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University of California Press

A People's Guide to Los Angeles


by Laura Pulido (Author), Laura R. Barraclough (Author), Wendy Cheng (Author)
Price: $17.95 / £14.99
Publication Date: Apr 2012
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 328
ISBN: 9780520953345
Series:
Endowments:

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

North Los Angeles

An Introduction to North Los Angeles

For hundreds of years the region we will call North L.A. in this book has been the historic core of Los Angeles. When the Tongva, the local indigenous people, dominated the region, one of their largest settlements was Yang-Na (near the current L.A. City Hall). Spanish and Mexican settlers also concentrated nearby, at the plaza. In the U.S. period, the central business district and political infrastructure, too, developed in this area. Starting in the 1900s, however, following the rail, Los Angeles grew in a leapfrog fashion, with multiple urban centers spread across the landscape. Since then, many observers have claimed that L.A. has no "real" downtown. This claim, however, is untrue. This part of the metropolis continues to be crucially important in structuring relationships of power and inequality that affect life not only here but also across the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area and beyond.

The linked processes of urban development, displacement, and resistance have fundamentally shaped life and landscape in North L.A. These dynamics began when Yang-Na was sold to a German investor who evicted the native residents. During the twentieth century, city leaders and capitalists consistently tried to lure people and investors downtown through a range of cultural, political, and economic inducements. Often they used eminent domain and other techniques to eradicate "blighted" areas (and their inhabitants), thereby making way for development projects. Episodes of displacement include the eviction of Chinese residents from Chinatown in the early 1930s to accommodate Union Station; the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans from Little Tokyo during World War II; the eviction of Mexican residents from Chavez Ravine in the early 1950s to acquire land for public housing that was never constructed, land on which Dodger Stadium was later built; and the complete destruction of Bunker Hill, beginning in the 1950s and continuing in the present (thus constituting the longest redevelopment project in L.A. history), to make way for upscale office buildings as well as a music and performance complex intended, according to city boosters, to turn Los Angeles into a "world class city."

Nowadays, it is in North L.A. that the most concrete efforts to reinvent the central city as an engine of growth, an investment opportunity, and a playground for the rich and upwardly mobile are occurring; all of these processes are part of a neoliberal economic regime that rests on largely unregulated (and therefore often exploitative) private market forces to generate urban growth and provide services. The development projects that have been changing the southern edge of downtown in recent years-for example, the Staples Center, the L.A. Live entertainment complex, and countless loft apartments-continue the linked trends of urban development and displacement into the twenty-first century. Although the area is experiencing higher and higher densities, there is less and less space for the poor and working class, who struggle to make a life amid the visions and decisions of the metropolis's political and social elite. These conflicts are apparent in the area's contemporary landscapes. Here are the governmental buildings and informal social settings where political and economic leaders plan the region's future. The sleek, postmodern skyscrapers where they work cast a shadow on tenement buildings owned by absentee landlords who refuse to make repairs while anxiously awaiting the condemnation of their properties for urban redevelopment. Garment factories-cum-sweatshops, which constitute a major part of L.A.'s manufacturing economy, are clustered in downtown industrial buildings, discreet except for the telltale clatter of sewing machines emanating from small windows. Skid Row and Pershing Square, two (forced) gathering places of the homeless, are also in this area.

Yet the tradition of resistance to displacement and exploitation is as strong and old in this part of the city as the history of urban development. This region's neighborhoods have long been a cultural and political crossroads, where people from different backgrounds have converged, shared, and created new ideas and movements. Some of the region's most vital and groundbreaking progressive social movements were formed in North L.A.'s neighborhoods, often led by immigrants and oriented to the needs and demands of the working class and poor. Among other things, a revitalized labor movement, led by Justice for Janitors and the former Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, has demanded workers' right to unionize and to be paid a living wage; the Bus Riders Union has mobilized for an efficient, clean, and affordable mass transit system; and immigrants, homeless people, and LGBT people have organized against harassment and police brutality. Indeed, the very diversity of North L.A., as well as the leftist traditions that have developed within it, have made this part of the city particularly attractive to all kinds of marginalized people. Notably, in this part of the city there has always been a large cluster of sites important to LGBT people, who have found in the bookstores, bars, and clubs a safe place for the expression of their identities and the formation of queer communities. In these same places, people have often developed politicized gay identities and worked collectively for sexual justice. Through all of these struggles, marginalized people have consistently demanded their "right to the city" while articulating alternative visions of urban life and community that we find inspiring.

