Fluidity

Much like other things in life, my neighborhood is not a static, concrete thing, but fluid. Indeed, fluidity has and will continue to be a major theme in the in-progress book on my life.

We have always known life to be such a complex thing to understand, yet we have been conditioned to put its elements and even ourselves into boxes. To aspire to fit neatly into such a box is a struggle even when one has gained consciousness of the state’s real intent behind imposing these standards upon us.

But I personally know how easy it is to be at the cusp of a box’s border and what lies beyond. For instance, I was born on October 20th, “officially” a Libra but nearly a Scorpio; born in 1987 but born so late in the year that people wonder why I’m 19 when everyone else is 20; I’m queer but I don’t personally feel the need to limit myself to any specific gender in terms of sexual orientation; I use the term “Latino” to describe myself, but it comes with its serious limitations as it is both oppressive to certain people unfairly identified as such as well as it is generally erroneously used to describe things specifically Mexican/Mexican-American(a

t least in the West Coast); my parents have very different phenotypes from one another so inevitably I’m thought of as “ethnically ambiguous”; I was never the alpha male because of my “feminine” characteristics, but I’m still grappling with the fact that I am indeed firmly grounded within the oppressive male gender; I’m officially a 1st-generation American, but because my mother and her siblings came here at such a young age, I have had a lot of 2nd-generation American privileges; and on my mom’s side of the family, the two first cousins I do have are multi-ethnic.

And the list goes on. Surely fluidity constitutes a major theme in everyone’s lives, so I’m definitely not special in that respect. And as I’ve said, my neighborhood makes no exception. My permanent residence in Los Angeles is located officially within the neighborhood boundaries of East Hollywood; however, I live less than a block away from the Silver Lake neighborhood and only a few blocks away from the Los Feliz neighborhood. In short, my immediate neighborhood is a little of each; and my “extended neighborhood” is all these and more. My more immediate neighbors are my Salvadoran grandmother, a family headed by a Nicaraguan wife and Filiipino husband, Filipino families, a gay couple next door, the White lady across the street, the Native American household on the corner, Black families, elderly Armenians, and the White hipsters/gentrifiers who just moved in. Down the street, you’ll find the ever-Mexicanizing Polish church, formerly just a Polish Catholic church, whose masses are held in English, Spanish and Polish with a lady of Guadalupe statue out in front. Down the street, you’ll find the Silver Lake/Los Feliz Jewish Community Center. Down the street, you’ll find a Korean retirement home. Down the street, you’ll find the pupuserías, the coffeehouses, the gelato place, 6 Thai Restaurants, Pioneer CHICKEN, a Vietnamese-owned donut place, quite a few gay bars, a Japanese-Peruvian owned …Peruvian restaurant, a really, really good Indian restaurant,—all within a 3-block radius.

In short, my neighborhood defies classification; its heterogeneity inevitably causes some confusion, and it also cuts short communication between neighbors because it is difficult to transcend language, socioeconomic, and cultural barriers. So of course it isn’t perfect nor is it some "multicultural haven" as I may have portrayed it to be, far from it. But I am grateful to live in an environment whose heterogeneity further inspires and even encourages me to physically and psychologically step in and out of externally-imposed boxes...but also to do the human thing: remember that people are people.

My Uneven Journey to Manhood

This is an edited version of an assignment for my African American Studies 109 class, called "Black Men in American Life." The assignment was to write how I learned to become a man (and for the women in the class, it was how they've come to learn what a man is).

I was born to working-class Salvadoran immigrant parents in 1987 in Los Angeles, CA, two years and eight months after my brother Andy. According to my mother, I was quite attached to her even as a baby, something that would persist into childhood, and in a different and less emotionally dependent way, even now. What that effectively means is that my father and I shared a different kind of relationship, such that up until the day he died, I believe he may have thought that I did not really love him, which was definitely not the case. The reason why I begin with my emotional attachment to my mother as a child is because it is an essential component to my formation, and thus, important to understand who I am today.

