Pleased To Meet You
photos by Louise Baker and Anna Bosch
MacArthur Park is a place many people come when they need immediately a fake ID and a tamale cart. They come from Mexico and El Salvador and mountains in Guatemala so rural and so remote that they do not even speak Spanish, but Kanjobal, K’iche’, Chuj. They come from trains and vans and the small space beneath the spare tire in trucks and they come here, to MacArthur Park, to start. It is a baffling, chaotic place to begin to assimilate and it is in this chaos that their view of America first takes shape.
If they are dropped off at the corner of Alvarado and Wilshire, and many newcomers are, then it is the 99¢ store that they see first; there is also, down the street, the: 98¢ store, 97¢ store, and the $1 Mas o Menos store in which goods are routinely priced and sold for $25.99 and $30.99. Such obvious, unapologetic misrepresentation is totally normal in this neighborhood. A dreamier version of America is in fact why many of them have come at all and they are shocked, for example, when they arrive to find Los Angeles expensive– whatever American story they were told at home was apparently so exaggerated and so mythic as to leave out certain critical details like the fact that most people in this country pay rent. And if rent is not a surprise, then a last name is. Mothers go to register their kids for kindergarten as only “Marcos” and “Francisco” to which the school secretary says that the children need a last name to enroll. For whatever reason, she does not explain that often one of the key points in a last name is that it stays consistent in a family unit and so the mothers make do: they ask random students in the school office for their names, to borrow, so that they may please the bureaucracy and go home. Marcos is now “Marcos Miguel”; Francisco: “Francisco Pedro.” These are kids in huge families with new last names in America, all of them first names, all of them different.
And when school starts they come with their High School Musical backpack and sit down on the rug and say in total seriousness that yes they have pets, they have chinches and would the Miss like to see them? Almost everyone lives with bugs. MacArthur Park was developed shortly after the turn of the twentieth century to be dense and compact– this was never the Los Angeles of the single-family home with the lawn and the two-car garage. Its design was intended for white, wealthy, single people who worked downtown and commuted close by. That the residents were wealthy meant glazed brick buildings with ballrooms in the basement; that they were single meant that the units were small, mainly studios and one-bedrooms. When the wealthy left–when the streetcars were ripped up and the price of rent plummeted– the demographic changed, but the infrastructure did not. Into these small spaces moved families of eight, nine, ten, more than ten. MacArthur Park is the densest neighborhood in the United States, outside of Manhattan. You cannot buy corn tortillas in packages of less than sixty.
You also cannot buy chocolate chips or tampons here– the palate is distinctly Latin. All along the street are carts and blankets and booths with belts and cologne and calling cards on display; the vendors are nearby in mid-mantra. Tarjeta, tarjeta, tarjeta. ID, ID, ID Bonita? A lot of the stores double as churches in fact and congregations rent storefronts at 10, 11 o’clock at night for services. If they cannot afford the rent at even that rate then they hold church in the park on Sunday with bullhorns and folding chairs; for special occasions: a generator, a drum set, a full band.
Church is in Spanish and if not Spanish, then Kanjobal. School is in English. Everything else is somewhere in between. There is “Mucho Bargain” and “Regalos Para Baby Shower” and “Flue Shot”– signs written in such pure invention that no one knows whether they’re looking at poor English, poor Spanish, or a new burgeoning dialect, another Yiddish.
Institutional signs are less confused. Esperanza, Hope, is the name of one school; Camino Nuevo, A New Road, the name of another. More recently a park was built and it was named “Hope and Peace Park.” This neighborhood is a Project. Everywhere there is evidence of this attempt to re-invent and create distance from the MacArthur Park that in 1990 was the site of 30 murders; there was (is) also problems with prostitution, narcotics, gangs, and rampant car theft.
The May Day Melee in 2007 certainly did not help the PR efforts of those trying to promote the neighborhood, but they go on. Westlake Theatre is under renovation. Survelliance cameras surround MacArthur Park and police officers are everywhere. And yet there is still the unsettling sense that there is in fact no order here. Teenage girls throw down, three on one, slamming a girl’s head into the pavement and kicking in her stomach, in the middle of a pedestrian walkway, on a high-traffic street, in bright, stark daylight. Maybe one or two people honk, but no one gets out of the car, and the girl on the ground limps off to the El Pollo Loco wiping street grease and tears from her face. A chunky 10 year old boy holds himself and urinates onto the clear, glass storefront of the McDonalds with customers inside, sitting on stools staring right at him, making eye contact even, and no one misses a bite. Still we all see what we want to see, and so every weekend the newly arrived go to the park and pay $5 to have their picture taken in front of what looks like a giant postcard of a clean and bright and beautiful MacArthur Park and they say thank you to the nice photographer and leave looking relieved to now have a picture of the America they came here for.
Very happy to see this site – thank you! However, you’re not quite correct on the history of MacArthur Park – it actually was surrounded by mansions with beautiful lawns. Take a walk on the north side of Sixth St between Lake and Corondalet and you will see the steps still standing that once lead to these mansions. Colonel Otis of course had a huge home – where the Charles White Elementary school now stands. And of course Charlie Chaplin’s old big house is now a Mexican restaurant on Wilshire.
The area did not become dense until the 1930’s when the wealthy started moving westward. This was the original Beverly Hills, where seals and swans were kept in the lake, and couples could rent a boat for an evening of listening to an orchestra playing live at what is now the boathouse.
By the 1940’s, although still upscale, it was becoming the home of European immigrants and working class citizens. As they propspered and moved to the Valley, they kept their property to rent out.