As any Angeleno knows, there is no such place actually called "North L.A." Instead, mainstream tour guides and other purveyors of cultural representation, as well as many inhabitants, identify and celebrate the area's distinct neighborhoods associated with past and present immigrant ethnic groups-Koreatown, Thai Town, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, the Greek-Byzantine Corridor, Olvera Street-oftenpresenting these neighborhoods as worthwhile places to consume food, art, and other cultural artifacts of "exotic" people and distant lands. Absent a structural analysis, such patterns of geographic representation feed into dominant ideologies of immigrant upward mobility, including the "model minority" myth, while pathologizing Black people and the poor. Furthermore, such representations reinforce damaging stereotypes of immigrants (particularly Asians) as "perpetually foreign." Since one of our goals in the People's Guide is to encourage reflection on the power of place-names and the ideological "work" they do, we felt it was useful to name this broad area "North L.A.," partly in recognition of the shared structural and ideological processes that have shaped all of these neighborhoods precisely because of their immigrant and ethnic origins, and partly as a response to the highly politicized and racialized place-name "South L.A.," which glosses over and ignores the distinctiveness of individual neighborhoods as well as the diversity of the people who live there.

The other reason we felt the need to name this collection of places in broader terms is the tremendous influence this area has on the larger metropolitan region. This is where the power of the state-local and national-is wielded: L.A. City Hall, L.A. County Hall of Administration, and numerous federal buildings, courthouses, and jails are located in this sector. In addition, many corporations and key cultural and political institutions have their headquarters here. And just as power is not distributed equally among people, the same is true of places. North L.A. exercises a disproportionate influence over the entire region. In sum, it is here where the aspirations of the city's power brokers meet and collide most visibly with its laborers, poor, and homeless.

North Los Angeles Sites

1.1 Biddy Mason Park

333 S. Spring St., Los Angeles 90013 (between W. 3rd St. and W. 4th St.)

(Downtown)

Bridget "Biddy" Mason was born a slave in Georgia in 1818. In 1836, she was purchased by Robert and Rebecca Smith, who later became Mormons and moved to Utah. In 1851, the Smiths relocated to San Bernardino, California, to start a new Mormon community. Fortunately for Mason, California had been admitted to the union as a free state in 1850. Technically speaking, this meant that all the Smith slaves were free. However, a few years later, when Mason's owner tried to convince her and the other slaves that moving to Texas-a slave state-would not imperil their freedom, she sought assistance from free African Americans. A lawsuit ensued, and the judge affirmed that Mason was a free person. The ruling was just in time, because the very next year, in 1857, the Dred Scott decision would have affirmed her status as property.

Mason was a skilled midwife, and as a free woman, she invested all her savings in real estate, beginning with her first house at 331 Spring Street. Her home eventually became the site of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, which she helped found, as well as Los Angeles' first child care center. Mason used much of her wealth to assist other African Americans, particularly recent arrivals, and the poor of all races. Mason died in 1891 and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery.

Biddy Mason Park features a mural dedicated to Mason and a time line tracing key events in her life. The park itself was developed in 1989 as part of a project called The Power of Place, spearheaded by Dolores Hayden, which was an effort to begin documenting and preserving important sites in Los Angeles that were not associated with great white men and their buildings.

