A Designer’s Conversationswith Los Angeles

I send Postcards to my family, friends, and teachers.I hope you enjoy my new city as much as I do.

“You take delight not in a city’s seven orseventy wonders, but in the answer it

gives to a question of yours.”

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

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Introduction

What is a city if not its horizon? As a student of design and marketing, I have been conditioned to look at most things as a product to sell. I look at people and places and objects and ideas and think, “How can I box that?” For cities, too, belong to their people and places and objects and ideas. In many ways, they become their emblems, defined only by their landmarks and consumed wholly by their skylines. The graphic designer in me seeks to construct patterns out of things too big, too complex, too chaotic; even a product as sprawling and contradictory as a city requires a brand identity for its citizens, its consumers. We seek an emblem—a postcard horizon—packaged and prettied into colors, images, and words.

Last summer, I departed for the last time from a cool, blue, sailboat skyline in Seattle. When I arrived at LAX, I noticed three things about my new city immediately. First, it was too big for even my peripherals. Second, there was no characteristic skyline, no emblem of automatic recognition. Third, the sun was very bright on this bustling plot of never-ending quadrants. It was all yellow. In place of a city I knew, that carefully compact Washington home, I found a golden cast of Day-Glo, sparkling street light

fixtures, swarms of yellow cabs, and shiny, shocking building reflections all running—speeding—all the way out to a hot horizon.

What is Los Angeles? When I arrived, I immediately tried to seek out a pattern and theme in the chaos. On that first day, I branded Los Angeles in my mind as the “yellow” city.

To me, this yellow is much more than what the sun hits. This yellow overloads the senses; it is vibrant and vast and it sticks out. It is the yield signs ignored by cars zooming by as fast as possible; it is all the yellow chicken, yellow rice, yellow flan, yellow curry. This yellow is the color of teeth, of skin—also of Venice, Santa Monica, Marina del Rey. It is the shimmering American dream; it is the bile and urine on Skid Row. The shock factor of Hollywood, of the tabloids, of Beverly Hills palaces, of fire, of construction vests, of bulldozers—this yellow is the city’s dichotomy at its rawest, most shocking form. To best understand this crude, yellow duality, make your way to the intersection of South Main and Winston Street. Eat at KazuNori for dinner, a swanky Japanese sushi restaurant. Watch the sun peep over the buildings of the golden skyline as you seat yourself at the booth. Sip tea. Try their yellowtail handroll, it is very good. Once you are barely full yet $30 poorer, walk

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off your meal down Winston Street, southeast. First, golden murals, yellow and brown people. Then shopping carts, destroyed mannequins. In one minute, you find yourself within the margins of Skid Row. You check the faint glow of Google Maps on your phone. You were just trying to naively get to the Arts District, you did not realize how quickly the sun would set. Rotten, peeling, pale beige walls in a neighborhood rawer than the fish you just ate. To me, yellow is also what the sun does not hit.

This city lives in my mind as its own horizon; my personal postcard depicts a yellow Los Angeles where shocking opposites coalesce and neon signs shine as bright as a ceaseless sun. Cities, too, belong to their people and places and objects and ideas, and my own yellow metaphor is the motive for this anthology of voices and experiences. My interview process begins with this desire to expose problems, pleasures, and irrationality—all of the yellows of the city, in both glory and bile.

I consider how my interviews fit my yellow city metaphor through contrast and coexistence, skylines and gutters. These are five conversations that I thought were raw, staggering, and vibrant. I send you postcards of Los Angeles: the yellowed voices and experiences that still—even in this vast, fluorescent backdrop of a city—stick out.

What is Los Angeles?

“Nothing like Dallas.”

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HelenRetired Black woman in her 60s.

(Helen lives in the peeling white house across mine on West 35th Street, near the Smart & Final just west of campus. The sun is beginning to set but it is still hot out. She is wearing a tank top and pajama pants. I sit with Helen on the steps in front of her house as her 15 month-old granddaughter climbs in

and out of a wagon in the front yard.)

I’m originally from Dallas, Texas.But I like LA. I think I would stick with LA even though I was born and raised in Texas. I just like the overall that LA offers. It’s a melting pot.They have all different areas. I’d go Downtown. ‘Cause they got Koreatown, Chinatown, and just the Downtown in general. And like you said with the campus, you can just walk onto the campus and walk around. Eatin’ different variety of places…

Harold’s and Bill’s is just up the street…Cajun cuisine…and, well, let’s see, when the kids was here,what they really enjoyed was all the amusement parks.My choice would be LA for sure. Being able to see my daughters grow up and get a college education and then marrying and working in the field that they went to school for.I moved out here when my girls was two and four. Now they’re forty and forty-two.

