I Am Los Angeles is a video portrait series created by journalist and filmmaker Joris Debeij, showcasing the unique people and their ideas that make L.A. what it is. KCET Departures will be featuring these videos as part of our continuing coverage of the shifting cultures of Los Angeles.
There's something a true artist of any discipline knows better than everyone else in Los Angeles. It's the fact that opening up your heart and expressing yourself to the world without reservation sounds simple but can be one of the most difficult things a person will ever do. Balancing this act with the natural inclination to seek acceptance and approval from others is an extremely delicate thing.
Eliot Rausch was an emotional kid growing up in the South Bay area, and he could tell that not many others were like him. He didn't feel like he fit in, but he did grow up in a loving and supportive family. Once he was a teenager Eliot found himself on a very dark path involving heavy substance abuse, which continued for some time. Some people never make it out of this mode, but Eliot would have an experience that would change everything for him.
One night when Eliot was out riding in a car with a friend, there was a terrible accident and the car crashed. Both Eliot and his friend walked away. It was a miracle, and a sign too strong to be ignored. Eliot had to face himself, and consider whether he would keep walking this path or make a drastic change in his life. Eliot chose courage, and embraced the love from his friends and family. With time he learned to accept himself and his vision as an artist. He resumed work on his craft of filmmaking, and today enjoys considerable success on account of his talent and vision.
We highly recommend taking a look at his work.
Originally published on I Am Los Angeles.
Check out more video portraits at I Am Los Angeles.
April 2013 is filled with random news of street art, murals, and how they fit in public space. Here's some news and notes we like to tag under Monthly Mural Wrap.
Like neighborhoods in Los Angeles split by freeways in the 1950s and 60s, San Diego's Barrio Logan was divided by transportation infrastructure in the 1970s. What was lost was the promise of a park, so the locals protested and painted. Now known as Chicano Park, a title given by activists on April 22, 1970, it's known for the murals on highway overpass pylons. At its peak, 72 murals were installed. Eighteen have been restored in time for the 43rd Annual Chicano Park Day held on April 20; the park was given more resonance when in February, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
"I AM THE FEDER," read the banner above. The feder? Oh no, I thought: another Jewish tradition of which I've gone through life ignorant. Maybe it has something to do with seder, which, as I understand it, involves a ceremonial meal. Or maybe it doesn't; all I know about it I inferred from an advertisement for "The Last Seder", a production at Fairfax Avenue's Greenway Court Theater. The banner, too, appeared on Fairfax, though further south, and only when I moved a few steps to the side did I realize that the message continued on another segment of which a tree had blocked my view. "I AM THE FEDERATION," went the full declaration, as in the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, which I like to think validates the spirit of my first assumption. The other banners along this stretch of Fairfax, known as the Fairfax District, promoted the Anti-Defamation League. For a moment, but only a moment, the neighborhood's character seemed easily understood.
A San Franciscan friend of mine has a saying: "Everybody in San Francisco is a little bit gay. Everybody in New York is a little bit Jewish. Everybody in Los Angeles is a little bit Mexican." We might thus call the Fairfax District (which, strikingly and almost uncomfortably by the standards of Los Angeles, comes off as not Mexican in the least) a little bit New York, albeit a version of New York that never rises above four stories, and reaches that height only grudgingly. Kosher sandwich shops, challah bakeries, diamond dealers, something called the "Diamond Bakery": this texture comes from an enduring density of traditional Jewish businesses, not to say stereotypical Jewish businesses. (I imagine the Anti-Defamation League themselves would have something to say about The Bagel Broker, were it a fictional location on a television show and not a real one just down Beverly.) Over all this the formidable Canter's Delicatessen has presided, all day and all night except on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, since 1931.
Posted Mondays, Jeremy Rosenberg's (@LosJeremy) Laws That Shaped L.A. spotlights regulations that have played a significant role in the development of contemporary Los Angeles. These laws - as nominated and explained each week by a locally-based expert - may be civil or criminal, and they may have been put into practice by city, county, state, federal or even international authority
Ed. note: Jeremy Rosenberg is off this week and turns over the Laws That Shaped LA column today to Michael Dear.
Dear is a professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley and author of the new book, "Why Walls Won't Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide."
This Week's Law That Shaped L.A.
