The Lost and the Found

I ONCE lived in London for four months.  The entire time, I don't think I got lost once.  Sure, being so far away from home can feel like being stranded in the middle of nowhere, but when it came down to getting from point A to point B, I never once failed, ending up somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.  London makes it easy to find yourself, to be where you want to be... the underground system is intelligible and so user friendly that a six year old could navigate the town.  I've lived in Los Angeles for twenty years, however, and it seems like I am always getting lost.  You get off the freeway one or two stops too soon and you are in an entirely different world.  There are an innumerable amount of pockets, corners and crevices in Los Angeles that want to swallow you away from your path, and there are no clear instructions to keep you on track.

Last night I agreed to drive a friend to Highland Park, yet another place in Los Angeles that I had never been.  She directed me as we drove east and then north on the Pasadena freeway, then through a labyrinth of graffiti-ridden streets, donut shops and convenience stores and Chinese food restaurants and fast food restaurants and slithering on into a realm of repression-hit homes, flaking, breaking bungalows and neglected apartment complexes.  The homes are built on angles, into bluffs, overlooking cliffs, crooked like rows of rotting teeth, and we're still rolling forward, farther and farther from the freeway, farther from the delicate vein of transit that will connect me home.  I feel severed, then, realizing I've lost track of the twists and turns we've taken away from familiarity.  I drive up a steep, cracked and weathered hill and down into a winding, shallow canyon where we finally make it to a cul de sac, a crescent moon of pleasant, well-maintained houses precariously embedded into a cliff.

Across my dashboard I could see deep into a gutted valley sprinkled with trees and pastel colored houses and complex webs of telephone wires.  "So, do you know how to get back?" My friend asks casually, stepping out of the car in leather, Jeffrey Campbell platform heels.  I could ask for point by point directions or program "current location" and "destination" into my phone, put I choose to get lost.

I put on Lana Del Rey, the most quintessentially Los Angeles  artist of the moment, and begin tracing my way back to the freeway.  My memory of streets begins to fade and each time the road parts I seem to choose the wrong direction.  It is nighttime now.  A starless night, the only light comes from living rooms--darkness and spray paint intentionally obscure the names on street signs.  I find myself on a road so narrow that my car brushes up occasionally against the row of cars parked on my right and the spray of trees poke their arms through my slightly cracked window on my left while Lana laments an absent lover...a man who chose the futile chase of money over her love.  In Los Angeles, everybody wants money and acceptance, money and validation.  Or we want validation and think money will bring it to us, think that having somebody to love will prove to ourselves that we are legitimate, valid creatures.  Here, love is interchangeable with money; it is a commodity we use to prove our worth.  Interchangeable with money, love is cheapened easily in Los Angeles.  In Los Angeles, everybody wants to be told they exist.  In Los Angeles, everybody wants to be found.

-- Zahra Lipson
Photo Credit: thedukeofla.tumblr.com

Wow I'm Lost

GETTING LOST  is something that comes very naturally to me. I like to call it “directionally challenged.” When I came to LA, the first gift I got from my parents was a navigations system. They knew that for a normal person, LA could be difficult to get around, but for me, it is an absolute nightmare; I’m talking Boogey Man kind of nightmare.


The thing with navigation systems is that they don’t take into account how fast an exit comes up or how quickly a lane may change, and neither do the freeway signs. So, I was cruising down the 10 West in the carpool lane on my way back into the city when all of a sudden, without any form of warning, a little tiny white sign popped up to my left that says “Carpool Lane 101. “What? Since when?” I shouted as I was forced to veer off the freeway.


Panic immediately ensued. Why was it taking me this way? I needed to stay on the 10 West! I felt like the designers of the LA freeways were playing a practical joke on me.


I followed the lane like a small fish trapped in a narrow river with current that was too strong to fight. I passed next to the big freeways. I knew that’s where I needed to be, yet I couldn’t get there. I blindly followed the lane, as it took me through round-abouts that cut next to rusty fences along one-way streets, unsure of where this current was going to spit me out. Finally, I was launched into a sea of red break lights. “Oh,” I thought, “so this is the 101.” As I looked up, I felt like a helpless animal at the bottom of the forest floor. Giant palm trees and skyscrapers patch-worked against the sky. I was lost in the LA jungle.