Personal reflection by Dolores Hayden, urban historian and author of The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History

Biddy Mason's life and work inspired many Los Angeles residents in the nineteenth century. Researching and writing her story in the 1980s, presenting a public history workshop about her, and organizing the subsequent artists' projects all provided a strong focus for the downtown itinerary of The Power of Place, which I based on the lives of working women, men, and children. Ultimately my 1995 book, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, brought Biddy Mason's life to people far from Southern California as part of a commitment to urban history. More than two decades later, the project lives on in many forms and many places.

Nearby Site of Interest

Bradbury Building

304 S. Broadway, Los Angeles 90013 (213) 626-1893

Architecturally significant office building designed by George Wyman and built in 1893. Featured in many films, including Blade Runner. Visitors welcome.

Favorite Neighborhood Restaurants

Homegirl Café

130 W. Bruno St., Los Angeles 90012 (213) 617-0380 (homegirlcafe.org and www.homeboy-industries.org)

A project of Father Greg Boyle's Homeboy Industries, which provides youth with an alternative to gangs, the Homegirl Café is staffed by young women who receive training in the food service industry. Boasting "Latina flavors with a contemporary twist," the café's menu includes roasted pineapple guacamole and carne asada tacos with peanut chipotle sauce. Recipes are made with ingredients grown in Homegirl's own organic garden.

Philippe's the Original

1001 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles 90012 (213) 628-3781 (www.philippes.com)

Established in 1908, Philippe's is an L.A. landmark and the original home of the French-dip sandwich, which remains the house specialty.

1.2 Black Cat Bar

3909 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 90029 (between Sanborn Ave. and Hyperion Ave.)

(Silver Lake)

In 1967, a police conflict at the Black Cat Bar led to Los Angeles' first known public protest for LGBT rights-two years before New York's better-known Stonewall Riot. A few minutes into New Year's Day 1967, after seeing customers kiss at midnight, undercover LAPD officers began beating patrons of two gay bars on Sunset Boulevard. Raiding first the Black Cat and then New Faces, police severely injured several people and arrested sixteen (for more on police abuse of LGBT folk, see entry 1.28 Pershing Square). Officers charged thirteen people with lewd conduct, two with drunkenness, and one with assault on an officer. Six weeks later, on February 11, approximately 200 people gathered in front of the Black Cat to protest police harassment of queer people. The event helped to mark Silver Lake as a gay neighborhood and establish connections between the emerging gay liberation movement and other radical movements at the time, including the antiwar, Black liberation, and Chicana/o movements. It was coordinated to coincide with similar protests planned in Watts by African American activists, in East Los Angeles and Pacoima by Chicana/o activists, and in Venice and on the Sunset Strip by hippies. Collectively, these protests challenged police abuse and drew links between racial and sexual oppression and the development of radical activism. Unfortunately, the Black Cat's proposed alliances between Black, Chicana/o, and gay liberation implicitly designated "gay" as white. Subsequently, neighborhood activists attempted to counter this assumption, for example by organizing the Sunset Junction street festival and forming Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos. This address is currently the site of Le Barcito, a gay bar. (Courtesy of Emily Hobson)

Nearby Site of Interest

Metropolitan Community Church

4953 Franklin Ave., Los Angeles 90027 (323) 669-3434 (www.mccla.org)

The founding MCC church, which explicitly welcomes LGBT people.

Favorite Neighborhood Restaurants

Alegria on Sunset

3510 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 90026 (323) 913-1422 (www.alegriaonsunset.com)

Popular Mexican restaurant in a Silver Lake strip mall. Try the dobladitas de mole (corn tortillas folded around melted cheese and smothered in rich mole sauce) or pollo en mole.

Café Tropical

2900 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 90026 (323) 661-8391

Cuban bakery. Customer favorites include fresh-pressed café con leche and guava cheese pie.

To Learn More

Moira Kenney, Mapping Gay L.A.: The Intersection of Place and Politics (Temple University Press, 2001).

