Pasadena ‘Newcomers’ Glad They Moved to Neighborhood

We would like to welcome staff writer Berkley Hudson to our Pasadena neighborhood.

My wife and I are also residents of Northwest Pasadena, just a few blocks west of the area Hudson is writing about in the series “Newcomers on the Block.” We often go on early morning walks in that direction.

I was interested to see that Hudson and his wife had asked a lot of the same questions my wife and I asked before we purchased our home two years ago. Like them, we are white and had fears about buying in a neighborhood where we would be a minority. But race, it seems, has never been an issue in any of our dealings with our neighbors--other than sparking occasional curiosity from people who are surprised to see white faces in the local grocery stores.

We also debated the crime factor but decided that we stood a better chance of getting killed on a long freeway commute than we did of getting caught in the cross-fire of gang warfare. Ironically, our first night in the house, a New Year’s Eve, our roof was hit by a bullet someone had shot into the air in celebration. The sound of semiautomatic fire filled the air that first night and we wondered if we hadn’t made the biggest mistake of our lives.

But conditions seem to have improved markedly in the neighborhood just in the past two years. New Year’s Eve has become the night we take stock of the number of Uzis in the neighborhood. Last New Year’s we didn’t hear any.

There is still a good deal of fear about the neighborhood among people who don’t live here. My wife operates a graphic design studio from our home. Many of her clients visit her there for consultations. Most of them are not put off by the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, many of them are fascinated by our craftsman-style home and the fact that we are trying to restore it.

On occasion, though, first-time clients will slow down as they drive by, double-check the address, then keep going, never to be heard from again.

By and large, though, we are quite pleased with our decision to move to the Northwest. We have a good home, good neighbors, we’re close to the services my wife, Liane, needs. I, and this is the best part, have a five-minute commute to my office.

I think about that every day as I listen to the traffic reports on the morning news. I think about the fact that I’m still sitting around sipping coffee in the kitchen while most of Los Angeles is already on the road. That’s one of the nicest feelings about living in the Northwest.

If Hudson is ever over our way, I hope he will drop by and say “Hi.”

LOWELL WAGNER JR.

Pasadena