I just saw a special on West Adams on “Eye on LA”. One homeowner, who had restored his historic Craftsman house, said something like the following (this is a paraphrase, not exact): “this was once one of the grandest neighborhoods in the city. Then the 10 was built and decimated the neighborhood and it became inner city. Fortunately, the costs of real estate in LA started driving people back here, and now we are witnessing a turnaround.”
‘Cause you know, there weren’t any “people” here before.
I think “recently, people with money to restore the historic homes started moving back in, and the neighborhood became more middle class” would be more accurate… and would avoid that troublesome insinuation that poor people aren’t people.
2 responses so far ↓
Bert Green // January 18, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Amazing, isn’t it? Once the former Mayor Riordan gave a press conference downtown claiming he was going to bring people back to downtown LA, surrounded by thronging (Latino) mobs shopping on Broadway. Very embarrassing.
EL CHAVO! // January 29, 2009 at 8:32 pm
I used to volunteer at a popular community center in HLP (www.florycanto.org) and once had a resident that had just moved from West LA come in to check it out. He liked it and started talking about how Northeast LA was great but “too bad nobody knows about it”. This in a space packed with people, in a community packed with people. I should have said something.