As I inched forward, grey skyscrapers towered overhead, walls covered in ivy enclosed around me and the smog was as thick as the fog in the rainforest. Palm trees that sprouted between the buildings gently swayed in the light smog infused breeze and the sherbet sunset glared through its haze. It was eerily quite, no horns or people shouting. The cars around me slowly moved forward all together, aimlessly as if they were in a magical trance. But I knew exactly how they felt, for I suddenly became calm, as if I too was in a trance. All I could do was quietly inch forward like the rest of them. I felt frozen like an animal does right before it gets eaten. That’s what LA does right? Chews you up and spits you out.


BEEEP! It was the sound of my navigation system that finally broke me from the trance. It was signaling for me to get off at the next exit. Although I was scared that some larger animal higher up on the food chain was going to pounce on me as I broke from the rest of the pack, I knew I had to take my chances. The off-ramp took form in front of me and I darted out from the lane and took off out of the jungle.


Getting lost is a scary thing. But being lost in LA is even scarier. Its survival of the fittest out there.

Photo Credit: Google Images http://wallpapercavern.com/wallpapers/concrete_jungle_los_angeles_california_800x600-800x600.jp

Getting Lost: "Old School" L.A.

TODAY I got lost, again and again and again. I really don't know how the roads in LA connect the city - so far, I've only learned about half of the freeways. I was trying to avoid the places I know and have been to before - Westwood, Culver City, Venice, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Downtown, West Hollywood and onwards - to find some place new.

I took roads I've taken before, but I took them in a new direction. I was surprised when I found myself in Koreatown when I didn't think I was headed in that direction. Living on the Westside, it's all too easy to forget that some parts of the city can take you far away from Los Angeles, where every storefront has Korean lettering and Asian imports. It's fascinating, how so few miles separate us but yet it feels like a world away.

I admired this wonder-world from inside my car, but kept on driving. It was not until I turned down an unknown street and wound up in Chinatown that I parked and hopped out to take a look around. I'd found myself on Yale Street at Castelar Elementary School. 

I hadn't heard of it before, and it was seemingly insignificant - just another school. But through my walking I saw a "historic sign" that gives background information about the place you're at - and soon realized that Castelar was one of the first schools created in the LA school district. Suddenly, with contextual knowledge, the place I had found became more than what I had first thought.

 

Through my trip I was reminded of the beauty of culture; how although these streets and signs look dim in overcast, cloudy light, in my mind, today they seemed more vibrant than ever. It's always fascinating for me to see the ways humans have shaped their surroundings, and how their surroundings have shaped them. In this location, it was easy for me to find art or beauty at every turn, although the setting seemed particularly ordinary to those who inhabited it.

 

This unfamiliar place was unknown to me in more than one way; while I had never visited Castelar school before, I am also not of Asian descent, which set me as an outsider here. It was a pleasure to explore a culture other than my own within the city of Los Angeles, the name that unites and embodies all of us. 

Did you know LA had trolleys?? I didn't!

 One of the school's murals, viewable from the road, is called "The Party at Lan-Ting." It is LA's first mural dedicated to Asian history. It is large at 17x40 feet tall, and depicts a party scene hosted by Wan Xi-Zhi, a calligrapher from China 1,700 years ago. You can read more about it here. The mural is two-dimensional and colorful, and even decorated with costume jewels and sequins in certain parts.

 

The two pillars at the left of the mural with written explanations

I didn't know until moments later, when I got back in my car and drove a few blocks down, that I was actually very close to an area I was somewhat familiar with - Chinatown. I stopped by Homegirl Cafe for a salad and a funky green smoothie drink, and then soon headed back on my way to Loyola Marymount.  

Photo Credit: Jennifer Pellerito

Getting Lost In Lennox

AS I  drove east down Century Blvd and away from LAX I noticed a drastic change in scenery.

Many of us are familiar with the loop that takes us from Sepulveda Blvd onto Century, and as I took that loop past all of the clichéd hotels and hyperbolic palm trees I noticed the consistent decline in scenery the further I drove down Century. The hotels slowly began to disappear and even the palm trees became shorter. Eventually, there were no palm trees and the large building that had before overshadowed the street were replaced with one-story building structures as I drove under the 405 Freeway. I had entered Lennox.