Law: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Year: 1848
Jurisdiction: International
Nominated by: Michael Dear
By Michael Dear
On February 2, 1848, a "Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement" was signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo, thus terminating the Mexican-American war. The war was ostensibly about securing the boundary of the recently-annexed state of Texas, but it was clear from the outset that the U.S. goal was territorial expansion. President Polk saw it as America's 'manifest destiny' to reach the western ocean through the acquisition of Nuevo México and the Californias (which included parts of the present-day states of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado).
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Read more columns from Rosenberg's "Laws That Shaped LA" series
Read columns from Jeremy Rosenberg's "Arrival Stories" series
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, as it came to be called, required the demarcation and marking the boundary line on the ground. The hard work of the surveys was undertaken between 1849 and 1855 by U.S. Commissioner William Hemsley Emory and his Mexican counterpart, Commissioner José Salazar Ylarregui.
One day, in L.A.'s Central Library, I discovered a diary that Salazar had kept during the first leg of the boundary survey, across California. He had been appointed to the Mexican Commission when only twenty-five-years-old, and already had a prominent career in public affairs. Emory was famous as a military man and explorer before he joined the survey, and Salazar's memoir recounted Emory's unfailing courtesy -- how he communicated through a smile that said: "I am American, but without being treasonous I can, as brother of all men, love Mexicans and love the beautiful Mexican Republic."
Commissioner Emory concurred. At the close of the survey, he wrote that: "the utmost harmony has existed on this Commission between the Officers of both governments, and ... all questions likely to produce the least difference have been settled harmoniously." That such harmony existed between two erstwhile enemies surprised me; but the fact that cross-border conviviality persists to the present day is even more striking.
If April is any indication of the coming months, we're in store for another festive Southern California summer. The last few weeks have been packed with poetry, live music and cultural events. This week L.A. Letters offers a quick scene report from our rich backyard. Like my old friend DJ Dusk would say, "We're not done."
"You look good Los Angeles, come on," said Azul Amaral on the microphone to a few thousand people last Saturday, April 20, at Grand Park. The Boyle Heights website L.A. Taco sponsored "Taco Madness," an event where a dozen of the best local mobile taco chefs brought their trucks to the park in order to go head to head in a judged competition for city bragging rights. Respected critics from local magazines went to each truck and sampled the goods. By the time I arrived the lines were too long to try any of them. I'm sure they were all excellent. The crowd was the biggest I have seen in the park yet, and smiles dominated the landscape. The music melted with the sunny afternoon. I ended up getting nachos because the line was the shortest. They were definitely top shelf nachos, and though I wanted to try the tacos, I was very happy to see the park swinging so lovely on a Saturday afternoon.
The all day party featured several of the city's best DJ's mixing live on stage, like Azul, DJ Destroyer, Eric Coleman, Brian Cross and Aaron Byrd. Azul got on the mic from time to time between records to salute the crowd. Longtime denizens of Los Angeles night life remember his voice from the legendary club Firecracker in Chinatown where he played a major role as DJ, host and photographer for a dozen years. The happy audience was spread throughout the park -- kids were splashing in the large central fountain, partygoers in the roped area drank microbrews and cold cocktails, Man One and a few local artists painted on the north side of the stage, and the DJs played and played. DJ Destroyer had the crowd in frenzy when he debuted the new Daft Punk track, "Get Lucky." It was quite a party. Grand Park is fulfilling its role as a cultural hub.
It only took one minute to save a site with 106 years of local public memory.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State wanted to pluck a cross off of Mount Rubidoux, which was built to support early 20th Century civic identity.
A Riverside based collective of non-profits, Totally Mt. Rubidoux, made a winning bid for the right to purchase a 0.43-acre parcel for $10,500 on April 11, saving the city potential litigation, reported the Press-Enterprise.
Even with a token competitive bid, the auction took less than 60 seconds.
To understand the cultural spirituality of Riverside, it means understanding how the Santa Ana River gave the city an agricultural baptism with its waters, giving people a place to settle just as the romantic economy of citrus blossomed.
That town 60 miles east of Los Angeles, and other inland cities, grew alongside Los Angeles. They were never suburbs. Riverside, Redlands, Colton, Corona, and San Bernardino were sophisticated country cousins that stayed in touch with the earth, while El Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles plowed over its fields and groves, trading the gifts of the Los Angeles River for industry and manufacturing.
