Huevos Divorciados at Liliana’s on the Eastside.

Huevos Rancheros at Flore in Silver Lake.

The Eastside is still east of the river. Never Forget!

Not my usual 2 minutes of random street corners, but I thought this one might be of interest. A makeshift memorial for Olivia Gamboa, a bus driver killed in an early morning crash. People seemed to be moved by this tragic accident, showing their empathy for another working person, someone they might have encountered at some point on their way to and from work.

Rest In Peace Olivia Gamboa, fellow worker that helped us get to our destinations.

More info here www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bus-driver-killed-20130612,0,1359034.story

We were driving thru the Westside today, somewhere along the border of Silver Lake and Echo Park, when we thought we saw something stupid headed our way. Sure enough, and cuz I had my camera handy, we were able to take a picture of some innocent dolt dressing up as a Mexican captain of sorts on his way to some shitty place to drink his shitty Tecate beers. Oh yeah, it’s Drinko de Mayo! We of the Chicano variety are not so learnededed on this American holiday so we decided to seek out an experience. Might as well get to know the Ethnic people that live in your city and figure out why they do the things they do.

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I’d heard rumors oh for many, many years that at long last another issue of SSP would see the light of day. I didn’t believe it, and still don’t, but CT is so convinced of its resurrection that there is an actual “Publication Release” planned for Saturday, March 9th 2013 at 8pm over at Espacio 1839 in Boyle Heights. Seeing is believing buddy. Notice it doesn’t say Release Party? I did. O pues.

If you don’t know, Sal Si Puedes is one of the best literary magazines to come out of the Eastside. I did a review of issue #3 waaaaayyy back in 2005, you should go read it.

See, doesn’t that sound interesting? It might take another decade for the next issue to come out so if I were you I’d hurry in to get my copy. The going rate is $10 but if you mention that you heard about it on LA Eastside, CT will let you have it for $9.99 and will throw in a free knock-knock joke. Yer welcome!

See ya there!

Check out the Facebook invite here.

Espacio 1839  
1839 1st. St (near Mariachi Plaza)
323.265.3730

Where were we? It seems like a bit of time since we last spoke. I thought it was a few weeks, maybe a month or two (tops!) but it turns out this lil’ site that couldn’t has been down for more than a year. Oh well, shit happens. Mostly it was a bunch of stupid spambots and viruses, lots of digital cleanup to do, but there was also the chance that we were going to go full throttle and GET A NEW THEME! PUNCH IT UP A BIT! GET BACK IN THE GAME! but sadly the writing was on the wall. Or wasn’t actually. Posting was getting scarce, many of the LAE participants were doing other things, and who has time for blogs anymore anyways?

We did this for fun and to bring some attention to some of the (still) overlooked communities in our metropolis. It was also to counter the crush of new LA residents jumping off the turnip truck and declaring anything East of the beach communities as “Eastside”, an erasure of history some of us found unacceptable. Since most of us were either students or workers the demands of this miserable world constantly increased taking away what little disposable time we had for posting stuff on a blog. Besides, life is elsewhere.

I didn’t want to pull an LA City Nerd and deny access to some useful posts, so I finally got the site back up so you can go back and see some of the smart, thoughtful, and incisive commentary we contributed to the discussion of our city. As well as all the silly, controversial, crass, and pointed articles that were probably even more important. There might be some new posts happening at some point since there is still much to say, and not many people are saying the things that need to be said, but the LA Eastside you once knew is no more. Pour one for the homies.

In conclusion: the site is up, it is no longer the same, only the cards know what is to come.

Nos Vemos Pronto!

…while the forces of eviction gather. Taken earlier today at Occupy LA.

This morning on the Madeleine Bland show councilman Dennis Zine got the laughs going when he bestowed some words of wisdom to all those participants of Occupy LA: Get a Job! You know, in the jobless “recovery”.  His great plan to accomplish this feat of full employment? Throw a “Job Fair.”

Haha! For reals? Yes, for reals.

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I went ahead and snipped together some of his inspiring babosadas, cuz I doubt you’ll want to listen to the whole thing. Oh yeah, aside from his “get a job” message he also complains about the “homeless that don’t have anything to do”, the movement is “generated by some international group”, something about socialism, “when you go to the city hall you like to see a nice environment and its sad to see people who are camped out because they have a cause, they can’t get a job”.

How very sad and disturbing it is to see the unwashed poor and the unemployed riff-raff. They should stay over in skid row where we don’t have to see them.

Fucking Hilarious.

Here’s another solution:

A few blocks away from the Occupy LA drum circles a solitary man registers his disappointment with the status quo. I like his sign, a critique of the TOTALITY but open-ended enough to suggest that it doesn’t have to be this way. Recognizing the total messed-up-ness of the world is a first step in changing it into something worthwhile.

Nihilists, just one more step…

North East Los Angeles is full of wankers. Well maybe not full but teeming at the very least. They like to bitch and complain about how this area is great but if only it had this or that particular amenity they had grown accustomed to back in their old fancy community or generic suburb. Whenever I hear them whine (or mostly when I read their laments online) I want to poke them in the eyes, 3 Stooges style. Because for all that griping they are still never happy even when they get what they want. That seemed to be the case today when I finally visited this fairly new market in Hermon which was incredibly nearly empty of customers. Yes, I am arbitrarily going to use this visit to make some wild generalizations and to argue that catering to the monied hill people is a losing proposition.

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It’s happening now in Downtown at city hall. Go check it out if yer not, uh, occupied.

OccupyLA.org

OccupyLosAngeles.org

UPDATE: I added a few more pics if you want to click ahead to see a bit of what is happening.

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The beginning of the best time of the year to be in Los Angeles. The tourists go back to their local malls, the starlets migrate West to begin the season of bitterness and disillusionment. And I’m ready for some champurado and elotes, the pan dulce kind.

Enjoy the season!

Beneath the average American City exterior the suburbs try to present, I know for a fact that all the worst things in the world come from these disconnected living environments: Rent-To-Own, Automatic Sensor Faucets, Baseball, Individual Retirement Accounts, The Grilled Cheese Truck, “I have to use some vacation hours or I will lose them”, Plastic Mole Jars, Self-Checkout Cashiers. I bet all of these modern evils have been thought up in some suburban kitchen or den, by some equally evil people. Yeah, it has to be true.

But I do like getting invited to the pool parties. Today I found out that these bastard suburbanites also enjoy some outstanding tinkle stations.

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