The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I grew up in what my car insurance company would call, "a high risk neighborhood," but I never saw Angeleno Heights quite like that. Its a small area right outside of Downtown Los Angeles, conveniently located next to the epicenter of my life, Dodger Stadium. The houses range from gorgeous, perfectly intact Victorians to dingy stucco multi-unit buildings owned by slum landlords. That in itself is the beauty of my neighborhood. About 100 years ago the most wealthy people of Los Angeles lived in Angeleno Heights, now it is considered "high risk". The neighborhood was so "high risk", that many of my friends parents would not allow them to drive to it at night. My friends were all fairly wealthy and disturbingly jaded by their Valley lifestyle. To them, my neighborhood was a living breathing example of the truth in urban media. Gangs, drive by shootings, and graffiti does occur in my neighborhood, but does not define nor contextualize this urban neighborhood. I felt obliged to say, "I've lived here my whole life and have not once felt uncomfortable" simply to enforce the idea that urban media is essentially racist. In reality, my friends and their parents were worried about the amount of Latinos in the neighborhood. They exemplify, aversive racism at its best; avoid people of color entirely, but don't cause trouble. This realization came full circle last week when I told my friends that my house was being forclosed on and I was moving to a townhouse in West L.A.. Their general reaction was, "well, at least you are moving to a better neighborhood". A better neighborhood? Or a whiter neigborhood? My new neighborhood is across the street from the Grove, a disneylandesque shopping mall, down the street from the Beverly Center, a giant mall, and right next door to a Ross. Do shopping malls really make great neighborhoods? Or do they just attract wealthy white people? Because that is exactly the neighborhood I am now living in; a large townhouse community filled with young white families. It is where Los Angeles gets the reputation for being culturally flat. In my eyes, for the first time I am living in a bad neighborhood. I love Angeleno Heights for everything that it had to offer: unique architecture, diversity, and of course, a close proximity to Dodger Stadium.