The Boys in Blue meet the Voices of the Past

SKEPTICAL AND preparing to be bored were my feelings as I entered Dodgers stadium for the first time in 2006. I was tagging along with my new roommate (now husband) who happens to be a die hard Dodgers fan. I knew very little about baseball, the Dodgers or Chavez ravine, all I knew was that there were fireworks after the game and that we got to go on the field. By the end of the game I was excited, invigorated and hooked.


That is just one of many memories I have had at a Dodger game. I married into a long line of Dodgers fans, and we spend our summers cheering on the boys in blue either at home or at the stadium. I have watched many documentaries on the Dodgers and I was aware that before they built the stadium there were houses and families living in Chavez Ravine. However, I recently watched a few short documentaries not focused on the Dodgers but focused on the people who were displaced. I would be lying if I said that those videos will stop me from going to Dodgers games, but they did affect me. I have often tried to imagine what the Ravine would look like without the stadium and after seeing pictures and video, it has become much more real to me. I remember someone saying once that you can still see the front steps of some homes that were demolished. That image haunts me, and though I have yet to go to a Dodgers game since I have learned all f this baseball season is upon us.


This haunting feeling of Los Angeles’ past is becoming repetitive as I explore the city more and more. So many things have been torn down to make way for the modernization of the city. People have been displaced and memories have been lost. Perhaps this is what makes Los Angeles so rich with culture and mystery. There are voices of past, present and future scattered all along the city, one just has to stop a minute and reflect upon what and who was once there. This will not erase the pain those people felt when rushed from their homes, however it will keep their memory alive, and for the city’s mysterious past, memory is all it has.

--Mickala Jauregui

Photo Credit: myself (featuring my hand and finger)

LA's Ghosts of the Past

“WE CAME, we saw, we kicked ass!” said Bill Murray’s character Dr. Peter Venkman in the 1984 Ghotstbusters thriller as they leaped into the Ghostbusters car with their freshly captured ghost. This random threesome of paranormal doctors paired up to create the “largest paranormal removal company in America,” while capturing audiences everywhere.  These men and their ghosts remain icons today.  The men, the car and the song are rhetorical masterpieces of the 1980’s film industry.  But what is the car without the actors, the songs, the ghosts and the magic that encompasses the giant flat screens of the theatres? Alone, the car is just that, an ordinary car.

The appeal came from the red streaks along the side and the ghost containers and trackers that lined the top.  But the real icon was in the red circle with a ghost inside and a red streak slashed through, slapped in the middle of the diver’s side door that symbolized the end to paranormals and for ghosts to BEWARE.  It zipped through the streets of “New York City” capturing all of the ghosts in sight.  It’s new home, however, is within the white lined rectangle of the third parking spot outside of the Judy Garland building on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City. The Ghostbusters Mobile is no longer any use for the three paranormal hunters. What used to transport ghosts captured in giant vacuums by three nerdy scientists is no more. Outside of the movies, it is stripped of its magic. Its “ass-kicking” abilities have been reduced to nothing more than an old white car from the 80’s. It was the means to which those brave men captured not just ghosts, but audiences everywhere, and yet, its only friend now is the black Green Hornet Cadillac and the occasional fan walking past on a tour from the lot, who stops to take a picture on their iPhone. 

Seeing the car is like seeing a faded outline of a woman who used to captivate men and women from the big screen or an ordinary man, who we used to watch scale buildings, dodge bullets and get the girl.  The movies will build you up, but once the lights in the theatre are turned back on and shine on the cracks within the surface as the glitter in the air fades away; it breaks you down to nothing more that tin metal in the shape of a car.

Denise Hamilton said, “LA makes promises it can’t keep.” This lonely Ghostbusters car is just one of Hollywood’s many victims.  It has become the outcome of Hollywood’s forgotten dreams and the realities of the movies, without the magic.

-- Elise Fornaca
 -- image via jalopnik.com