The dramatic change didn’t occur until President Nixon allowed Guatemalans to come to America because of the civil strife in Guatemala in the early 1970’s. President Reagan did the same for El Salvadorians in the 1980’s. A woman I worked with told me that up until the mid 1960’s people would still wear their Sunday best for a picnic at the park and a movie at the Westlake Theater – which incidentally is where Jim Jones was arrested for lewd conduct around 1971.
Anyway, very happy to see your site.
Thank you for your comment and interest in the area & the website. I am working on a detailed history of the neighborhood for the “About MacArthur Park” page for the site, to be completed soon.
This is quite a refreshing look/take at MacArthur park and the surrounding area. I reside, literally, a half block away and absolutely love the area. I don’t know the history all that well, as I did not grow up here; however, I am looking forward to reading more.
The pictures are pretty amazing as well. I myself take photos often of the park and surrounding areas, so it is a real delight to know that there are others out there that do it too!
Thanks for your site.
D
Great essay. Awesome site. For me, MacArthur Park stands as an example of a new urbanism; a weird neo-Americanized dystopian vision of the “vibrant” neighborhood. By virtue of its amazing density, stores, churches, schools, and residences are all literally smashed together along the same streets and boulevards allowing for the random interactions between people that typifies the vibrancy idealized by Jane Jacobs in her theories on New Urbanism. I never see as much foot traffic around LA outside of the tourist sections as I see here. But its vibrancy is on a different scale than that of Greenwich Village, say. The stores are chains and discount outlets, the schools are understaffed and underfunded, the churches, as you say, are often rented out storefronts, and the people are strangers to this strange land, financially strapped and culturally cut off from their homelands. Here, by virtue of economic constraint, vibrancy breeds pollution, drugs, crime, and dislocation. But how unique a neighborhood to immigrate into, where the experience of America so dramatically toes the line between Dream and Nightmare. I am happy to call this place home and look forward to more stories on your site. Thanks!
Thank you for the history and current situation in the MacArthur Park area. I have read about the area in novels and in the newspaper. Unfortunately, when it is newsworthy it is because of some act of violence. The whole area changes on the weekends when the sidewalks are lined with vendors and there is hardly any space to walk. Thank you for shining the light on those people who live there and try to make a living. I was a bit surprised that they were not only willing to talk to you, but have their pictures taken. Great insights into the community. Am looking forward to reading more.
Great piece and love the photography. I am interested in learning why MacArthur Park is the first stop on the bus, train, van, for immigrants arriving in America. What about this neighborhood makes it a hub for point of entry? It is just the popularity of the cross streets at Alvarado and Wilshire or is it now known as the starting point for Latin immigrants?
I also love your comment that we see what we want to see because it’s true – in every city. Cities often downplay crime and violence as a PR tactic which only encourages the media and politicians to react. Other times, if social and economic chaos is brought up as action items to face, fingers are pointed and blame is assigned for letting the neighborhood crumble. Either way, changes to communities in instability talk a village.
Looking forward to reading more.
This site is great. As one of the gentrifying masses, I moved to Silverlake in 2001. I was always curious about MacArthur Park- the lake from Chinatown, the amazing surrounding architecture, the feeling of history. But the sense of density you described has always kept me away- the claustrophobia, the fear that anything can happen. But hearing and seeing the beautiful details of life and people in your photos and writing make me want to visit here soon. I’ll comment again once I have.
Great site!!! I love neighborhood sites and publications.
I like the ABOUT MACARTHUR PARK MEDIA statement alot!
“MacArthur Park Media tells stories set in and around the immigrant portal that is the MacArthur Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. This is the first America many immigrants see, the place where they begin to assimilate, or not. The way that they shape America is in many ways determined by how neighborhoods like this one first shape them.”
The whole site is well crafted and written and has beautiful photography.
I especially loved the gorgeous photo collection with the “Pleased to Meet You” title.
I’d love to see an article on Mama’s Tamales (if there hasn’t been one already.)
It’s on 7th, just West of Alvarado so southern edge of the park.
That place is so yummy, has great community and social consciousness events
and has fantastic ORGANIC coffee!!
Is there a “Food” section on the site? If not yet, I’d love to see one.
Maybe I could do some food writing for the site (hey, yay self promotion
of my foodie passion.)
I’d also love to see a “Meet Your Neighbors” section that profiles folk who live
here with us in our beloved yet relatively unknown by outsiders
enclave, Westlake/M.P
Mama’s and the park itself are so far my faves in the M.P. hood.
Thanks for bringing this great site into being!!!
I live just North/West right above La Fayette Park, which is also officially
in Westlake, according to the Supershuttle people.
lived for 2 and a 1/2 years.
MPM will definitely see what we can do to make a Meet Your Neighbors section possible. When I covered the polls here last year and saw who actually lives in the neighborhood, I was quite surprised — a lot of older middle-class couples, white twenty-somethings, and Koreans of all ages (this, in addition to, of course, many, many Latinos, some of them first-time voters; I interviewed this one amazing man in his finest cowboy hat and belt buckle, who had been in the US for almost 40 years and was participating in his inaugural election). It is not very often that I see any of these people on the streets or in the stores, or in any kind of public space in the neighborhood. Even you and I talked about how infrequently we make it to MacArthur Park. I will say that I had my 26th birthday party there, a mad hatter tea party in the theme of Alice in Wonderland/Westlake, and we played croquet and I wore a white dress and the police circled and stared, and about halfway into the soiree I realized that I could not have planned a whiter event even if I had I really tried. ps I AM trying again, not the whiteness, but the event-planning: a MacArthur Park night-out for neighbors and other young reporters. Will let you know.