As a young boy, I would cry if I were ever separated from my mother, be it at family gatherings when my mother would leave my side to go dance or when she would drop me off with a babysitter. In fact, I recall my mother telling me later in life that, as a baby, I would refuse to let my father carry me; I’d cry if he tried. Thus, I recognize in retrospect an early emotional attachment and dependency upon my mother, which did not allow me to bond with my father in the conventional ways between father and son, the ways in which he did with my older brother. They shared sports, two father/son trips to El Salvador, among other things—a relationship that I now in retrospect realize I envied subconsciously. Because of this inadequate conventional “male” father/son relationship with my father, I was always an outsider observing and left to my own devices in terms of surrounding myself with diverse influences that affected my ways of thinking and my own masculinity. Also, though I was not “conventionally masculine,” and having some obvious “feminine” traits, I was still “masculine” in the sense that I was not “feminine”; that is, I was still “acceptable” but not “optimal”: I played with cars, I listened to the rap, hip hop, and R&B my “masculine” brother listened to, I watched “straight porn” through the scrambles on cable television with my brother, I watched wrestling and even wrestled with my brother, (notice that I did not do things out of my own volition, but through my brother as a sort of middle man). As young children, my brother and I would play together; but as we grew older, he progressively gravitated towards our older cousin Wilbert, and I gravitated toward my younger cousin Natalie, both because I enjoyed playing with her and because I no longer had the same relationship with my brother as I did before due to the two-year age gap as well as his forward-looking masculine ambitions (i.e., learning from our older cousin), which I could not provide.

Things began to change for me in the “upper level” grades in elementary school; I had my first major female crush, I was obsessed with the female body and watching it through the aforesaid “porn-through-the-scrambles,” and I craved learning about sex—while maintaining my timid and naïve outward appearance. But I still could not catch up to my brother, who I always looked up to, as well as my ambitious and intelligent father, the one who had become a white-collar worker despite the fact that he did not even have a high school diploma—the vehicle of sorts that led our family’s upward mobility. I was always around women (my mother, my single grandmother, my aunt, my female cousin, and my sister who was born when I was 6, whom I resented because she took my place as the ‘baby’ of the family as well as the fact that she was born 3 days after my sixth birthday), and that is why I admire them so much and am able to empathize (as much as I can, I must recognize my male privilege). They were the ones who supported me, counseled me, and gave me hope, and in the case of my female family members, spoiled me at the expense of my sister, which is something very characteristic of Spanish culture (and I’ve heard that it’s the same in some Arab cultures). Yet they were not able to provide something that was missing: men in my family drank alcohol and beer at family gatherings; they had very aggressive and commanding voices that were necessary for storytelling and joke-telling, skills that are important to have in my culture. I lacked something. In sixth grade, I attempted to assert my masculinity by trying to prove to my brother that I knew “a lot about sex,” to which he replied by asking me if I knew what “fingerbanging” was—I did not know, though of course I had a vague idea of what that was.

Though my brother did at times call me “faggot” because of some of my “feminine”/ “homosexual” tendencies, he proved to be a good man, and human in general, when he rebuked me for an insensitive remark I had made about gays, essentially saying that I should treat people all the same and “What difference does it make?” At the time I did not know that another cousin with whom my brother was close was gay and had come out to him, in addition to another out lesbian cousin we had. Though I did not come out to myself until 9^th grade, I take comfort in knowing that I would have been able to come out to my brother, and that he would love me unconditionally. In fact, He and my father were killed in 1999, the summer between elementary school and middle school, childhood and adolescence. This has also affected my masculinity, my being a man, because of a lack of immediate male influences, aside from my uncles on my mother’s side. I feel I have unfinished business with both my father and brother; but especially with my father, to whom I consciously started to have a father/son relationship that he understood in order to show him that I really did love him (we took our own father/son trip to Denver in 1998; and then he, my sister and I went on a trip to El Salvador later that year). In his own way of showing me his affection, he shared with me our family’s financial information, his income, our family savings account statements, his life insurance statements; in fact, he even allowed me to play an important role in helping him search for the perfect home for our family to buy—and this was when I was 11. In terms of my brother, I lived under his shadow in terms of masculinity (he was voted most popular in his 8^th grade class), but he lived under my shadow in terms of intelligence—but why can’t I have both, I have always asked myself.

In short, being a man are about asserting my own identity and rejecting social convention; but at the same time, ironically it is a constant challenge to be accepted and either subconsciously or consciously following social protocol. I ended the story with my father’s death not because my male influences end there but because my immediate influences ended along with them. As a child I was firmly grounded within the male gender, though as many of you can see I’ve long struggled to integrate both so-called male and female attributes. Recently I find myself gravitating toward what is deemed masculine, in terms of sexual preference in men, in artistic, gesture, music and fashion personal choices. I am not too far from the privileged gender, and the oppressive one, and I am not as tolerant as I formerly believed myself to be. But I’m working on it.