1.3 Bus Riders Union and Labor/Community Strategy Center

3780 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1200, Los Angeles 90010 (at Western Avenue) (213) 387-2800 (www.thestrategycenter.org)

(Koreatown)

Despite Los Angeles' reputation as an autopia, it also has the largest mass transit system in the United States and therefore has become a prime site for struggles over transit equity. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) became locked in a fierce battle over how best to meet the city's public transportation needs-should it expand and empower its old, run-down bus fleet, or build a new light rail system? Political and transit leaders clearly favored rail, and their decisions to fund massive, expensive light rail projects that catered to suburbanites ignited protests among working-class bus riders, who saw the issue as a matter of transportation equity. At the time, 88 percent of Los Angeles bus riders were people of color, more than 50 percent had annual family incomes under $12,000, and 57 percent were women. Although buses carried 94 percent of the system's ridership, they received only 30 percent of MTA subsidies. Conversely, MTA rail projects served only about 6 percent of all riders (a disproportionate percentage of whom were white), but received more than 70 percent of public transit dollars.

The Bus Riders Union (BRU), a project of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, emerged in the early 1990s to challenge these conditions (for more on the origins of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, see entry 6.4 General Motors Van Nuys). The BRU is a good example of what has been called the "new organizing" in Los Angeles. Unlike traditional labor unions that organize workers within a specific workplace or industry, the Bus Riders Union organizes literally on the city's buses, where a broad spectrum of the working class converges daily. The Bus Riders Union embraces an explicitly multicultural, multilingual approach, bringing together Black, white, Latina/o, and Asian (especially Korean) transit users. The BRU recognizes that, despite their ethnic, linguistic, and national differences, bus riders are linked by their dependence on a public transit system that is inadequate, undependable, and expensive.

Pairing up with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the BRU charged the MTA with establishing a separate and unequal mass transit system in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits agencies that receive federal funds from spending those funds in a racially discriminatory way. In 1996, the BRU won a consent decree that obligated the MTA to reduce overcrowding, maintain equitable fares, expand bus service, replace old diesel buses with cleaner ones, and generate a plan to dismantle the city's two-tier system of transit segregation. During the next ten years, implementation of the decree was uneven and the BRU had to fight the MTA at every step. The consent decree was not renewed when it expired in 2006, even though the MTA had not carried out the court's mandates. However, the BRU has continued its organizing work on the buses, leading people in resisting the MTA's persistent proposals to cut bus service and increase fares even while it approves millions of dollars for light rail. The BRU is now the nation's largest grassroots mass transit advocacy group and has been a model for transit organizing work in other cities. The Labor/Community Strategy Center and the BRU are housed in the Wiltern Theatre, a beautiful art deco concert venue.

Personal reflection by Grace Summers, BRU member

Early in 1997 ... I read about a hearing that involved some [bus] lines I used. I didn't make it to the meeting, so I called the MTA headquarters. ... And after three phone calls netted no one who would speak to me, I [called] the Bus Riders Union.... I got ... a hearty greeting from Della Bonner, who told me that I had a right to good public transportation. She gave me a summary of the hearing in question, ... and [I] felt great goodwill for this Bus Riders Union.

Meetings were in two languages-three if you count the food-and we who spoke only English were properly humbled by the experience of listening through headsets to the simultaneous translations from Spanish.

My job at the time was as a substitute aide in the Burbank Schools. I could take a day off any time I wished. Counting standees on buses sounded constructive. I donated my Tuesdays to standing at the corner of San Fernando Road and Fletcher from 6 to 9 A.M. and 3 to 6 P.M. I knew this was a check on whether the MTA was meeting its agreement for the consent decree. I felt useful.

Nearby Sites of Interest

Petersen Automotive Museum

6060 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90036 (323) 930-2277 (www.petersen.org/)

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90036 (323) 857-6000 (www.lacma.org)

Architecture and Design Museum

6032 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90036 (323) 932-9393 (www.aplusd.org)

La Brea Tar Pits/Page Museum

5801 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90036 (323) 934-7243 (www.tarpits.org)

Famous fossil collection preserved in tar.

