Where We Are
“Where We Are” is about the place we call L.A. and the often avoided conversation Angeleños have about its past and its conflicted present. I believe places matter, but their intersection with our lives is often obscured or ignored. And if we reach out in longing, we grasp mostly clichés of a city that’s always painted in the colors of smog, that’s always seen from a height, from a seat in a descending jetliner, from a freeway overpass. From there, the city looks like a collection of absences: the absence of hierarchies, of a center, of any authenticity. Finally, we’re absent, too, displaced and wrapped in reveries of substitute cities more adequate to the demands of our desire. “Where We Are” questions, argues, reflects, and in other ways challenges these Los Angeles clichés. I’m not a historian. I don’t live in the City of Los Angeles. I don’t drive. My qualifications for writing about a place I love. ~ D.J. Waldie
Where We Are:
What would you chart as a guide to the city you know? Beaches, radio stations, Hollywood beauty salons, taquerías, swimming pools, the other downtowns of Los Angeles?
Where We Are:
As cars and trucks become more fuel efficient and more all electric and hybrid vehicles take to the road, states are seeing gas tax revenues shrink.
Where We Are:
The Getty's "Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940 - 1990" and the Huntington's "Maynard L. Parker: Modern Photography and the American Dream" consider how Los Angeles sought to be forever modern.
Where We Are:
The sight of an orange tree, laden with golden fruit on a cold winter afternoon, remains a guarantor of Southern California's mythic qualities.
Where We Are:
Cities are supposed to carry out the state's affordable housing mandates. Except the state has clawed back the money that's supposed to build the homes that working-class Californians need.
Where We Are:
No NFL team has expressed "serious interest" in moving to Los Angeles, and the game clock runs out in six weeks.
Where We Are:
Southern California has its own way of celebrating the New Year, by taking aim at easterners who might yearn to live -- warm and snowless -- in our presumed paradise.
Where We Are:
Social and political forces are shaping neighborhoods to become more dependent on walking and cycling. Greater risk is an unintended consequence.
Where We Are:
I'm the boy in front. My brother, two years older, is behind.
SoCal Focus is a blog about the people, places, and issues in and around Southern California.
I Am Los Angeles: Strings of Success
Sasha is content just to be living his life on his own terms, doing something he thoroughly enjoys: building and playing guitars.
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