Cher Paris

Je viens de passer six semaines à Paris en étudiant la grammaire et la littérature françaises. Moi, je suis un jeune américain (ou, plutôt, états-unien), ce qui n’est ni unique ni spéciale, surtout en été. D’abord, je vais vous dire que j’ai certainement aimé mon séjour à Paris. Comme je suis d’un pays dont la culture est de base anglo-saxonne (mais il faut noter que c’est complémentée par des éléments essentiels d’autres cultures, sans quoi la culture ne serait pas comme on le connaît actuellement), je n’étais pas habitué à être entouré par une richesse de tradition dans tous les domaines de la société, sauf dans la maison, bien sûr, car ma famille vient du Salvador (pour votre information : le Salvador est un tout petit pays situé en Amérique Centrale, pas Amérique du Sud). Donc, vous pourriez vous imaginer l’heureux que j’étais quand j’ai fait la connaissance de la bonne vie française : les baguettes, le vin, le fromage, les repas longs, parmi d’autres choses. Tout d’un coup, je suis tombé amoureux. Tout d’un coup, pourtant, tout cela c’est fini dès que je suis entré dans l’avion pour repartir à mon pays, à la vie avant de Paris, de l’Europe, et de jeune homme libre.

Cependant, ne vous contentez pas de ce que je vous viens de raconter : c’est vrai, et vous le savez, que la France est plein de bonnes choses. Comme j’ai dit, globalement, mon séjour à Paris, c’était bon ; mais cela cache les moments où j’ai éprouvé la mal aise. Je ne parle pas de rater le dernier métro après une bonne soirée, et donc, avoir besoin d’attendre le Noctilien pour m’emmener chez moi dans le 17ème, soit depuis la Bastille, ou le Marais, ou le Montparnasse. Non. Ce n’est pas du tout cela. Regardez : mon nom est Pacheco, qui est d’origine espagnole/portugaise, et il n’y pas eu beaucoup d’immigration espagnole ni portugais jusqu’aux Etats-Unis pendant les époques d’immigration européenne, car ces peuples se sont plutôt allés à l'Amérique latine pendant cette époque-là, c’est logique. Bien sûr, je suis fils de parents immigrés d’un pays latino-américain.

En France, après avoir « dévoilé » ma nationalité américaine, voyant mon visage matte, on me demandait : « De quelle origine êtes-vous » (On a souvent pensé que j’étais arabe, et c’est grâce aux ans sur ans de mélange dans ma famille). « Origine ? », me demandais-je, perplexe. Ce mot me fait penser aux origines de quelqu’un, comme les origines de beaucoup d’américains, ou d’argentins, ou de mexicains, qui peuvent être allemande, irlandaise, ou bien, polonaise. Moi ? En ce qui concerne la « race », je suis un métis d’origine mélangée d’espagnole, italienne et amérindienne, et peut-être africaine (pourquoi pas, c’est l’histoire de l’Amérique entière, le manque de connaissance des origines de soi). En France, on parlait de mon « origine », en effet, la Salvadorienne, comme si c’était celle d’un pays de culture atavique comme celle de la France, ou l’Angleterre, le Maroc, ou la Chine.

Non. Le Salvador est un pays composite, comme les Etats-Unis, et, effectivement, comme presque toute l’Amérique, depuis le Canada jusqu’au Chili : ce sont des pays fondés par la conquête brutale et l’immigration des Européens, et dont les classes dominantes actuelles sont composées par des blancs, en forme de « pur » blanc, ou métis, ou mulâtre. C’est à cause de mon maudit visage (bon, moi, personnellement, je le trouve assez beau), que j’ai dû éprouver des moments que la majorité de mes amis dans le programme universitaire n’en ont dû : faire peur aux gens (surtout les femmes âgées) en marchant dans une rue abandonné, faire provoquer du soupçon parmi le personnel d’un magasin, ou être la seule personne, j’imagine, qui a dû montrer la carte de membre universitaire quand j’ai voulu accéder l’école pendant le week-end, ou bien, être méprisé dans un magasin en étant ignoré pour aider une personne blanche américaine d’origine je sais pas quoi dans un magasin….Enfin, discrimination de toute sorte. Est-ce que je n’ai pas le même privilège d’un américain d’origine pure blanche ? Apparemment pas. On ne me confère pas mon identité, on l’enlève, on le mécompte. Cela s’est passé à mes amis « Africain Américains », auxquels on leur demandait leur origine, et c’est pire pour eux. Mais c’est idiot, cela ! Je suis sûr qu’ils n’ont jamais été demandés leur origine chez eux, c’est logique. Néanmoins, à Paris, on insistait sur savoir leur origine. Qu’est-ce qu’ils allaient dire dans ce cas : « Je suis le petit-petit-petit-petit-petit-petit-petit-petit fils d’esclaves » ? Ne connaissez-vous pas l’histoire de l’esclavage ? « Non, vous n’êtes pas américain ! Ce n’est pas possible ! », comme s’ils avaient le droit de décider ce qui est définitivement vrai ou pas. Vous voyez, cela enlève leur identité. S’ils ne sont pas américains, comme les Français se sont souvent fait croire, qu’est-ce qu’ils sont, alors ? En effet, l’ignorance n’appartient pas seulement aux Américains, apparemment.