I’m a retiree. I worked with Parks and Rec, and then with insurance companies. Lots of insurance background. Parks and Rec was for the city. Did about eight years with them. One thing that fascinated me while I worked Parks and Recs, I didn’t know we actually had forests. There in Parks and Rec you can go there and they can take you through

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all the forests they actually have. Pretty cool.

It seem like this past year, there been so many drive-by shootings. Like mostly with kids, during the summer, all of the parks and recs have activities but they all end about five-thirty, six o’clock. So if you’re not old enough to drive on your own, then your day basically have ended. You know kids… well that’s one thing, kids are getting shot just sitting on the bus stop or in they own yard and… it’s just all over.

When I was supervisor, we’d take the kids out and go kayaking.That’s not something you do every day! But Parks and Rec offers that, and it was a good experience for me, because I had never did it before in my life. And livin’ here you get a winter, but nothing like Dallas.

I took my mama to the beach. She said she’d never seen a body of water that large before in her life. She’s ninety-four.

“Home. This is home.”

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Santiago32-year-old Peruvian-American USC Pre-Law student.

(Santiago and I sit face-to-face in the shade at a table outside of Taper Hall on the USC campus. It is

a breezy afternoon, right after a lecture.)

Home. This is home. I came here when I was two months. Practically born and raised. Downtown LA was where my mom’s travel agency was, LA by like 3rd and Vermont, that’s where I grew up. I know that area like the back of my hand. One place I would take a person, though, I’ll take them to Olvera Street. You know, I myself, I’m Peruvian, but all my friends were Mexican, so I grew up with that food, that lifestyle, you know sometimes I even talk with a certain accent that isn’t even Peruvian. It’s a great place. Historic. You can get some great food right there.

A lot of good ambiance right there.

My mom—she tried to go to college. Her coming over here, she didn’t really know much English. She’d work so hard all the time. My grandma would always take care of me, but I remember one day specifically my mom was taking English classes, just so she could, you know, advance in her work. It was 1992 roughly, everyone knew English, especially with her job. She took classes at LACC and I remember I had not seen her for a while because she’d always wake up earlier than me, come back when I was sleeping, so I remember saying, “Mom! Mom! I want to go with you wherever you’re gonna go!” “Well, I’m gonna go to class right here in LACC!” So she took me, her trying to be, you know, be a college student, took me to class, and there I am, ten years-old,

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surrounded by thirty and forty year-old people. I remember the professor just was teaching them English, and one of the words was “rewind.” And my mom was like “what’s rewind?” Like she didn’t understand. And I remember me telling her, “Oh Mom, remember back then? Remember when we rent the videos and it says ‘please be kind, rewind?’” And she goes,“Oh! Oh, okay okay.”Rewind. Like re-track. There I am like ten years-old, I hadn’t seen my mom for like the whole week or something, you know how hard she worked, and she took me back to her college. I always bring up that moment to my mom. She gets emotional.

We moved to Burbank.It got to a point when I was in LA and I come home from school and I was gonna get jumped. “You wanna join this gang?”

I be like no and I try to run away and they would say,“We’re gonna get you,we’re gonna jump you regardless if you wanna be in this gang or not.” I was like,“No, that’s not me.” And I told my mom, and she was like, “Okay, we gotta do whatever it takes to get out of here.”Soon we hear the gunshots at night and it was an awful place to be. And we hear “hey!” at 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning and I’m sleeping and I hear “hey!” loud and a couple seconds later, you hear like a bang. I’m like, man, I just remember covering myself in my bed. I remember the little apartment we lived was on Berendo, the address was 4059 Oakwood, right by LACC. Rent was $450 at that time. A little one bedroom. My grandma slept in the living room, my mom and I in the bedroom. So small.

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I remember my mom’s birthday was March 15, and we took her back to our first apartment. She started crying. You know, we came a long way. What sucks is that it looks the same. No remodel done since we’ve left. I mean, you still see gangsters walkin’ around, um, and always graffiti.It’s changed, but not significantly.

“Always changing.”

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Keïta36-year-old Black poll worker on the day of the California Primary.

(As I wait for a voting booth to open up, I talk to Keïta who is working at the reception table of the

polling place.)