Ambassador Hotel (former)

3400 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90010

The Ambassador was a famous Los Angeles hotel and the site of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. The Los Angeles Unified School District acquired the land and razed the hotel in 2006-despite the fierce opposition of preservationists. The Robert F. Kennedy Inspiration Park and Community Schools now occupy the space.

Favorite Neighborhood Restaurants

Papa Cristo's Taverna

2771 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles 90006 (323) 737-2970 (www.papacristos.com)

Family-owned Greek restaurant and market. Try the roasted lamb-and-feta sandwich, or take some fresh-baked spanakopita and baba ghanoush to go. Their baklava is considered to be among the best in the city.

Ma Dang Gook Soo

869 S. Western Ave., Suite 1, Los Angeles 90005 (213) 487-6008

Korean restaurant specializing in noodles. Customer favorites include the chicken noodle soup with hand-cut noodles and mountain vegetable bibimbap. The chilled noodles in soybean broth is a refreshing meal on a hot day.

To Learn More

Drop in to the Labor/Community Strategy Center.

Check out the film Bus Rider's Union, directed by Haskell Wexler (1996).

Eric Mann, L.A.'s Lethal Air (Labor/Community Strategy Center, 1991).

1.4 Caballeros de Dimas-Alang and Philippines Review

126-128 Astronaut Onizuka St., Los Angeles 90012 (between E. 1st St. and E. 2nd St.)

(Downtown/Little Tokyo)

This address on Onizuka Street was once home to the offices of the Caballeros de Dimas-Alang, a Pilipino fraternal order, and the organization's newspaper, the Philippines Review. The building was a centerpiece of a thriving Pilipina/o immigrant community known as Little Manila during the 1920s and 1930s. The district, which housed restaurants, barbershops, tailors, and boardinghouses, was roughly bounded by San Pedro Street on the east, Sixth Street on the south, Figueroa Avenue on the west, and Sunset Boulevard on the north. These businesses catered to an almost exclusively male population of migratory Pilipino agricultural workers who traversed the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Diego, as well as a much smaller population of urban Pilipina/o domestic workers and students.

Because the Philippines was a colony of the United States, Pilipina/o migrants were not subject to the immigration restrictions that excluded most other Asian immigrant groups during this period, and they could enter the United States freely. However, like other Asians, they were considered "aliens ineligible for citizenship" and so were unable to own property, apply for naturalized citizenship, or live outside the city's central districts. Although the neighborhood was formed largely through exclusion and restriction, Little Manila nonetheless thrived as a multiracial center of working-class recreation

About the Book

A People’s Guide to Los Angeles offers an assortment of eye-opening alternatives to L.A.’s usual tourist destinations. It documents 115 little-known sites in the City of Angels where struggles related to race, class, gender, and sexuality have occurred. They introduce us to people and events usually ignored by mainstream media and, in the process, create a fresh history of Los Angeles. Roughly dividing the city into six regions—North Los Angeles, the Eastside and San Gabriel Valley, South Los Angeles, Long Beach and the Harbor, the Westside, and the San Fernando Valley—this illuminating guide shows how power operates in the shaping of places, and how it remains embedded in the landscape.

About the Author

Laura Pulido is the Collins Chair and Professor in Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon.  Among her books is Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los AngelesLaura Barraclough is Professor of American Studies at Yale University and the author of Making the San Fernando Valley: Rural Landscapes, Urban Development, and White Privilege. Wendy Cheng is Associate Professor and Chair of American Studies at Scripps College.


