San Marino is a tiny, affluent city nestled in the San Gabriel Valley which comes in at number 48 on the list of America's least-affordable places to live. Its homes were mostly built in the second quarter of the 20th century and are in a fairly wide variety of styles-- some are actually pretty low key. Monterey Park may've been envisioned as the "Beverly Hills of East L.A." by its planners, but surely San Marino has more right to the comparison than other Easterly cities and neighborhoods. It has often, on TV and film, subbed as the West Side, East Coast or just a nice, anonymous neighborhood in such timeless, Hollywood classics as Mr & Mrs. Smith, Monster-In-Law, One Hour Photo, American Wedding, Men In Black II, and television episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the Office, The West Wing and Alias. Despite the fact that in films and TV it is used to portray genteel, white neighborhoods, in reality most of the population is Chinese-American, which is why people jokingly refer to it as Chan Marino.
This installment of Eric's Blog takes us to Rosemead.
First, a bit of background on the City of Rosemead. As is proving to be true of everywhere I go in southern California, the area which now makes up Rosemead was formerly inhabited by the Tongva for thousands of years before the Spanish came. I'm considering just saying in regards to my posts about Southern California, "Unless I say otherwise, this area was inhabited by the Tongva for thousands of years before the Spanish came." Anyway, the Spanish did come and built a mission there in what's now Whittier Narrows. Due to flooding, they relocated the mission to it's current home over in San Gabriel in 1775.
After the land moved from Mexico to the U.S.A.'s hands, pioneers began moving to the area like John and Harriet Guess in 1852. Around that time, Leonard and Amanda Rose bought a tract of land where they bred horses and they named their ranch "Rosemeade."
In 1959 Rosemead became a city in name, although it's still pretty undeveloped compared to its neighbors. There are lots of vacant patches and not really a downtown or town center unless you count the Diamond Square Shopping Center on Garvey. Also of note is the Bánh Mì District with the popular chain Lee's, Bánh Mì (&) Che Cali and, my personal favorite, Baguette Express. There's also Paris Sandwhich, Ba Le and Saigon Sandwich. Bánh Mì, for those who don't know, are the culinary silver lining in the cloud of French imperialism- sandwiches made on wheat & rice flour baguettes with pickled carrots, daikon, gluten, roasted rice, meat (or mock meats), cilantro, chilis, pate, mayonnaise and other stuff. They're delicious and, best of all, nearly always about two dollars for a decent-sized one. There was a short lived Bánh Mì place in Silver Lake where they charged upwards of 6.50 a sandwich! In the world of sandwiches and Silver Lake, I suppose it was quite reasonable. In the competitive world of Bánh Mì it was suicidal and I felt guilty and lazy for eating there even once. For that price I could've gotten about seven sandwiches at Che Cali!
