This past Sunday at the Heritage Square Museum in Highland Park it was L.A. Heritage Day. The Heritage Square Museum is a "living museum" made up of some Victorian buildings saved from impending demolition that was begun in the 1960s. All the homes were moved from their foundations and transported to their current home in Highland Park. Some of the buildings are still pretty rundown and, as money comes in, are restored. My sister and I used to play a game on road-trips where we'd try to spot rundown houses with trees poking through the roofs and cry out, "That's your honeymoon house!"  The idea is that honeymooning in a run-down house would be rather humorously outrageous. Of us siblings, only my sister has been married so far and I don't think she did end up honeymooning in a dilapidated mansion. Anyway, our parents responded by creating the "Quiet Contest."


        One of the more colorful Victorian homes.                              A Victorian teenager posing in front of the chapel.

Because of fire code, so the story goes, all of the second (and third, in the case of the hexagonal house) stories of these fine buildings are off limits except to the volunteers. One of the costumed guides complained how silly that was since there is no danger of fire in the homes. However, another guide said that two of the original buildings burnt down after being moved to Heritage Square. Probably some punk kids out for kicks but who knows?


    A docent and I in my Zodiac shirt.       It's like a giant cable-knit sweater that someone keeps knitting and knitting and...

New Beverly, silent movie theater, nuart, Egyptian, Aero, Billy Wilder Theater

    Hispanic Heritage Month began in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week. We never learned about it in my schools which prided themselves on being among the most progressive in the country. Every year we celebrated Black History month which began, amazingly, in 1926 as Negro History Week back when the Ku Klux Klan enjoyed its peak membership of 4 to 5 million people (or a whopping 15% of the nation's eligible men). Anyway, we students always raised the same questions. Is it in February because it's the shortest month? Where's Asian or Latino History Month? Where's White History Month?
I don't recall my teachers having the answers except that we learned plenty of white history year-round and Black History Month was a time to recognize the contributions of a people to American culture who'd been systematically ignored.
     So, this year I found out about Asian Pacific American Heritage month which began in 1978 and which I had NEVER heard mentioned. Some Asians I knew had. They said it was marked by more documentaries about Japanese Internment Camps being shown on PBS. At the same time I found out about Hispanic Heritage Month which I mentioned started in 1968 and which I'd also never heard about. 
     When I first moved to Los Angeles, I thought (educated mostly by Los Angeles' films and TV and music videos) that it was going to be 50% plastic people living in palatial homes, 25% Crips and 25% Bloods. I don't know any of those people except  O.G. Crip Greg "Batman" Davis who's one of the patron saints of Amoeba's Black Cinema section.
But that's pretty much what we were fed. And I thought, given it's famous palm trees, it would be steamy and sub-tropical like my former home in Florida.
     I got to Chino (which I figured was pretty close to the ocean) and drove to Pollo Loco in Chino Hills because I'd seen an ad in Spanish for it with a chihuahua that said a lot more than "Yo quiero Taco Bell" which piqued my interest.
     My friends in Chino and Pomona whom I'd met in Iowa showed me around. I flipped the radio stations and heard bandas, Vietnamese talk, ranchera (on the am), Korean music, norteñas and freestyle. The people I saw everywhere didn't look like the people I'd been led to believe I'd see. And it was dry and cold at night. I still get annoyed when (invariably white) people characterize Los Angeles as a soulless botox world of corporate chains and cultureless (and invariably white) people. It's almost as if you're not black or white, then you're invisible. The truth is that Los Angeles is probably the most ethnically (and culturally) diverse spot on the planet and possibly the universe. 46.5% of the population is Hispanic and/or Latino. Los Angeles was founded by the Spanish and then became part of Mexico with its independence. Following the rebellion of illegal American immigrants in Mexican Texas and it's subsequent secession, they tried the same thing in Mexican California. Maybe that's why some people are afraid of immigrants from the south. Maybe we/they have this cultural memory about when white people moved illegally to the area, refused to assimilate or even learn the language and then revolted with guns because the creator of the Universe always had this plan for white people to settle on the Pacific which he communicated to Andrew Jackson in a vision, I suppose.