Je vais vous dire que, parfois, j’ai un accent presque parfait quand je parle Français (parfois c’est mauvais). Selon le contexte, c’était une bonne chose, ou une très mauvaise chose, parler bon Français. En entrant dans un taxi, le conducteur m’a demandé « Tu vas payer ? » Quand j’allais à l’immeuble de mon école à Paris (dont le propriétaire est Columbia University) pendant le week-end, bien que c’est une règle de demander une pièce d’identité de chacun qui veut entrer pendant le week-end, le personnel m’a toujours demandé une pièce d’identité, sauf après longtemps, quand il a commencé à me reconnaître. Aussi, les dames âgées avaient peur dans la rue quand je marchais vers elles. Le fait c’est que mon visage était menaçant, appamment. Et j’ai jamais dû éprouver la discrimination comme je l’ai fait à Paris.

Una tragedia personal

Esto fue escrito para un curso de composición hace dos semestres, cuya tarea fue escribir una "presentación de narración." Es una historia de verdad.

This was written for a Spanish Composition class two semesters ago. The assignment was to write a short narrative. It's a true story (and unfortunately I won't translate it).

Aproximadamente a las 8:30 de la noche el 9 de Agosto del 1999, apagué la computadora y me levanté de mi asiento en cuanto decidí a ir con mis padres a la lavandería. Pasando la puerta abierta de la casa, me fui hacia la sala para platicar un poco con mi hermano mayor Andy y mi primo Wilbert. Fue la última vez que hablé con mi hermano. Luego me fui a la habitación de mis padres, quienes se estaban alistando para irse. En retrospectiva, era un entusiasmo tan raro y tan repentino que tenía de acompañarlos, pues les había dicho que no iba ir hacía una hora anterior.

De repente se oyó un ruido extraño proviniendo de la sala. Nos asustamos pero en ese entonces estaba seguro de que se había reventado alguna de las vejigas de broma (whoopie-cushions), (las que mi tío/padrino trajo ese mismo día). Entonces, para averiguar lo que acontecía en la sala, salí inmediatamente de la habitación y caminé por el corredor oscuro, acercándome lentamente al marco de la puerta. Precisamente en el momento en que vi lo que ocurría, mi vista y mi memoria se volvieron nebulosas: la sangre corriendo por mis venas se calentó y empezó a correr ligeramente. Me puse en pánico: vi a un hombre (cuya imagen en mi memoria parece borroso), de altura mediana, cargando un extintor rojo en una mano y una pistola en la otra, disparando a mi primo Wilbert. Oí el grito de mi hermano, quien era alto y tan desarrollado que parecía todo un hombre pese a que tenía unos 14 añitos, tan espantado: "Noooooooooo!"

De inmediato, corrí hacia la habitación de mi tía, donde se encontraban dos tíos, mi tía, la novia de uno de mis tíos, dos primitos y mi hermanita de apenas cinco años, quienes en ese instante estaban viendo una novela. Bien aterrado, abrí la puerta, y entré al exclamar “¡Hay un hombre con una pistola adentro de la casa!” y, al unísono, respondieron con un “¿Qué?” muy asustado. Justamente después de su reacción colectiva, el hombre irrumpió en la habitación, tirándome hacia la pared, y, por estar directamente en frente de la puerta cuanto penetró, atrapándome detrás de ella sin que él se dara cuenta. Allí se quedó parado al disparar a mi tío Jaime, matandolo instantaneamente como si estuviera en una película. Todo pasó en un abrir y cerrar de ojos.

