Discover Top Posts Tagged with #3readings

To Live and Die in L.A.

To live and die in L.A It's the place to be. You've got to be there to know it What everybody wanna see  It's the City of Angels and constant danger South Central LA, can't get no stranger Full of drama like a soap opera, on the curb Watching the ghetto bird helicopters, I observe So many niggas getting three strikes, tossed in jail I swear the pen the right across from hell I can't cry 'cause it's on now, I'm just a nigga on his own now, living life thug style So I can't smile, writing to my peoples when they ask for pictures Thinking Cali just fun and bitches Better learn about the dress code, B's and C's All them other niggas copycats, these is G's I love Cali like I love women 'Cause every nigga in LA got a little bit of thug in him We might fight amongst each other, but I promise you this We'll burn this bitch down, get us pissed Full Lyrics: https://genius.com/2pac-to-live-and-die-in-la-lyrics

#tupac #3readings

Every summer, Southern Californians flock to the Hollywood Bowl for evenings of music and picnicking under the stars. As the Los Angeles Philharmonic...

“Although the Bowl is best known as a symphonic music venue, it has hosted a variety of events, from Hollywood High School's annual graduation ceremony to speeches by political leaders and dignitaries.

In April 1943, Soong May-ling, the wife of Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, concluded a wartime speaking tour of the United States--organized by film producer David O. Selnick--with a rousing speech at the Bowl. Hollywood luminaries, Caltech scientists, and more than 30,000 others filled the Bowl the hear Soong describe China's war with Japan. Soong concluded her speech with a call for the U.S. Congress to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act, an 1882 law that banned Chinese immigration into the United States. With China as an ally in the war against Japan, Congress complied that December.”

#jarretlin #3readings

During prohibition, corrupt city officials ran drinking dens under the streets of Downtown Los Angeles.

“Despite prohibition laws, 11 miles of service tunnels became passageways to basement speakeasies with innocuous fronts above ground. Patrons were able to move about under the city, boozing it up without a care in the world, while the Mayor’s office ran the supply of hootch.”

#jarretlin #3readings

The pachuco style certainly became a point of honor for the Chicano movement in the 1970s. To leaders of that movement, the men of the early 1940s were the first Latinos to have pride in the face of an unfair megalopolis that forbade Latino families from living in most neighborhoods. That said, there are those who believe many of the zoot suit-clad Latino youths were punks, plain and simple. Violent kids who, when faced with adversity, submerged into an underworld of violence and drug abuse that is now manifest as the street gangs that have plagued Latino neighborhoods for decades. Scholar and historian Eduardo Obregon Pagan, who wrote “Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, &Riot in Wartime L.A.”, takes a more nuanced view. The incidents and views that led to the riots existed in a rapidly changing world, he believes. Whites lashed out against youth who challenged the entrenched racial and gender roles. Ethnic Latinos living in the U.S. at the time couldn’t eat at certain restaurants and were expected to step off the sidewalk for white pedestrians. “What happened is that these kids sort of accidentally were challenging segregation,” Pagan said. “They grew up thinking they were Americans.”

#3readings #maxwell

Sterling declared that “the Chinese need a Chinatown” and drummed up support from business leaders like the L.A. Times’ Harry Chandler. But once again, she solicited nothing more than token input from the Chinese American community. Non-Asian Hollywood movie set designers were hired to give China City the proper “Oriental atmosphere” complete with 25-cent rickshaw rides. When China City opened in June 1937 just blocks from the original Chinatown, most Angelenos were taken with the results of Sterling’s vision. That is except the city’s Chinese Americans who felt justifiably excluded from the creation of what was to be their own community. So the Chinese, under the direction of businessman Peter Soo Hoo, developed the “alternative” New Chinatown—basically Chinatown by and for Chinese Americans—which opened a short distance away on June 25, 1938. In 1939, Sterling’s China City suffered another setback when a fire pretty much destroyed everything. The cause of the fire is still unknown to this day although the popular theory was that it was arson started by angry Chinese Americans.

