Does Los Angeles have a "Little Italy" ? (San Diego: condos, home)

[rocketeer]

Does Los Angeles have a "Little Italy"?

[crookcole]

There are tonz of great Italian paces to eat, but other than that...not that I know of or heard of.

[BreaOC]

Originally Posted by rocketeer

Does Los Angeles have a "Little Italy"?

No. We do have a Little Tokyo and a Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles. There is also a Little Saigon and Koreatown in Orange County. Los Angeles doesn't have a large Italian population, most of the immigrants are of Asian, Latino, and Jewish background. If you consider Jewish people to be immigrants (some do some don't). If I am correct San Francisco is the only city in California with a little Italy unfortunately. The previous poster is correct in saying that there are some pretty amazing Italian restaurants locally.

[bhcompy]

no little italy, but plenty of good italian spread out over the LA, Long Beach, and OC areas.

[cantstopthebeat]

yeah, it seems like theres only a bunch of "anglo" italian joints. Theres nothing like the places in new york.

[bhcompy]

Ferraro's restaurant in Long Beach(palo verde & los coyotes) is calabrese style, definitely not "anglo", and very good to boot

[robertpolyglot]

Originally Posted by BreaOC

Los Angeles doesn't have a large Italian population, most of the immigrants are of Asian, Latino, and Jewish background. If you consider Jewish people to be immigrants (some do some don't). If I am correct San Francisco is the only city in California with a little Italy unfortunately.

Boy, this is the right post for me and boy is it sad, in a way.

I was born in Los Angeles to immigrant Italian parents. There was never a shortage of Italians around the house. There are actually quite a few Italians in the LA area though most have intermarried, making it all irrelevant. Also, there was not much of an Italian neighborhood, though, in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, there were sizable Italian populations in Eagle Rock, Burbank, Los Feliz...so close in to and north of the downtown area. The social scene revolved around parishes and social clubs. Unlike the East, Italians in the West became Anglicized very quickly. About 1/4 of my high school class at a Catholic school was Italian but didn't act very Italian like you would see on the East Coast. Personally, I would have liked a tighter bond with this community which was so dispersed.

There is North Beach in San Francisco and its boundaries are being eroded by Chinatown's expansion. There is a Little Italy in San Diego but the young hip nouveau Italian is hardly a Guido but a connoiseur of fine cuisine, so they open restaurants. So, other than its trendiness and good food, it's really more full of trendy California-esque Italian fusion food and expensive condos. The Napa Wine Country also has an Italian presence, to be sure, but it has become so commercialized, big league and entrepreneurial, that you would hardly call it an Italian enclave any more.

That's the Italian scene in LA and in California from someone raised in a home where only Italian was spoken.

[TonyT]

If you do a search for a thread titled "Why Doesn't Los Angeles Have a Little Italy?" you will find two rather extensive posts I wrote regarding the role of Italians in Los Angeles and about the old Italian Quarter.

Briefly though, there was a Little Italy in Los Angeles. It occupied the area that is now known as Olvera Street and extended up to the borders of New Chinatown. This whole section of the city was the location of Italian owned and operated businesses. The residential areas of Little Italy were primarily the foothills of Elysian Park and Lincoln Heights. Many of the businesses in Little Italy were forced to close during the Second World War, due in large part to discrimination and government imposed restrictions on non-resident Italians. Some businesses however did continue on well into the 1950's and 1960's. The residential areas were slowly abandoned after the war as Italians moved into the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys.

So while it is true that there is no Little Italy in Los Angeles now, there was once a very vibrant and thriving Italian community downtown whose presence has both been forgotten and ignored for far too long.

[Prince of Lombards]

It's too bad there's no Little Italy in L.A., since such neighborhoods are generally pleasant and non-hostile. You'll never see graffitti, bars on windows, 20 cars parked on a dead lawn, etc. in a Little Italy neighborhood.

[King0fthehill]

Originally Posted by Prince of Lombards

It's too bad there's no Little Italy in L.A., since such neighborhoods are generally pleasant and non-hostile. You'll never see graffitti, bars on windows, 20 cars parked on a dead lawn, etc. in a Little Italy neighborhood.

Nice cheapshot on our Hispanic friends there....