En ese entonces me convertí en realizador de una película sobre cuyo trama yo no tenía control. Teniendo que tomar el control de la situación, decidí arriesgar mi vida en huir. Estando atrapado en el espacio estrecho detrás de la puerta, no había espacio en el cual caminar, y mucho menos para poder salir huyendo. No obstante, .conseguí escaparme sin jamás haber considerado la posibilidad de una muerte fría, puesto que seguramente nuestros cuerpos tocaron durante un segundo escalofriante. Pero él estaba en plena matanza rabiosa, no ha de haber reconocido nada.

Después, pasando por los sofás manchados y goteando de sangre, corrí por la sala donde encontré a mi madre que huía también; pero no huimos juntos, ni se nos ocurrió hacerlo ni quedaba tiempo de pensar en nada. Salí afuera donde encontré a mi primo Wilbert con su camisa y su garganta todas sangrientas; su garganta fue donde aquél le había disparado. Le dije “Voy a buscar ayuda, okay?” y entonces tenía que decidirme de prisa: para pedir auxilio, ¿ir hacia la derecha o hacia la izquierda? Algo dentro de mí me dijo que no fuera hacia la derecha, donde, como me di cuenta mucho más después, resultó ser sitio de fatalidad y de herida. Me dirigí hacia la primera casa vecina . Nadie contestó cuando toqué la puerta. Llevado por el pánico, corrí una media cuadra hasta llegar a una casa rodeada por una cerca de alambre. Salté por encima de ella, desgarrando mi camisa, corriendo desesperadamente a las puertas. Toqué como un loco pero nadie me contestó. Nadie.

Desesperado, y sin saber qué hacer, hice lo único en que podía pensar en hacer: seguí buscando auxilio. Corrí más, pasando dos casas de las que, por alguna razón, no tuve la impresión que fueran hogares . Luego, me paré erguido en frente de una casa amarilla, que inexplicablemente me dio esperanza a pesar de también ser rodeada de una cerca de alambre. De manera demasiada frenética, toqué la puerta como si alguien estuviera persiguiéndome. Una pareja joven me abrió la puerta y me preguntó sobre lo que me sucedía. A punto de llorar, les conté brevemente lo que había pasado en mi casa, y, tan amable y compasivamente, entonces me dieron refugio. Ellos me hicieron sentar en la sala mientras marcaban al 9-1-1. Al estar por fin en un ambiente más o menos calmado, se me salieron las lágrimas pues al fin siquiera tuve tiempo de sentir el horror. La mujer me pasó el teléfono tanto para contarle a la operadora lo que había acontecido en mi casa como para darle una descripción física de aquel hombre. Temblaba y echaba lágrimas sin poder tranquilizarme, pues sólo era un niño de 11 años. Después de colgar, permanecí inmóvil en el sofá, no prestando atención a la televisión encendida, puesta a la misma novela que mi familia estaba viendo cuando penetró aquel hombre para cometer dichas maldades. Los niños de la pareja se quedaron viéndome en ese estado triste, con sus miradas curiosas y desconcertadas a la vez. De repente me dieron ganas de vomitar, o “echar las tripas”, como antes solía decir mi padre. Teniendo tanto asco, aun la decoración sencilla del baño al que me llevó la mujer me fue nauseabunda. Me puse de rodillas en frente del inodoro, quedandome así durante quizás unos cinco minutos; pero en realidad, se sintió como toda una eternidad. No pude vomitar, ni lo quise hacer. Temía hacerlo. En fin, había perdido todo control de mi vida de modo que ni pude manejar mi propio cuerpo.

Avergonzado, sin saber por qué, salí del baño. Oí los helicópteros y las sirenas policiales proviniendo de la calle. La mujer me dijo, “La policía me acaba de decir que te avisara que tu mamá te está buscando”. En ese momento me dio un consuelo temporáneo oír que me reuniría con mi madre en seguida.