CicLAvia's sixth installment, billed as "To the Sea," brought out hundreds of thousands of Angelenos to ride or walk on a temporarily closed 15-mile route from City Hall to Venice Beach. For a five-hour stretch the city, known for its privileging of the autopia ecology, opened the streets to bicycles, pedestrians, skateboarders, and performances and celebrated Los Angeles in unique ways that allowed Angelenos to experience the geographic diversity of the city.
As much as CicLAvia has become known for the monumental effort it takes to close down the streets and invite bicycles and others for public use, the story of CicLAvia nevertheless remains to be about how participants are personally engaged by the event.
Each week, Jeremy Rosenberg (@LosJeremy) asks: How did you, or your family before you, wind up living in Los Angeles?
Today, he speaks with architect, professor, and author Ilaria Mazzoleni:
CHAPTER ONE
"I grew up in Sottochiesa, a village in the Italian Alps in the province of Bergamo. My family still lives in the same village. It's a very settled-down lifestyle. Generally speaking, Italian families are less mobile than the typical American family.
Sixteen years ago I came to L.A., by myself, to study. After completing my undergraduate degree in architecture at the Politecnico in Milano, I wanted to study more, to learn English and to see a little bit of the world.
I applied for schools -- I was lucky enough to get a scholarship from an Italian sponsor and the opportunity to come to the U.S. and study at USC*, where I did my Master in Building Science.
I also would say that I haven't ever really completely left Italy because I go back often. My family is all still there, and they will never leave! There are several reasons that bring me back to L.A., so I would say that I live between two places. I spend time here but I go back to Northern Italy two times a year.
I Am Los Angeles is a video portrait series created by journalist and filmmaker Joris Debeij, showcasing the unique people and their ideas that make L.A. what it is. KCET Departures will be featuring these videos as part of our continuing coverage of the shifting cultures of Los Angeles.
It isn't enough to dare to dream. If you want something you can keep dreaming about it, or you can dare to do what it takes to make your dream come true. This positive way of looking at things seems to work out very well for this European transplant in L.A.
If you haven't noticed, the street artist and avid skater Chase is on a campaign to help you stay mindful of the power of positive thinking and living a life that feels true to your soul. The artist's murals, paintings, and stencil art makes abundant use of bright '60s pop colors, humor, and uplifting messages to bring positive energy to others, and his work graces more than 200 murals in L.A. and other cities. Chase has items for sale in stores and has collaborated with Puma, Adidas, Levis (just to name a few).
The principles Chase strives to motivate through his work are representative of the artist's approach to his own life. Like a lot of kids from broken families, the young skater got into his share of trouble growing up in Antwerp (Belgium), and the artist developed his positive mindset as a kind of survival mechanism. Chase figured out early that doing what you love is the key to being happy, and he began dreaming of getting to Los Angeles to skate.
Little Tokyo sold me on Los Angeles. My northern Californian childhood introduced the delights of San Francisco's Japantown, still one of my beloved areas, but every time I go there, it looks to have wearily endured yet another wave of exodus and surrendered to yet another degree of decrepitude. This, of course, makes for its own kind of charm; fallen places often seem to me the only ones worth visiting. Little Tokyo, too, feels fallen, and richly so, though with an accent of resilience I no longer sense in its San Franciscan predecessor. Whatever becomes of either of these neighborhoods -- whose residents will always describe them as more vibrant twenty, thirty, forty years ago -- I can't imagine them losing their core usefulness when you need to stock up on canned green tea, buy a genuine futon, burn an hour at the arcade, eat a heaping plateful of hayashi rice, or gaze upon the finest men's style magazines.
Free & Easy, for the record, ranks as the finest men's style magazine, at least for my sensibility and money (when I can bear to part with the price of an imported issue). But Japan, an incubator of unusually robust print and menswear cultures, produces dozens more, all meriting the serious dresser's attention. I read them, and occasionally purchase them, in Little Tokyo's branch of the Japanese bookstore chain Kinokuniya, whose Seattle location absorbed much of my adolescent allowance. In each session at their Free & Easy shelf, I practice my Japanese reading while beholding full-page photos of middle-aged graphic designers and record producers in bespoke suits and handsomely worn brogues, reclining on Eames chairs and vintage road bicycles. But I try not to think about why I have to stare so hard at these expensive foreign magazines in the first place. The city streets around me, alas, suffer from a near total-absence of living, breathing, three-dimensional dandies from whom to learn proper style. Nice try, Mike Davis, but nothing in "City of Quartz" indicts Los Angeles so thoroughly as our population of fifty-year-old men in hoodies.
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