Tell me what L.A. was like back in the 1950's/1960's (Los Angeles: insurance, homes)

[Bruin Rick]

I just wish that L.A. could live again. But it probably never will.

[majoun]

Originally Posted by rack of lamb

Shortly after this period, the crime rate went through the roof, and Rodney King riot occurred in 1992. LA in 1984-1987 era were great because of all the excitements. You had the olympics, cool nightlife, good heavy metal scene and beach girls scene. Everything was relatively affordable. It wasn't too crowded on weekend on I 405 yet, and I could get to Newport Beach in less than an hour. Now, it takes 4 hours or more. It's a disaster. It was starting to get bad after 1989 with more traffic and crimes. They completed alot of mid to highrises by 1992. The economy tanked, and Downtown LA went with it. Now, it's boring with Brody Jenner, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian are the player of the current nightlife scene, not Kim Alexis, Cindy Crawford and Catherine Oxinberg back in the 80's. I can go on how now is the second worst time to be in LA.

But why beginning in 1984? The crime rate was rapidly rising during the time period that you refer to.

And downtown LA during the 1980s was in pretty bad shape except for Little Tokyo. With the exception of Little Tokyo (and some adjacent places like Gorky's and Al's Bar) and Chinatown, if you were downtown at night in the '80s you were either a drug dealer, gangbanger, prostitute, drug user, john, or involved in some other sort of illegal activity. LAPD traditionally did not investigate downtown murders as they viewed downtown murders as controlling the criminal population. Many places that are very nice now were very scary in the '80s.

My guess as to why you cut off your time frame in '87 is because that's when heterosexuals started getting scared of AIDS. I'm surprised you didn't say the '70s rather than the mid-80s.

[Mr.Kurtz]

I don't see L.A. getting any better ..... Crime might be way down, and bad areas are better, today, ok .... But the entire L.A. area seems so over populated, and traffic is a complete nightmare at ant time of day or night. My last visit to the SF Valley, about 1.5 years ago, I met an IT man from India. He was living in Downtown L.A. and commuted to the West Valley for work. He made a decent living, and lived good in the downtown area, that was revamped. He doesn't drive and takes the metro, walks, or bus. He's 32 years old. As a kid in Sri Lanka, he dreamed of living the ' California life ', and once he got a Visa, via IT work, he flew direcly to L.A. The night I met him, at Fallbrook Mall in West Hills, he was the only person speaking English at Starbucks.

So now, with the Internet, and all these Talent Shows like American Idol, seen worldwide, people from all over the world are flocking to L.A.

Illegals, legals, and few speak any English, and they ' arrive ' in Los Angeles ....

[SalParadise]

Originally Posted by Mr.Kurtz

I don't see L.A. getting any better ..... Crime might be way down, and bad areas are better, today, ok .... But the entire L.A. area seems so over populated, and traffic is a complete nightmare at ant time of day or night.

The night I met him, at Fallbrook Mall in West Hills, he was the only person speaking English at Starbucks.

Illegals, legals, and few speak any English, and they ' arrive ' in Los Angeles ....

People see what the WANT to see. I've seen your rants on the So. Fla boards about "Third World" Miami.

So let a native offer his observations about the Fallbrook Mall:

I have been to the Fallbrook Mall MANY, MANY times in my life (as recently as a few months ago). ENGLISH is the dominant language you hear there. Yes, you will hear Spanish, Farsi, etc.

But OVERALL, most follks speak english, esp. when transacting business at the mall.

[majoun]

Originally Posted by Mr.Kurtz

I don't see L.A. getting any better ..... Crime might be way down, and bad areas are better, today, ok

Just as many of the bad areas of the past are no longer bad areas or have improved, some of the bad areas of today were not bad areas 20 or 30 years ago let alone 50 or 60 years ago (some were not even built or only barely built in the 1950s).

I speak particularly of most of the Valley within L.A. city limits.
The irony is that many of the neighborhoods which people fled from to live in Valley neighborhoods are better than said Valley neighborhoods are today.

.... But the entire L.A. area seems so over populated, and traffic is a complete nightmare at ant time of day or night.

This is true. And why L.A.'s survival depends upon the expansion of the Metro, as it no longer works as the car-based city that it was.

My last visit to the SF Valley, about 1.5 years ago, I met an IT man from India. He was living in Downtown L.A. and commuted to the West Valley for work. He made a decent living, and lived good in the downtown area, that was revamped. He doesn't drive and takes the metro, walks, or bus. He's 32 years old.

With the state of the economy being what it is, and with L.A. being worse hit than many places, not as many are coming.

Illegals, contrary to what some think, are human beings motivated by economic opportunities like other human beings. If L.A. does not reinvent itself further and revive its economy they will stop coming too.

In any case the "IT man from India" you refer to is the kind of immigrant (who can come from any country) who greatly benefits California and L.A. (Although I highly doubt he was the only anglpphone at a West Valley mall.)

[SalParadise]

Originally Posted by rack of lamb

Shortly after this period, the crime rate went through the roof, and Rodney King riot occurred in 1992. LA in 1984-1987 era were great because of all the excitements. You had the olympics, cool nightlife, good heavy metal scene and beach girls scene. Everything was relatively affordable. It wasn't too crowded on weekend on I 405 yet, and I could get to Newport Beach in less than an hour. Now, it takes 4 hours or more. It's a disaster.

