Westward Ho!

OH HAI.

Have no internet access at home right now -- still waiting for (now rescheduled) Time Warner installation. Am checking in periodically wherever there's a connection available.

Recovering this morning from awes wknd at Fuck Yeah Fest IV, which really surpassed my expectations all around -- it was one of the most well-organized festivals I've ever been to, and it was obvious a shit-ton of work and thought and experience went into putting it together. Good to see so much energy there -- with the exception of a few indiepoppers, it was like a full-on 2-day hardcore/noise show, with super-talented bands that actually got the audience to carry the crowd-surfing singers (this never happens back in jaded NYC). Cool to see drug-outlaw Don Bolles in attendance too. :-)

I didn't take any pictures or video but everyone else did, so if you need to perv on the Pissed Jeans singer's love handles, keep checking Flickr and Youtube.

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

There is an act playing the Echo tonight called Lymbyc Systym.

Diversity

Bob "Bowling Alone" Putnam wonders whether "diversity" helps or hurts the strength of communities.

It's an interesting debate, in an era where it's de rigeur to celebrate the heritage of particular ethnic groups by naming districts after them (Little Armenia, Historic Filipinotown, et al), while at the same time these districts are more ethnically diverse than ever before, making these distinctions largely arbitrary and exclusionary. What good is the name "Koreatown" when so many of the neighborhood's residents are Mexican, Central American, and -- increasingly -- white? What happens when the moniker becomes obsolete as the neighborhood character changes? Is it still important for the Chinese of Los Angeles to have a Chinatown to raise their social capital and offer guidance and support to new immigrants? Or is the bigger question whether all of us as Angelenos need Chinatown as a monument to our local history? Does diversity imply assimilation into the American mainstream, and does ghettoization make it more possible for groups to hold on to (and be collective advocates for) their homeland traditions?

Goings On

No, I haven't given up on this blog. It's been a packed summer, and it's turning into a packed autumn, but I promise to post more regularly. This week I'm in the middle of moving... from my sublet in Silver Lake to a full-time crash pad two miles away in Thai Town ("Los Feliz Adjacent"). I love the neighborhood, warts and all. It has so much potential, and yet with the tremendous renter population, it's important to keep the property values low so the people living there can afford to stay there. Eventually, though, the gentrified development along the bookending Red Line stations will move inward, which I think is the idea -- TOD nodes as catalysts for further revitalization. And the gleaming megastructures of the Kaiser campus/Church of Sc13n+0106y are mere blocks away.

Aside: One of the songwriting greats and all-around weirdos of the past century just left us. Rest in peace, Lee Hazlewood. I've been listening to you all day.