I have driven this drive since my sophomore year. I often visit Lennox Middle School (LMS) as a member of LMU’s El Espejo mentoring program. I have been fortunate to do so since the commute is just minutes from LMU’s campus. However, the short drive covers a lot of distance in scenery as I find myself almost landlocked in Lennox. From the field at LMS you can see the 405 South as it merges almost directly above the field with the 105 East Freeway. Airplanes frequently fly over the field as they descend toward LAX’s runways. No bluff hills or mountain tops can be seen. The freeways and the planes are the only indications of anything different than two-story structures across this flat section of Los Angeles. It seems barren and for the longest time I had trouble finding out what was hidden just east of the airport.

I found myself getting lost in Lennox on my way to finding a taco truck that some of my friends often eat at. We traveled the same route I often travel to go to Lennox, but instead turned down Inglewood Blvd. The streets were very dark as we drove down Inglewood Blvd, but eventually a well-light truck, accompanied by an empty parking lot, welcomed us as we entered. We had found the truck, and we had found something more than just tacos. The truck was a social hub for many of the residents in the area as they found affordable tacos, drinks, and churros. In addition, there was vendors that sold discounted movies and video games, and even knock-off cash for gold table. All in all this taco truck draws quite the crowd that I had been hoping to interact with in Lennox. Prior to this I had only known young students in the area, but this helped paint a cultural picture of the area.

Lennox begins as L.A.’s stereotypical facade ends. As you cross into Lennox you enter into an area that may not be as attractive as the areas just west of it. The stores are less commercialized, and the buildings are very worn and torn. However, for the people of Lennox this is exactly what they love about L.A. Their culture can thrive around just a taco truck. It doesn’t need imitation living and palm tree covered streets. Lennox is a genuine diamond among all the superficiality in Los Angeles. From the outside looking in it is easy to dream up ways to improve the area, but from that taco truck everything seemed to be just fine.

-- Art Flores

-- Photo credit: Art Flores

Getting Lost at the Grove's Farmers Market

I'VE BEEN to the Grove in Los Angeles before, a long time ago when I was a freshman. It's an upscale outdoor shopping center that has events every week and supposedly lights up at night, literally, with thousands of glowing lights--or maybe that is just at Christmastime. In short, it's a place of bustling activity, located in an area that is anything but typical--surrounding it is Wilshire boulevard on one side, where Museum Square and office buildings such as the one containing Wenner media, which I have mentioned before. If you look a little ways down the corner that the Grove shops are located on, you will see beautiful apartment buildings that are characterized by palm trees and women entering them with big sunglasses and shopping bags. If you drive three minutes to the left, you will see an enormous 99 Cent Store that boasts to be the "official headquarters" of whatever holiday is around the corner, (right now it's "Your official Easter headquarters"). If you inch your way towards the highway through traffic lights that seem unnecessary, as you stop every few minutes, you will end up in Little Ethiopia, which from what I saw basically consists of a few run down apartments with the windows unhinged, as well as a dozen Ethiopian restaurants.

Although I have explored the Grove before, I've never been to its Farmer's Market, though I heard great things about this wonderful place where you can get any kind of food imaginable, for a steep price. The Farmer's Market at the Grove is where I got lost.

Upon first glance, the market doesn't seem like anything. A Pinkberry and a Starbucks line the dark entrance to a little pathway that identifies itself as "Farmer's Market" with a vintage sign. I was surprised that a Starbucks and Pinkberry would even be there because of their omnipresence and the fact that they are the last thing I think of when I think of Farmer's Markets.

When I first walked in, I felt disoriented. Not because of the crowds, (it was surprisingly empty), but because of all of the different things that existed in one place. I didn't know where to start, and I felt actually lost wandering around the different shops, as if I didn't belong at all and as though it was so obvious I was an outsider who didn't know what she was doing. Maybe it's my imagination, but I felt like the shop owners and patrons caught on to my naivety and being actually lost. People were there for a purpose and knew exactly what they were doing, whether it was the couple placing a specific order for sausage at the meat stand, or the mother and daughter enjoying an early dinner at the French Bistro near the entrance.

I recorded some words that described what I saw and felt upon first walking in and that I knew would jog my memory for writing about my experience later: spices, Mexican, clean soap, lavender, things burning, BBQ, more soap, stickers, baked goods, hot sauce, Little Spain.

Now, looking back on my experience, I realize what all these words mean to me and represent about my experience exploring and getting lost in the Farmer's Market. Just as Los Angeles, can be described as a melting pot for different cultures, people, and experiences, the Farmer's Market is a melting pot for not only different restaurants and cuisines, but different cultures entirely, as well as different ideas.