The nostalgia for the 1980's is quite funny. I grew up in LA County and was a teenager in the 1980's. I remember old timers back then talking about the "good old days"....as in the 1940's.

Those were the days when the San Fernando Valley (and San Gabriel Valley) were filled with Orange Groves and the sweet smell of citrus was in the air.

The 1980's was a time of tract homes and mini-malls. And high crime, bad hair, and bad smog.

I'll take the 1940's (or the 1920's) over the 1980's anyday. The days before SMOG became a common phrase. Smog didn't really start to be an issue until about 1943.

[nmnita]

Originally Posted by Bruin Rick

I just wish that L.A. could live again. But it probably never will.

Rick, it is still alive but in a totally different way. Unfortunately and sometimes fortunately we can't go back in time. Everything changes. I would never live in Los Angeles again, but there are still things about it I love and so do many other people. My biggest fear: it will become another Detroit if people don't watch out.

NIta

[nmnita]

Originally Posted by SloRoller

Not segregated?? You're making a joke, right? In the 50's blacks could not go south of Slauson or west of Vermont. I mean literally. If you did you ran a very high risk of being attacked or threatened by local whites, or jammed up by the police - meaning possibly roughed up, certainly threatened, absolutely interrogated. When my father was looking to buy a home in 1959, the realtor refused to show him any homes for sale south of Slauson, telling him "I'm not going to show you anything in that area. We really don't want people like you over there. It's a nice neighborhood". He fired her a$$ on the spot. He bought a home on Hobart Blvd., near Manchester and Western. We were the third black family on the block and the prejudice and racism toward all of us was running rampant from a lot of the residents and some of the local small business mechants.

I remember my first encounter with blatant racism in the 5-and-10-cent Store. I was 5 years old and the cashier absolutely refused to wait on me for my purchase. After she took several customers ahead of me who got in line after I did, I went to the cashier at the rear of the store and got the same treatment. I remember going to the local liquor store with my father when I was 4 to purchase a newspaper and a pack of cigarettes (for him, of course). The newspaper rack was outside the door. In the course of removing the newspaper he dropped it. The owner of the dry cleaners next door was out on the sidewalk talking to the owner of the liquor store. Knowing we were well within earshot, the dry cleaners owner says to the liquor store owner, "Look at that clumsy ni66er. I don't know why he's buying a paper, he probably can't even read". Mind you, we had been doing business with this cleaners for a couple of years. Immediately after leaving the store, we stopped at the dry cleaners to pick up everything we had in there. My father made it perfectly clear that he would no longer be doing business there and that all of the other black families we knew would be advised of her being a racist.

Within 4 years white flight was in full swing from the immediate and surrounding neighborhoods.

Well into the 60's, Inglewood was very hostile to black people. The police were beyond ridiculous with their agression and prejudice toward black people. I experienced this first hand as well.

I don't know what leads you to believe that "they all got along until the early 60's". I was living in Los Angeles, California. Which Los Angeles were you in?

Sad as it seems you are completely right. We were about to buy our first home, in about 1960, near Manchester and west of the Harbor freeway, I can't remember how far west. We wanted to live in Inglewood but we couldn't afford it, so we looked as close to the area as we could. We are white and I remember the realtor bringing up the color issue, telling us, if we were worried about blacks moving onto the street, not to be concerned, the neighbors had agreed not to sell to them. My parents and some neighbors in the west part of Pasadena actually brought a lot on our street to keep blacks from buying. Yes, there was way too much segratation in before the mid 69s. Inglewood was completely white until, probably the early 70s. We couldn't believe people would go so far to keep minorities out of a neighborhood. As young 20 somethings, starting our family we wanted our children to be part of a racially mixed enviorment, our parents thought we had lost our minds. As it turned out we did not buy in So Los Angeles, we moved clear out to Covina, but the color of people's skin had nothing to do with it.

In my highschool graduation class, we had no blacks, about 5 or 6 Hispanics and one asian.

Of course the city was segregated.

Nita

[nmnita]

Originally Posted by rack of lamb

Hey, they may have resented blacks in 1957, but they all seemed to get along. By 1959, they grew more resentment of blacks because of more blacks moving in from the south and threatening their jobs by then. It seemed fine in South Central because it was white and blacks. This was 1957. LA was already diverse in the east, south and small cases to its immediate west like Mid-Wilshare with mostly white in Mid Wilshare with some hispanics/blacks.

sorry I disagree with you, it was more like the late 60s when the color barrior started to crumble. Yes, there was some mixed neighborhoods, but they were few and far between, no matter where one lived. Even Gardena was almost all white except for a handful of Asians. You rarely, if ever, saw a black or Hispanic person in Gardena until the late 60s. Blacks taking jobs froms whites had little, if anything to do with it...

[Count David]

Originally Posted by nmnita

My biggest fear: it will become another Detroit if people don't watch out.

The levels of segregation described in your two following posts made it sound like Detroit with a good economy.