Me acompañó la mujer hasta la frontera de su casa con la calle, donde el esposo se encontraba estaba hablando con un policía. Al abrirlo, salí a ver a la izquierda una muchedumbre de gente parada detrás de una cinta de acordonamiento, todos queriendo saber que había ocurrido, o con compasión o con un fisgoneo vergonzoso. Vi también a varios carros patrulleros. En fin, en ese entonces no pude creer que me había pasado lo que jamád creía que me podría pasar. Me fui hacia la muchedumbre porque me dijo el policía que allí encontraría a mi madre. No fue cierto. Sin embargo, vi a alguna figura que caminaba hacia a mí. En ese instante, sentí simultáneamente decepción y alegría: fue mi abuela maternal, la que vivía a unos quince minutos de mi casa. Nos abrazamos fuertemente, sollozando juntos. Me decía, en su acento no perfecto en inglés, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” y continuó a decir, “Todo va a estar bien, mijito”. Por primera vez en lo que pareció ser toda una eternidad, quizás unos quince minutos en total de pánico, de terror, de escape y de búsqueda de auxilio, sentí una consolación al estar en los brazos de alguien que me amaba con todo su corazón, mi abuelita. Fue una noche inolvidable que cambió mi vida para siempre.

Sunset Junction Street Fair a.k.a. Scenester Takeover a.k.a. Classist Exclusion

Because the Sunset Junction is this weekend:

I recall a Sunset Junction street fair entrance volunteer's off-putting—bordering on aggressive—approach at attempting to make me pay the 'suggested' donation of $7 back in 2004. Of course, I refused and went in anyway. But the discomfort lingered and soured my mood for the initial part of my time there. Little did I know that that particular year's fair logistics and ambiance presaged what was to come in 2006. Although,in retrospect, I did perceive that something had changed - and I couldn't quite put my finger on it – that made that particular year unsettling, something that didn’t allow me to have as much fun as I did in previous years.

Upon learning of the changes to the Sunset Junction fair, I was immediately upset, admittedly mostly because I was like, "Damn, now I'm gonna have pay a whole lotta money just to get in," without taking the social/elitist implications of the changes into consideration.

In “good ol’” ’06, my friend’s band played at the Bates stage, located about a block-and-a-half away from my family's apartment. After they played, however, the deeper into the fair territory I got, I noticed little by little the different crowd, the decline of quality rides, the high entrance cost - it lost its family-friendly appeal. Needless to say, as an ensemble, the fair was disappointing, to say the least. Sure, certain people say "$12 is a bargain to see all these bands, so stop complaining!" Yes. Because everyone goes specifically to see those particular bands; because everyone has the same music tastes; because everyone can afford to shell out $12 to enter a fair in their own neighborhood. The organizers of the fair seem to believe that the negative effects of the fair in terms of parking, traffic and drunken loud fools seem to be confined to the areas within a block radius of Sunset Boulevard; think again, try to walk as far as 5 blocks, folks.

In short, with the new "VIP lounge,” the huge increase in scenesters, the Sunset Junction street fair has officially sold out, to take the phrase from another blogger (credit is given to you, blogger whose username I forget). Yes, the Sunset Junction Street Fair is no longer for the entire community. What began as an event to bring the old-time residents with the incoming residents of a different demographic, has been exploited. Gentrification, to put it bluntly, has forced many low-income residents to have to search for housing in less expensive parts of the city, or even outside of the L.A. Basin. The fair is now exclusively catering to the tastes of professional-middle or upper-middle class hipsters/scenesters that have moved in to the neighbordhood and even more to the scenester kids outside of the East Hollywood/Silver Lake/Echo Park/Los Feliz area. I realize that gentrification is not altogether a bad thing, as it does have positive effects; but it has very negative consequences that can be mitigated. The new institutional changes done to the fair is a very good example of such negative consequences. I used to love seeing the incredible mix of people; now the fair’s crowd seems to be homogenizing as the years go by. The different scenes (i.e. "leather" gays from old Silver Lake, among others), and “ethnic” folks are now no more than tokens to be used to promote the “diversity” of the increasingly sterilized fair.

Of course, these “types,” if I may be allowed to stereotype for the purposes of this entry, are as much a part of the neighborhood as anyone else, so it’s not an issue of ownership. But these new changes blatantly exclude an important demographic from the neighborhood, be it in the Silver Lake, East Hollywood or Franklin Hills side, whose parking and traffic is directly impacted by the fair: the working-class, immigrant person or family.

I’m glad to hear that there'll be a Sunset Junction Street Fair post-mortem. It will be a good venue to express the concerns certain neighbors have. As a self-proclaimed progressive person, I do realize that things do change, so lets do it right.