Santa Monica

This past Sunday I went on a walking and beach riding along the coast of Venice Beach and Santa Monica Beach. My friends and I started at Venice Beach Blvd. where the markets and small shops are located. There is a basketball court and skateboarding rink as attractions. There is also countless amount of services like tattoos, piercings, and art. We rented bikes at a bike shop near market street. It was 12 dollars for 2 hours which was enough time to go up and down the beach. Most of the people here looked like they just wanted to relax on a Sunday afternoon. There was people of all ethnicities and lots of noise. As we rode away from Venice there was less people walking and less shops as well. I would say the parking lots are the midway point between both beaches.

Once getting closer to Santa Monica the pier became more visible and people were becoming more present. Here we posed on a wall next to the pier, the wall has a picture of Royce Hall



The pier serves an attraction for the neighboring cities.

Black Friday Rally

Happy Thanksgiving!

So for this week I will be writing about an article on the LA Times. I first saw it on the news and later looked it up on line. Here is the link to the article

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/11/striking-walmart-workers-schedule-black-friday-rally-in-paramount.html

So earlier today workers and civilians rallied outside Wal Mart in Paramount, CA. A bit Southeast of Los Angeles. Here the workers rallied against working rights currently present at Wal Marts across the nation and making people work on holidays. The chain has about 1.3 million and only a few percentage of that actually walked out.

For example, this shows that the workers want change but are afraid to walk out because they are afraid of consequences if the rallies and revolts do not work. For most employees this it their only job and cannot afford to lose it even if they are unhappy working there.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUKt9IBTEOs

Baldwin Hills

I remember coming to Baldwin Hills for a field trip a couple years ago. The reason being was to visit the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. However, what stuck in my head that day was not the park itself but the huge amount of oil rigs around that area. So this week I decided to drive by that area. I drove down La Cienega Blvd. which drives down the middle of the hills. I did not take pictures of the oil rigs since i was driving, so these pictures are on line.



Here there is a youth soccer game in the recreation area which is alongside the oil fields.



This is the area where most of the digging is occurring. The nearby cities are Baldwin Hills, Culver Cuty, and Inglewood.



Property values are lower near the fields than they are further away deeper into the city.

When driving I noticed that there wasn't many people walking on the sidewalks since there is not much around, except for the park. I find it weird that a recreation area is right next to an oil field. The oil field not only makes its surroundings look degraded but also unappealing for passerby's. I wonder if theres a situation like the City Reader mentions, property values go down making poor people move in and since more color people are poor, it makes the area seem as if they are segregated. I did not get a chance to see the people living here, but ill look it up and see the population and ethnicities living there.

Placita Olvera

 I have lived in the Los Angeles area my entire life, but it was my first time going to "Placita Olvera" or Olvera-Street as it is known. This little piece of land is only about 2 blocks and located near downtown LA. It is encircled by Alameda St. to the West, Arcadia St. to the South, Main St. to the East and Cesar Chavez Ave. to the North. Even though it is a small place, it is considered to be a historic monument.

It was filled with many shops selling authentic Mexican items, from food to "Huaraches". After walking through the shops we came to the Plaza Park. Here their is statues of Felipe De Neve and King Carlos III. There is also a cross with the original name of Los Angeles, "El Pueblo De Nuestra Senora La Reina De Los Angeles" which translates to "The town of our lady the queen of the angels". Here the place seemed old, but are probably like that to preserve the history.




The people and atmosphere here was mostly latino based. There was also many families, many of them speaking Spanish. What caught my attention at the local restaurants was that there was live mariachi playing live for the people eating there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKEm19lMjuQ




Here my friends and I posed in front of one of the many little shops. This is a nice little place away from the busy city life and recommend it for anyone who has not gone there.