 

Table of Contents

List of Maps
An Introduction to A People’s Guide to Los Angeles
Los Angeles County Map

Chapter One: North Los Angeles
An Introduction to North Los Angeles
Map of North Los Angeles
North Los Angeles Sites
1.1 Biddy Mason Park • 1.2 Black Cat Bar • 1.3 Bus Riders Union and Labor/Community Strategy Center • 1.4 Caballeros de Dimas-Alang and Philippines Review • 1.5 California Club • 1.6 Calle de Los Negros • 1.7 Chavez Ravine • 1.8 Chinatowns • 1.9 ChoSun Galbee Restaurant • 1.10 Downey Block • 1.11 El Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española • 1.12 Embassy Hotel and Auditorium • 1.13 Fernando’s Hideaway and Sisters of GABRIELA, Awaken! • 1.14 Gay Liberation Front (1969–1972)/Former Home of Morris Kight • 1.15 Gay Women’s Service Center • 1.16 If Café and Open Door • 1.17 Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA) and Villa Park • 1.18 Kyoto Grand Hotel • 1.19 L.A. Live • 1.20 La Placita and Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels • 1.21 League of Southern California Japanese Gardeners • 1.22 Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters and Parker Center • 1.23 Los Angeles River Center and Gardens • 1.24 Los Angeles Times Building (Former) • 1.25 Musicians Union Hall (Local 47) • 1.26 Orpheum Theatre, Sleepy Lagoon Murder, and Ventura School for Girls • 1.27 Partido Liberal Mexicano • 1.28 Pershing Square • 1.29 Roosevelt Hotel—the Cinegrill • 1.30 Tropical America Mural • 1.31 Yang-Na

Chapter Two: The Greater Eastside and San Gabriel Valley
An Introduction to the Greater Eastside and San Gabriel Valley
Map of the Greater Eastside and San Gabriel Valley
Greater Eastside and San Gabriel Valley Sites
2.1 Alma Avenue—Residential Discrimination Site • 2.2 Altadena Open Housing Covenant • 2.3 AMVAC Chemical Corporation • 2.4 Atlantic Square • 2.5 Cathay Bank • 2.6 East Los Angeles Prison (Proposed) and Vernon Incinerator (Proposed) • 2.7 El Espectador • 2.8 El Monte Sweatshop • 2.9 Haramokngna American Indian Cultural Center • 2.10 Hicks Camp/Rio Vista Park • 2.11 Lacy Park • 2.12 Llano del Rio • 2.13 Mariachi Plaza • 2.14 Mount Sinai Home Care Agency • 2.15 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Richard Chambers Courthouse) • 2.16 Owen Brown’s Gravesite • 2.17 Quemetco, Incorporated • 2.18 Ruben Salazar Park and Silver Dollar Café • 2.19 San Gabriel Mission • 2.20 Santa Anita Park and Pomona Fairgrounds • 2.21 Self-Help Graphics and Art • 2.22 Upton Sinclair’s House • 2.23 Whittier State School

Chapter Three: South Los Angeles
An Introduction to South Los Angeles
Map of South Los Angeles
South Los Angeles Sites
3.1 Alameda Boulevard • 3.2 Alondra Park • 3.3 American Indian Movement, Los Angeles Chapter • 3.4 Bicycle Club Casino • 3.5 Black Panther Party Headquarters • 3.6 California Eagle • 3.7 Chuco’s Justice Center and FREE L.A. High School • 3.8 Compton Communicative Arts Academy • 3.9 Dorothy Ray Healey’s House • 3.10 Duke Brothers’ Automotive Shop • 3.11 Dunbar Hotel • 3.12 Eso Won Bookstore and Leimert Park • 3.13 Firestone Tire and Rubber • 3.14 Holiday Bowl • 3.15 Holman United Methodist Church • 3.16 Indian Revival Center • 3.17 Kashu Realty and Thirty-sixth Street Residential Discrimination Site • 3.18 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum • 3.19 Maywood City Hall • 3.20 Mercado La Paloma • 3.21 Peace and Freedom Party, Los Angeles Chapter • 3.22 Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research • 3.23 Trianon Ballroom • 3.24 USC McDonald’s Olympic Swim Stadium