#3readings #maxwell

The Lost Canals of Venice of America

excerpt from:

https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/the-lost-canals-of-venice-of-america

Secreted away from the hustle and bustle of the famous boardwalk, the picturesque canals of Venice, California, are one of the seaside community's hidden charms. But in Venice's early years, the canals that survive today were only a sideshow. The main attraction – the original canals of Abbot Kinney's Venice of America – are lost to history, long ago filled in and now disguised as residential streets.

In planning Venice of America, Kinney incorporated several references to the community's Mediterranean namesake, from the Italianate architecture to his fanciful notion of launching a cultural renaissance there. But Venice of America would not have lived up to its name were it not for its canals.

When it opened on July 4, 1905, Venice of America boasted seven distinct canals arranged in an irregular grid pattern, as seen below in Kinney's master plan for the community. Totaling nearly two miles and dredged out of former saltwater marshlands, the canals encircled four islands, including the tiny triangular United States Island. The widest of them, appropriately named Grand Canal, terminated at a large saltwater lagoon. Three of the smaller canals referred to celestial bodies: Aldebaran, Venus, and Altair.

Though their primary role was to evoke the old world charm of Venice, Italy, the canals also functioned as part of Kinney's transportation plan for the development. In 1905, the automobile had barely dawned on the Southland, and so Kinney laid out Venice of America at the pedestrian's scale. Visitors would arrive by interurban streetcar or steam railroad and once there could reach the entire community and its various amusements by footpath. The canals -- as well as a miniature railroad that circled the development -- provided an alternative to walking. Gondoliers rowed tourists through the canals for a fee, serenading their passengers in Italian. Homeowners, meanwhile, navigated the system of waterways by canoe or boat.

#davechan #3readings

Watts Towers: The Story of an L.A. Icon

excerpt from:

https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/blog/watts-towers-story-la-icon

On an unassuming plot of land, spitting distance from the train tracks that run through the center of Watts, you'll find one of the most stunning and improbable works of public art anywhere in the United States. Seventeen sculptures rise like giant, inverted ice cream cones toward the sky. The openwork spires are embedded with shells, tiles, soda bottles, mirrors, shards of pottery and two grinding wheels. It remains an island of whimsy in the middle of an urban landscape.

The Watts Towers are more remarkable when you know they were the vision of one man, a semi-literate Italian immigrant who worked, with no outside help and only the most elemental tools, nearly every day for 34 years to build a monument at once impenetrably personal and joyously communal.

#davechan #3readings

From dawn to dusk to dawn over Los Angeles

excerpt from:

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/23/health/angeles-crest-ultramarathon-fit-nation/index.html

For 30 years, the AC100 has blazed a trail through the Angeles National Forest, in the backyard of Los Angeles. The 180 or so runners who experience it every year can thank Ken Hamada, the race director and its founder. Hamada was running ultras in the 1980s when most were courses of multiple loops. He wanted a 100-miler that "starts somewhere" and "goes somewhere," and he enlisted friends and volunteers to develop the route and organize the first AC100 in 1986. Much of the trail winds through pine and Douglas fir forest. Some trees are more than 2,000 years old. Other trees are dead and ashen-colored from recent fires, including ones that forced the cancellation of the race in 2002 and 2009. The terrain of the trail -- rocks, tree roots, inclines -- threatens twisted ankles and falls along some steep ledges. Running up and down mountains means greater physical demand than simply a long race. Elevation affects breathing, weather can add impediments and even danger, and the terrain of the trail -- rocks, tree roots, inclines -- threatens twisted ankles and falls along some steep ledges. In addition, there is the challenge of running by the light of a headlamp, all night long. The highest peak on the course is more than 9,000 feet above sea level, nearly the top of Mount Baden-Powell. But it's not necessarily the most challenging stage. Many runners would agree that distinction goes to Mount Wilson, a 4½-mile climb that begins an exhausting three-quarters of the way through the race and is usually climbed under the stars. The foot (and hoof) race that pits humans against horses" That is where the race really begins," explained Hamada. After 75 miles and 20-plus hours of running, "your gas tank is empty, and your hubcaps are spinning off. Then you have to deal a real big challenge: Mount Wilson. And that is really the moment of truth for most runners in the race, because ... there is no easy way out except making it to the finish line.”

#davechan #3readings