Is there anywhere else in the world where you can buy stickers, hot sauce, soap, flavored pasta, BBQ, meat, baked goods, smoothies, Mexican food, Italian food, American food, coffee, fruit, nuts, vegetables, beer, and vintage goods, all in the same small confined vicinity? If there is, I would like to know where, and I would bet that it's somewhere else in Los Angeles.

Side note, I will explore Little Ethiopia next.

--Photos Credit: Pacificlistings.com

Getting Lost in the Santa Monica Mountains

TUCKED AWAY in the Santa Monica Mountains, off the Murphy Ranch hiking trail, are the remains of an unsuspected history from the 1930’s, a Nazi sympathizer campground. In 1933, Winona and Norman Stephens built the fifty-acre compound to be a self-sustaining Nazi community and a safe haven once America fell to Hitler. The Stephens and their followers believed Los Angeles would be where Hitler would rule the United States and restore order from anarchy. The Stephens and 15,000 other Californians believed in and supported Hitler, and thus there is a piece of deeply disturbing Nazi history attached to the city of Los Angeles, according to historian Randy Young in an article on Huffington Post.

 What seems like a never-ending staircase in between trees and shrubs leads down into the beautiful canyon with an ugly history. Once at the bottom the trail leads to a large building that was once used as a secret base for German spy, Herr Schmidt. The peaceful and tranquil atmosphere of the Santa Monica Mountains is replaced with an eerie feeling once the building comes into focus through the oak and sycamore trees, and Los Angeles’ startling Nazi past becomes real.

Today the base is covered with graffiti inside and out with empty beer cans and trash on the floor as Angeleno youth began using the secret Nazi base as a secret party base. Continuing along the trail there is a rusty red steel structure that has collapsed in several places. This structure too has been spray painted with a mixture of artwork and vulgar phrases across the standing sections of the steel structure.


To leave you have to go to back to the secret base to hike up more stairs. These stairs not only lead you back to your car, it also leads you to the large crumbling stone gate, which was the entrance to the ranch. Ironically, the Nazi sympathizer had the gate designed by prominent African-American architect Paul Revere Williams, also according to Young. The ruins of the Nazi campground are a piece of history hidden in the Santa Monica Mountains that is typically unknown to both Angelenos and tourists.

--Nastassja Habers

--Photo Credit: J.Jakobson, MagicRedShoes (Flickr)

Getting Lost: The Connective Tissue

I HAVE always been interested in intersections -- literally and metaphorically. One of my fascinations about L.A. has been how the city "connects up" and which throughfares are the ones that can lead you through many different faces of the city: It's many moods, rhythms and preoccupations.  When I was a kid,  many of our family Sundays incorporated a late-afternoon, stress-free leisurely drive (unheard of nowadays!) down one of the major throughfares.
 
Back then, my favorite journey was along Wilshire Boulevard as it wound all the way from downtown Los Angeles to the sea.  Moving gently along its curves was like watching a movie montage through the window: architecture, signage, colors,  traffic, churches, museums, department stores, apartment buildings, boxy steel and glass office highrises, then the colorful divey beach motels, the fancy hotels and finally it all petered out -- you'd reached the end of it all  -- the ocean unfolding endlessly before you.

This morning, I did a mini drive north/south exploration down San Gabriel Boulevard as it connects Altadena to Pasadena to San Marino to San Gabriel to Alhambra to Rosemead and so on and so on ... This is some of what I saw along the way:

What I kept thinking about this morning, as I moved through this "collage of place", was that you see old and new San Gabriel Valley the "new" bowling lanes, which aren't, but the telephone pole with it's pull tab phone numbers tells you so much about how a place like Los Angeles swiftly and radically changes: the many languages spoken, the many stories waiting there, unfolding.

-- L.G.

(Photo: San Gabriel Boulevard

Credit: L.G. )

Let's Get Lost - Corner of 2nd & Wilshire

Fig Tree at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel

photo credit: Google Images

AMIDST THE chaos that is the city of Los Angeles, there is a place that radiates warmth to me - the corner of 2nd and Wilshire. Standing on the busy sidewalk you will encounter people bustling to work, sauntering back from the beach, strolling with an armful of shopping bags, or, of course, begging for change. This corner is a place I have spent quite a bit of time at over the past two and a half years I have lived in Los Angeles, but I am referring back to it for the idea of getting lost in L.A. because it was the first place I wound up in when I moved to L.A. and I was lost; albeit a sixty foot radius from the sun-spotted beach.