Chapter Four: The Harbor and South Bay
An Introduction to the Harbor and South Bay
Map of the Harbor and South Bay
Harbor and South Bay Sites
4.1 Baypoint Avenue Residential Discrimination Site • 4.2 Bixby Park • 4.3 Lakewood City Hall • 4.4 Mark Twain Library and Cambodia Town • 4.5 Miramar Park • 4.6 Port of Los Angeles and Liberty Hill • 4.7 Puvungna • 4.8 Terminal Island • 4.9 White Point Preserve and Education Center • 4.10 Ziba Beauty Center

Chapter Five: The Westside
An Introduction to the Westside
Map of the Westside
Westside Sites
5.1 Ballona Wetlands • 5.2 Campbell Hall, UCLA • 5.3 Century City • 5.4 Federal Buildings • 5.5 Highways Performance Space • 5.6 The Ink Well • 5.7 Los Angeles International Airport • 5.8 Malibu Public Beaches • 5.9 Midnight Special and Sisterhood Bookstores • 5.10 West Hollywood City Hall • 5.11 Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring

Chapter Six: The San Fernando Valley and North Los Angeles County
An Introduction to the San Fernando Valley and North Los Angeles County
Map of the San Fernando Valley and North Los Angeles County
San Fernando Valley and North Los Angeles County Sites
6.1 BUSTOP • 6.2 Chicana and Chicano Studies and Pan African Studies Departments, California State University, Northridge • 6.3 Everywoman’s Village • 6.4 General Motors Van Nuys • 6.5 The Great Wall and Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) • 6.6 KPFK Radio Station and Pacifica Archives • 6.7 Lang Station • 6.8 Saint Francis Dam • 6.9 Santa Susana Field Laboratory • 6.10 Simi Valley Courthouse and Site of Rodney King Beating • 6.11 Siutcanga/Village of Los Encinos • 6.12 Tarzana • 6.13 Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants • 6.14 Val Verde Park • 6.15 Wat Thai of Los Angeles

Chapter Seven: Thematic Tours
First Peoples Tour • Radical People-of-Color Movements of the 1960s and '70s Tour • Queer Politics and Culture Tour • Independent and Alternative Media Tour • Economic Restructuring and Globalization Tour • New Organizing Tour • Environmental Justice Tour

