New Style Boosters?

WHILE this picture won't make it into my final compilation, I had to share it by other means. I took this picture earlier this weekend in Hyde Park. Is this what "boosterism" has become to Angelenos? Calling on bilingual teens to make some extra cash via abrasive yellow paper? Moreover, who are the two teens that have called?!?

From one city to the next -

THIS past weekend I traveled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. From one city of bright lights to another, I noticed many similarities when landing in Sin City. Apart from the dry weather and desert surroundings, Vegas resembles that of Los Angeles in many ways than meets the eyes. Immediately after exiting my terminal from the airport, the appearance of simulated landmarks and varying cultures mixed into one central strip. The traffic, alike with LA was unbearable; however, in Vegas, the only road you have to sit in traffic in is located on the strip, so the option of walking is more convinient as opposed to walking in LA. Arriving at my hotel, I immediately felt as though I was in Hollywood. The Cosmopolitan, a new hotel featured in Vegas resembles that of a Hollywood-esque scene: there are vibrant chandeliers cascading from the top of the rectangular shaped building with stores that you would see on Rodeo Drive lining the walls of the hallways.

The influence of other cultures, being remade and simulated through the establishment of such hotels as  :Paris" and "New York New York" also reminded me of the city of LA in that a similar appearance can be found all over the place in the western city. Walking among the crowded streets of the Las Vegas strip, I really got to thinking, Las Vegas alike with LA was a booster city at one point in time. The city has been fantasized and illustrated as some type of oasis in the middle of the desert. So, many people view Las Vegas as a destination; a place to commit unlawful acts and to experience some type of fulfillment by participating in the culture of the city. Sometimes, Los Angeles can be viewed in this same light. Not only did this strike me as interesting, but also with the rapid growth of Las Vegas, who is to say it won't be the next Los Angeles?

Only time will tell, but until then, Sin City will stand in the shadows of the brighter lit city, Los Angeles.

-Chelsea Vogt

A Travel Guide to the Past

YOU might just want to check out this little time-machine jaunt: University of California Press recently republished Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of the Angeles.

On his blog, L.A. Observed, Kevin Roderick reports:

My favorite new Los Angeles book — the one I took driving with me on Saturday — is a guidebook from the distant past . . . [the] guide . . . works 70 years later as historical snapshot of Los Angeles the way it was at the cusp of World War II — neighborhoods, places of interest (the ostrich and alligator farms on Mission Road), recreation (45 bowling alleys), literature and familiar restaurants like Musso & Frank and El Cholo.

For those of you who are interested in spending a little bit more time in L.A.'s booster past you'll find some of that atmosphere, no doubt, but as well, the book does more than glance on many of the themes we've already explored in class -- boosterism, vanished L.A., the nascent film industry, Julius Schulman and Raymond Chandler, just for starters.

For more of Kevin's post and a great photo tour of Downtown L.A. and its built history -- go here.

I've already ordered mine, I'll let you know what I think in the weeks to come.

-- L.G.

A Fantasy Without a Past

IN David Fine’s chapter, "Starting Points" L.A. was boosted into existence with no presentation of its past but all the hope of the future. This “new world” almost immediately caught the eyes of people from all over the nation because they could make the land what they wanted, a sort of personal Utopia. Whether it was because there are not many permanents such as restrictions on land or beliefs, or the culturally diverse background of the people of L.A. that welcomes newcomers, but people keep on traveling to see what all the fuss is about. The other helpful boost comes from advertisements and their use of grandiose words. With words like sun-kissed, Utopia, fantasy, happiness, who wouldn’t want to come here?

Writers also were interested in coming for the oddballs and stories that come with L.A.’s unusual landscape. With the advertised curative nature of the climate, racial conflicts, and unreality, it is not hard to imagine a story that intertwines all of these themes. Like Joan Didion says “no one remembers the past”, but these visitors and outsiders are ready to interpret and tell the future of L.A. on the pages of a book. These storytelling themes have not only reflected how the city began to come together but actually shaped L.A. physically.

Though there are designated city limits, the true shape follows no boundaries. Throughout this city, microcosms have been created for every culture and motivation. There are places like Koreatown and Downtown for the multicultural ethnics and then there are places for the film industry and corporate. One interesting difference noticed in Fine’s Chapter is the local versus movie set architecture. This reflects not only the actual use of buildings needed but the give in that the city allows to keep on attaining this romantic notion of a fantasy place where buildings can be created for any desire.

There are quite a few factors of this chapter that are personally illuminating. The first, being the lack of privacy that was brought up in the first page. Like any other city, we have buildings right up next to each other, but I think privacy would also be in the sense that our stories are constantly being told and examined. There is no place to hide for those oddballs out there. Like one author puts it, we are a “splendid sideshow” to be written about for many eyes to read and learn about. Especially learn from the natural and man-made disasters that seem to come about every decade or so, that seem to really bring the news light illumination.

There are still many of the same stereotypes and false promises of Utopia in present-day L.A. A city that seems to keep on growing, and city limits don’t define, the land of fantasy catches foreigners’ eyes everywhere. I went abroad last year, and when I told my new friends where I’m from, it almost seems like the only city they know in California is the allusively seductive L.A.

--Jessica Fernandez

caption: Santa Monica state beach

credit: denizoran, flikr creative commons

Boosting on the Page

IN the reading, David Fine argues that Los Angeles was “boosted” into existence for a variety of reasons, taking into account historical, literary and cultural situations. As a history Major, I found it interesting when he discussed the development of San Francisco as a city, with Los Angeles being the “new instant city being manufactured” in 1897. From this moment on, diversity proved to be a crucial element of the city, making it an immigrant destination where various nations and languages came together. I feel that this has an enormous basis for the Los Angeles we have today (specifically seen with destinations like Little Ethiopia and Little Tokyo). Next, Fine explored how Los Angeles came into existence through “the page”. Immediately this quote from Fine caught my attention: “Los Angeles fiction is about the act of entry, about the discovery and the taking possession of a place that differed significantly from the place left behind…by a sense of dislocation and estrangement, is the central and essential feature of the fiction of Los Angeles” (p.15). Those who began to write about LA were viewing it from the outside as new migrants to the city that was still in the crucial stages of development. However, even today I feel that this applies to me. I tend to look at LA from the outside myself, which means my writing may show that I am experiencing Los Angeles just as these writers were. These writers went about encompassing how they felt about the city (or even how they wanted to feel about it), and represented it on the page for others to see, adding to the mythology of Los Angeles, whether or not it was fact or fiction. Fine ended this article with an interesting quote; “Twentieth-Century fiction about Los Angeles is less a collection of hate mail to a beleaguered city than an expression of anxiety about the modern condition”. Through this reading, he was expressing how the booster mentality that was so evident in the beginning years of Los Angeles has been lost. But those now writing about this city are not viewing it begrudgingly, but almost longingly, to return to how the city was once viewed instead of what may come in the future
--Reilly Wilson

photo: union station passenger terminal
credit: via hidden l.a website