As I sit here today and take in the beach covered in mid afternoon mist, I can't help but smile. My brother once deemed Santa Monica a magical place in that "people are fun enough to party all night but active enough to be up for their morning jog," which is a description that rings true in this moment. There is always activity in Santa Monica, and from my perch on 2nd and Wilshire I can observe that activity and relish it for what it is - the type of area people dream about when they envision Los Angeles.

The corner has a neon brightness from the white light of the sun compared to the dimmer streets perpendicular to it, and maintains a peaceful air while it's 3rd street counterpart is packed with shops and popular eateries. This corner is quiet, boasting a hair salon and a dog groomer as well as smaller cafes and doctors' offices.

The aspect of this corner that makes it feel like a slice of home to me is the Fairmont Miramar hotel that spans the area between the corner and the beach. It is the hotel I stayed at with my parents the night before I started college, and it is the place that they stay each time they come and visit - which is twice as often as most of my classmates' parents! Any time I have taken a friend to the hotel to hang out with my parents, they comment on the gargantuan fig tree that sits in the middle of the sprawling entrance. Someone once told me that they purposely built around it to garner a homey feel.

And, at the end of the day, of course there is the beach. If you walk less than a mile into the bright sun you will reach Santa Monica Pier, with its gorgeous view and infamous rides.

Santa Monica is one of my favorite places to explore in Los Angeles, and the corner of 2nd and Wilshire is just one of the many spots I hope to find during my time living here.

-- Jordan Younger

Getting Lost: First Fridays

I AM lazy and I will be the first to admit that. I like staying home, curling up on the couch in my pajamas, with a cat or two and watching stupid television with my husband. Add a glass of wine to that and it is my perfect Friday night. However, I live in Los Angeles and this fact does have me feeling guilty about the fact that my husband and I never go out. So this semester I purposefully took the Theatre in LA class because we are required to go out into the city and see a play every week. Friday night found me in Venice on abbot Kinney on the first Friday of the month to see "Awake in a World that Encourages Sleep" at the Electric Lodge. Normally this would not be a big deal but this area has been one I have avoided in the past, especially on a first Friday. I hate crowds, which is the biggest reason why I hate going out. If the place is worth going to then it is probably crowded, which for me, then eliminates the worth going part of it. First Fridays on Abbott Kinney definitely draws the crowds. Luckily my parents and I arrived early in order to make parking less of a headache.

The shops that align Abbott Kinney are full of unique items far beyond the reach of my wallet but a girl can dream and this is the place to do it. A home store full of items from Scandinavia left me puzzling at the tags in the unfamiliar language. We walked along the street admiring the blast from the past architecture, which sent my mother right back into the 60's. The smell of the gathering food trucks began to intrigue us and we started to ponder what kind of food we wanted for dinner.

We were pushed here and there as several kinds of people made their way up and down the street. We weaved between people doing our best not to step on a tiny Chihuahua. She turned her head either snarling back at us for almost stepping on her or she simply pleading that we rip the fluffy pink tutu off of her so she could continue her walk with dignity.

After scouring the block we honed in on a parking lot with the coveted grilled cheese truck and my mother declares she will eat that, even though we had it one week earlier. The parking lot belongs to a bar so we hunker down, hiding from the growing numbers of people, sip rather expensive beers and wait for the food trucks to serve. Leaving the grilled cheese truck for ten minutes was a mistake, seeing that the line had grown to fifteen people deep and we had to wait even longer, however it was definitely worth it. With cheese on the outside of the grilled bread, sweet grilled onions and perfectly melted Gruyere cheese, that delectable sandwich cannot be found elsewhere. First Fridays on Abbott Kinney in Venice beach are a huge attraction and if you want food you should get there early, in fact if you don't you may as well go somewhere else unless standing in line for thirty minutes to an hour for food out of a truck sounds like fun, which to m obviously isn’t. I hate crowds, but they are there for a reason and even though it was crowded I will probably return to a First Friday in Venice, but look for me early because I will definitely beat the crowds.

--Mickala Jauregui
Caption: Abbot Kinney Blvd
Credit: Gema Campos Hernando, via flickr creative commons