism and reverse racism, of violating the separation of church and state, and of cultural insensitivity.
June 20, 2008
OUT THERE
Encountering the Integratron in the Mojave Desert
If you set off one morning and drive into the desert, past swirling dust devils and Wile E. Coyote rock formations, and then you drive some more, all the way until the paved road ends, you might find yourself at the Karl sisters' place, where time travel might, or might not, be possible.
June 13, 2008
Back on a roll in L.A. with Derby Dolls
The hipsters have taken to calling it "Hi-Fi," but long stretches of Historic Filipinotown are quiet after dark. Even on a Saturday night, the only sound is the purr of the cars passing overhead on the 101; the only action is an old man pushing a shopping cart, a child's pinwheel stuck in the end of his bedroll.
June 6, 2008
OUT THERE
Housing downturn is a jolt to upscale Temecula
For almost 20 years, they've been painting the town red in Temecula.
May 30, 2008
OUT THERE
Chino Hills artist Abel Izaguirre creates tiny tributes to his old home: South L.A.
To those new to street art, there are aspects of Abel Izaguirre's empire that might surprise and alarm. Many of the 37-year-old Chino Hills artist's designs are callous celebrations of guns and dice, turf and cognac -- of the gangster life that defines and afflicts so much of the metropolitan area. They appear on everything from shoes to skateboards to, by special request, caskets.
May 16, 2008
East L.A. getting a long-overdue face-lift
The padlock swinging from the gate suggested that there was once something special in this place, something to keep, something to guard. But whatever magic there might have been was long gone by the time Frankie Firme arrived this week, stepping through a hole in the fence into weeds so dense they muffled the bustle of his beloved East L.A.
May 9, 2008
OUT THERE
Stabbing death shakes up L.A.-West Hollywood neighborhood
She'd tell him, time and again: Don't walk at night. The place has changed. It's not safe. They'd been married, though, for 44 years. After a certain point, it wasn't really a conversation; it was like a song they'd played a thousand times, enjoyed more for routine than anything else.
OUT THERE
In San Clemente, they're saying heck no, we won't grow
When Richard Nixon made San Clemente his western White House, the late satirist Art Hoppe described the population as "15,000 conservative Republicans, 2,000 surfers, five poor people [and] roughly the same number of liberal Democrats."
April 18, 2008
OUT THERE
Finding beauty and healing among the saints
Sister Nuala Ryan's shoes are wet with dew when she walks into the rec center. The place isn't much to look at, all cinder-block walls, dusty curtains, a deflated balloon that's been hanging from a ceiling vent for as long as anyone can remember. Church services will begin soon, right here. There is much to be done.
April 4, 2008
The artist behind the iconic 'running immigrants' image
On the fifth floor of Building Two of Caltrans' San Diego compound, a bear of a man with a quiet voice sits in a cubicle straight out of "Dilbert."
February 8, 2008
An urban conversation in Los Feliz
I am sitting with Stephanie. Three days in a row now we have met. We click together like Legos. Her lips taste like strawberries.
February 29, 2008
OUT THERE
A stoic little town faces tomorrow
Sigfried Carrle angled his farmer's hat into a forceful wind roaring across the Antelope Valley. He did not blink, even when a fly bounced off his craggy cheek.
February 15, 2008
SCOTT GOLD | Out There
Joy is permitted on Fridays
Thirteen-year-old Kevin Cedano steps onto the stoop of the Ohio Hotel.
March 21, 2008
In Norco, trouble on mane street
Ten years ago, after Judee Haddock married off the last of her three children, her house in Orange County suddenly felt very quiet. She was 53 years old -- far too young and far too healthy, she figured, to sit around listening to the floorboards creak.
March 28, 2008
Hope lives sparingly in wounded community
The sun splashed onto the roof of a church, filling the faces of two golden statues of angels who opened their arms to the sky. It was the first light of the morning, which made everything look pretty, even the hardened heart of South Los Angeles.
April 11, 2008
Seeking to send a sport soaring
Don Chew leaned in close, crinkled his nose and offered a Cheshire smile that threatened to envelop his face. Yes, he said, he is well aware that his grand dream -- a foreign man pioneering badminton, a foreign sport, in a foreign land -- has been preposterous from the start. But, he said, here's the thing: "It's all coming true."
February 22, 2008
Name change touches a beach community's soul
Don Spencer stepped into the recess of his bay window and stared at the rooftops terraced beneath him, all the way to the sea. He spoke of a childhood easy to imagine but difficult, by now, to re-create.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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