Recommended Reading
Acknowledgments
Credits
Index

Reviews

“Imagine Howard Zinn, the late renegade professor who gave us ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ kidnapping Huell Howser and rewriting your Auto Club TourBook. . . . But you don’t have to agree with the authors’ politics to be intrigued by their work. Even though I’ve been working on an L.A. guidebook myself for the last 18 months, this ‘People’s Guide’ taught me plenty.”
Los Angeles Times
“F**k Rodeo Drive: A People's Guide to Los Angeles is an L.A. Guidebook for the 99 Percent. . . . Let the tour buses take the throngs to visit Marilyn Monroe's hand prints at Grauman's Chinese Theater or to press their noses up to the windows on Rodeo Drive and wander Beverly Hills like they're Julia Roberts. Despite what the entertainment industry would have you believe, the city of Los Angeles and its surrounding neighborhoods have a much richer, often conflicted history than just those landmarks—and A People's Guide to Los Angeles...would like to make sure you don't forget it.”
LA Weekly
“If Davis [Mike Davis’s City of Quartz] and McWilliams [Carey McWilliams’s Southern California] alerted visitors to the existence of Los Angeles's deep fissures and hidden history of conflict, they don't reveal where one can go to actually see evidence of it. A Peoples Guide to Los Angeles brilliantly fills this gap with listings of more than a hundred historic sites of struggle, as well as themed tours of the city from Latino, Native American, African American, and queer perspectives.”
Bookforum
“This is not your typical guidebook. There are few descriptions of LA’s iconic sites nor the best places for celebrity spotting. It assumes the form of a guidebook but not the content. On the contrary A People’s Guide to Los Angeles emphasizes the other Los Angeles, the neighborhoods in the city and county that are not on the typical visitor’s radar; that is those places and people often metaphorically and literally left off the map. . . . An intriguing and important book of alternative tourism.”
Chicago Tribune
“High Gas Prices make staycations more inviting, so start planning with A People’s Guide to Los Angeles. The focus here is on the people, places, struggles and triumphs that make our area unique.”
Pasadena Star-News
“A beautiful collection of short essays, maps, stories, photographs, directions and secret histories.”
OC Weekly
“[A] darkly enthralling read.”
Publishers Weekly
“A rare and refreshingly new take on the tourist guidebook. . . . The book offers a more balanced and accurate picture of Los Angeles’s past and its regional diversity than other guides to the city. . . . An exhaustive resource that will inspire its audience to reimagine tourism, rethink the spatial organization of Los Angeles and other urban areas, and join in a conversation about historical imagination and the stories we choose to present in public history.”
Southern California Quarterly
"It should become a permanent feature on bookshelves and course syllabi across the region."
Social & Cultural Geography
“An indispensable guide for those seeking to understand Los Angeles beyond its well-hyped glitz and glamour.”
Beyondchron
“This is not your usual roundup of traditional tourist sites in L.A. but, instead, a unique and vastly informative guide to places of interest and importance in the struggles of race, labor, gender, and the environment.”
Booklist
A People’s Guide to Los Angeles is not for the Beverly Hills, celebrity-gawking crowd, but for those whose idea of fun involves a glimpse of L.A.’s left-leaning history. The book is a blueprint to places where progressive groups fought battles along lines of color, gender and class.”
LA Downtown News
“The masterfully executed book subverts the typical Los Angeles guidebook. . . . It's an invaluable source of little known or forgotten but very necessary L.A. history.”
KCET.org
"A rich, full, and fascinating alternative tour of Los Angeles that is sure to hold something of interest for just about anyone who is curious about the subterranean history and hidden current life of the city . . . a groundbreaking and important project."
Journal of San Diego History
“Offering an interesting alternative to the usual tourist guides, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles is a socio-political look at the West Coast’s occasionally explosive cultural melting pot that . . . illuminates a few corners that don’t turn up in the usual tourist guides.”
Wanderlust
“We’ve found a great summer read that’s giving us a new perspective on the city we love. It’s got intrigue, action—and enough shocking stories for a miniseries. Plus, it’s all true. . . . Its thoroughly researched, intelligent text is edifying no matter where you stand. And like any good guidebook, there are dining recommendations along the way.”
Purewow
“Illuminating and lavishly illustrated.”
AAG Newsletter
"A People’s Guide is much more than a guidebook, it is a unique and much-needed people’s history of Los Angeles; an historical document to resist the erasures, and to capture stories, struggles (both historical and ongoing), successes and defeats, that may otherwise be lost or remain inaccessible to those not intimately familiar with and embedded in the region."
Human Geography: A New Radical Journal

"Includes a wealth of bibliographical cross-references and aids. . . . Interrogates critical power relationships as the city and economy take shape over the centuries, and how this history remains embedded and mostly still visible in the ever-shifting landscape. If you live in L.A. or love the city, it’s worth a place in your library."

People's World
“Forget the stars’ map of Hollywood: this is the real trip through an L.A. history of militant strikers, civil rights activists, and unforgettable feminists. A tour de force of imagination and memory.” —Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

"A People’s Guide brings the reader to the Los Angeles I know and love. The amazingly diverse, vibrant, gritty LA filled with history and struggle. Finally, here’s a guidebook that takes visitors to the places and people that make me proud to call Los Angeles my home.” —Madeline Janis, Executive Director, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE)

Awards

  • AAG Globe Book Award 2013, Association of American Geographers
  • SCIBA Book Award 2013, SoCal Independent Booksellers

Media

Los Angeles River
Los Angeles River
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Statue
Statue
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Mural and mariachi band
Mural and mariachi band
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Interview with the author.