T

he Other Los Angeles

 

May 14-15, 2003







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In Los Angeles, not all is big and not all is downtown. We drove back and forth, north to south, and east to west and west to east and saw lots (but not even half) of the metropolitan region. Below are four "snapshots", all actually in the City of Los Angeles.




Older stores with Korean signs, west of downtown
Older stores with Korean signs, west of downtown

Today Los Angeles is "majority minority" as they say. That is, the sum total of the immigrant and non-white populations exceeds the total of the native born white population. The hispanic community is the largest of these but there are plenty of others that are not small. In western LA, especially near UCLA hundreds of thousands of Iranians have settled. Near downtown there has always been a Chinatown. There is a new one in Monterey Park. There is also a large black population, much of it to the south and southwest of downtown. In fact, Inglewood, which was all white when founded and when Gerry's father was growing up there in 1916-1930, is now almost all black. Almost wherever we drove, we were sure to see some evidence of immigrant groups. Often, as with Korean groups, the signs on their stores, in a foreign language and often distinctive alphabet was a quick giveaway.


Tall office buildings on Wilshire Blvd near Hancock Park
Tall office buildings on Wilshire Blvd near Hancock Park

Wilshire Blvd was the home to the first "suburban" department store in Los Angeles, a May Department store. Built in the 1950s it seemed far out, at six miles, from Downtown Los Angeles. Because of the enormous growth of the area in the succeeding five decades it now seems close in. All things change and all empires have their reverses. The building that once housed the May Department store now houses the Museum Annex, a complement to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Together the Museums buildings bracket Hancock Park .




Entrance to Hollywood Freeway
Entrance to Hollywood Freeway

The Hollywood and Pasadena freeways were the first of many in the Los Angeles area. They worked well so they were copied. The simple on-ramp above betrays the early construction. Gerry spent the summers of 1960 and 1961 working for the California Division of Highways (now become Caltrans) helping plan freeways. There are several he helped inspect before they opened, including the southern reaches of the Harbor Freeway and the first parts of the Ventura Freeway. He helped in a minor way with the planning of the Santa Monica Freeway and in a major way with the Foothill Freeway.




Angelus Temple, near Echo Park
Angelus Temple, near Echo Park

Angelus Temple was the home church of Aimee SempleMcPherson (1890-1944), a radio preacher and faith healer famous in LA in the 1920s. From her radio audience she got the funds to build this 5000 seat home of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. It was an age of over-the-top preachers; Sinclair Lewis fictionalized them in "Elmer Gantry" in 1927; his book must have been influenced by her. Incidentally, at the same time Gerry's step-grandfather, "Gypsy Dan Chandler", known to some as "Medicine Dan" was active in downtown Los Angeles selling "snake oil" (phony cures). Today's TV ministers have a long history behind them.


L.A., L.A. County, & L.A. Metro

In conclusion, because it is interesting and doesn't fit anywhere else, let us note what "Los Angeles" is and is not. There are at least three Los Angeleses: from small to big, they are the City (about 3.8 million people), the County (8 million people) and the metropolitan area (11 million people). The City of Los Angeles is about 450 square miles, about the same area as New York City. The County of Los Angeles is about 4000 square miles, half the size of New Jersey or Israel. The metropolitan area is 50% larger.

The City of Los Angeles is entirely contained within the County of Los Angeles and the County within the metropolitan area. Hollywood and the Airport are in the City but West Hollywood and Beverly Hills are not. The latter, as well as Pasadena, Hawthorne, and nearly one hundred other legally defined, self-governing cities are located in Los Angeles County. Disneyland and the suburbs of Anaheim and Santa Anna are in Orange County, not Los Angeles County.




Updated July 14, 2003