the arts district and artisan tortillas
I’ve been thinking about space lately. I’m finally living
the Eastside dream I’ve had since I started making pilgrimages to Silver Lake in college. I start the day with a train ride that takes me across trestles and
over a cement river. I eat lunch in the middle of 1938’s idea of
China—neon-outlined pagodas and bamboo lettering. And then I go home to
Highland Park’s rolling hills and gold-pink light. I took a long walk on
Saturday and found an old glass-works studio I’d never known about.
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| Old New Chinatown. |
A little while ago, a writer I know, who recently moved to
L.A., asked her Facebook friends what their favorite coffee shops to write in
were. There were the usual suspects: Intelligentsia, Café de Leche, the Coffee
Table. Someone wrote a poetic reply about the best writing spot being the one
you stumble into that no one else knows about. Fair enough answers, all of
them, but I was tempted to go the anti-hipster route (but I didn’t, because
nothing is more hipster than being anti-hipster) and mention some of my true
favorites:
·
The Starbucks inside Target (not as overly air
conditioned as regular Starbucks)
·
McDonald’s (better and cheaper coffee than
Starbucks)
·
LAX (the sweet un-anxiety of early arrival + the
good feeling of multi-tasking by traveling and
writing)
·
Philippe’s (49-cent coffee + a weird
circus-themed wall)
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| The original French dip! Unless Cole's is! |
Clearly, I pride myself on an anytime/anywhere approach to
writing. I was raised on stories of women writers who scribbled on legal pads
in their cars while waiting to pick up their kids from soccer practice. But
it’s pride born largely of necessity (not entirely, though—we do have a spare
room in our house that gets called “the office” and, when we’re being honest,
“Ollie’s eating room”).
This morning I tagged along to the new art class being taught
by Fabian, Homeboy’s resident artist. (This is the awesome part of my job. But
I also spent a lot of time today reading the fine print on government grant
applications.) For years he painted at home, but as his work started getting
out there, a patron offered him a studio. I followed a dozen homies to the
third floor of an old hotel on Main Street. There was oyster-cracker tile and
filigreed columns, all in a state of blissful disrepair that made my heart ache
when I wondered how much of this—the homies, the ruins, the art—might be pushed
out of Downtown in the next few years.
There is a more ruined kind of ruin too, of course, which is
the other side of this coin. The hotel back when people used it to shoot up.
The homies when they—some of them—shot up. First thing you see in Fabian’s
studio is his altar, with pictures of his
grandparents and fallen homies and the gods of Chicano art: Rivera,
Kahlo, Orozco, Siqueiros. Then you see Fabian’s art,
which has evolved, in his words, from “folklorico stuff,
straight from the tube” to glowing, nuanced portraits that reflect a growing
thoughtfulness about cultural solidarity. He showed me one of his latest, the back of
a rabbi overlaid by Hebrew words from the Torah.
 |
| "Falling Star" by a rising star. |
“If you’re getting upset, it’s ‘cause your brain is working
out some shit,” he said. “That’s art, ese.”
Neuroplasticity meets street art.
Comments
I have been to Phillipe! The coffee was even cheaper.
Also the Coffee Table, that was close to home and I remember running into a classmate from grad school there, she was writing, natch.
Never understood that. Fucking drives me crazy to have people talking around me when I'm trying to right. I humbly submit that the true anti-hipster route would be not to write in any sort of coffee shop or public space. ;)
Love that your new job has a resident artist. Very cool!
I wish I could write at home. I like a little white noise. Although that could change now that I'm working at a place with a lot of white noise and noise-noise of all colors.