All That Jazz Brings Downtown Its Harmony

The music of downtown is a harmony of languages that emerge from Little Tokyo, Olvera Street, Chinatown and the black neighborhoods south of the Santa Monica Freeway.

It comes full of the accents and idioms, the jazz and Japanese, that give a place beat and character, interwoven like ribbons of sound through changing patterns of culture.

More important than any skyscraper, the fusion of language talks about a city’s people, and it says we’re becoming a tapestry composed of many tones and colors.

I was never more aware of this than a weekend spent rediscovering the heart of L.A.

To say downtown is multilingual is to minimize what that means.

To say I saw a Vietnamese man in Chinatown speaking French with an Asian accent to a black Puerto Rican who spoke only Spanish says it better.

For those who missed Part 1, Cinelli and I bummed through downtown to see if the city really has a center, or if L.A. just kind of oozed out of a crack in the desert.

Cinelli, by the way, is my wife, although she often perceives her role to be that of a tempering influence on one who, she says, cants toward drive-by journalism. I take her along to keep me calm.

We spent the better part of a day looking over those ethnic compounds that are supposed to characterize the cultures they represent, although cultures, like language, often blend.

For instance, while Mum’s Cafe in the Tokyo Hotel served no luncheon sushi, it did offer pastrami sandwiches.

The Japanese are of special interest since they are well on their way to owning the world through buyouts, takeovers and a willingness to accept almost any nation as collateral on a loan.

In that spirit, Little Tokyo is expanding almost daily, both upward and outward, stressing heritage and culture as well as food and trinkets in an atmosphere relatively free of social trauma.

For instance, there is only one bum in Little Tokyo. That’s pretty rare for a center practically across the street from Skid Row, where bums abound. If you’re in the market for one, that’s the place to look.

The Japanese bum squats in an alley, waiting for a handout and grateful for whatever he gets. He’s the first bum I’ve ever seen who bows.

A merchant assured me he was quite harmless, though I noticed when he did unsquat and wander, he was carefully watched by a security guard.

One had the feeling if a tourist were even mildly annoyed by the vagrant, he would be shipped to, say, Santa Monica, where vagrancy has achieved ecumenical stature.

We didn’t have the same feeling of tourist concern in Chinatown. Once bright and inviting, it now seems seedy by comparison to Little Tokyo. While one bustles, the other stagnates.

Chipped paint on buildings and litter in the streets speak of neglect on Upper Broadway. Even the “Central Chinatown” sign over the pagoda entryway to its main plaza is part broken and hanging loose.

Olvera Street seems pretty much what it has always been and probably what it ought to be, a cheerful composition of hustle and history.

If you like margaritas, chicken pinatas and miniature replicas of the Crucifixion in a conch shell, you’ll love Olvera Street.

We moseyed first through the plaza outside the local Catholic church where real Mexicans ate roasted corn and slices of mango on a stick, then crossed the street to where the tourists wandered.

The birthplace of L.A. isn’t all that bright and shiny either, but at least it has a sense of fun and caring that Chinatown lacks.

Those who are fighting any kind of change to Olvera Street are afraid it might lose its Mexican flavor, most notably in a planned restoration of the street’s Italian Hall.

They want to see it remain Mexican, not turn multicultural, and they’re right. The Italians have all the best restaurants in town and ought to leave Olvera Street alone.

I see no future in tortellini tacos.

On that note of moderate ethnocentrism, I hoist a margarita toward the South-Central part of town, where Marla’s Memory Lane abides.

While Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard isn’t exactly a mecca for tourists, Marla’s jazz club is a place to hear music as warm and sweet as a morning in Paradise.

The food won’t drive you away from five-star downtown restaurants like Engine Co. No. 28, but listening to the jazz compositions of Phil Wright and Larry Gales will make even macaroni and cheese seem special.

Hours later, I could still hear Gales singing “Misty” when I bought Cinelli a nightcap in the bar atop the TransAmerica Center, looking out at the lighted city towers and a full moon hanging above them.

It almost looked like a movie set. I’m glad it wasn’t.