I’d say Los Angeles is always changing. Who knows what it will be like. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s becoming very pricey to live in Los Angeles. The housing issues, and yeah. Different neighborhoods becoming more expensive.Changing. Hmm. I don’t know. If I had a billion dollars,I would try to make, like, private universities affordable for residents in some kind of way. And, uh, gosh. And I probably, you know, well, I think what the mayor’s doing now by renovating

some old motels to use them for the homeless is a great idea. I’d love to do something like that. And, you know. I’m a student—a music student at LACC. I play jazz guitar. I think importantly, for me, is to bring back the arts into the schools. A lot of the schools suffered in the ‘90s when they cut those programs. I’d bring that back.

A memory? Um, gosh.The riots. ’92 or ’91. I was 11 or 12 when it happened. Um, that really… it just, that is something I will never forget. Very memorable.

It was nothing I had ever experienced before. Probably never will again.

“It’s a good spot.”

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Victor28-year-old Research Analyst at the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity and Center of Study of Immigrant Integration (USC PERE/CSII).

(It is three in the afternoon. Victor and I sit outside the USC PERE/CSII offices at a table in the

courtyard.)

Born and raised in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles.A lot of good memories growing up. Food especially. We’ve been going to this one restaurant, El Huarache Azteca in Highland Park for ten years… Still being able to go to that place, well, that’s a nice feeling, that you’re still able to patronize those places. The food, the sense of community that exists is very much rooted and to me, that’s always beenvery characteristic, textbook LA.

I want to work in public policy here.To come from an immigrant family—very working class—You know, you see certain struggles and opportunities

that were afforded to some that weren’t to others.My mom had breast cancer.Health insurance and that whole process—if my dad had not had a job with insurance, I don’t know where we would’ve been.You encounter people who weren’t lucky enough to havebenefits at work that really kinda make you grateful for your opportunities.At the end of the day, the conditions that people face are the product of the policies that are enacted.So many folks can’t even afford housing here.You’re unable to pay for your child’s education. It’s a snowball effect.

Looking back, LAUSD was a very interesting, difficult experience. Not a lot of kids who graduated made it onto paths that allowed them to be the best versions of themselves. I think a lot of people didn’t have the services or interventions that I did. It leads to this cycle where they can’t leave and come back and reinvest. I have friends, for example, that are still working at fast food joints,

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at home, ten years later. It’s hard to see that. You know we started from the same place. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

LA is like… it doesn’t fit the mold. It’s not your traditional big city, it’s super sprawled. But in a lot of ways, you’ll find everything need here. If you’re looking for that “big city” experience, you can find it. If you’re looking for a residential, suburbanesque ecosystem, you can find that too. It’s vanguard, it’s cutting edge, it’s trying to become this city that is ahead of the curve.I like to go to the Griffith Observatory. If you go as the sun is going down, you’ll see the city from the westside all the way out to the ocean. It’s a really good spot for reflection, to take in how big LA is. To take in, like, wow, how enormous the city is,

and how much presence and energy is in it. You see the streets lined up, the cars moving. It’s a good spot.

“Clean!”

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MafaldaTaco stand owner from Mexico in her early 40s.

(Every day after work, I walk by Mafalda and her son at their taco stand at the intersection of West 36th Street and South Vermont Street. I have always been too shy to approach, but today I decided to buy a delicious yellow tortilla chicken taco. It is a few hours before sunset. Mafalda struggles with speaking in English, so I converse with her in my rudimentary Spanish. I pick up what I can and translate what she

says in parentheses.)

No! It’s okay. Te entiendo. My name is Mafalda. Soy de Mexico. Mexico City. Oh wow, my God. Twenty—twenty-eight years. Sí. En este lugar. No. Yo vivo en Ocho y Hoover. 8th and Hoover.

(No! It’s okay. I understand you. My name is Mafalda. I’m from Mexico. Mexico City. Oh wow, my God.

Twenty—twenty-eight years. Yes. In this place. No. I live on 8th and Hoover. 8th and Hoover.)

Pues, vienen, te quitan. City Hall… no es buena para nosotros. No está bien. Porque estamos—vinimos aquí, y immediatemente nos quitan.

(Well, when they come, they kick you out. City Hall… they’re not good for us. It’s not good. Because we—we come here, and immediately they kick us out.)

(Edgar, a middle-aged Mexican man, approaches and eats his tacos at the stand. She turns to him.)

Mafalda: ¿Habla ingles? (Do you speak English?)

Edgar: Un poquito. (A little bit.)

Mafalda (to me): Entónces, introdúcete. Yo entiendo, pero

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no mucho. (In that case, introduce yourself. I understand, but not much.)

Edgar (to me): ¿Ah, hablas español? (Ah, you speak Spanish?)

Mafalda (laughing): Sí, su español está ¡perfecto! ¡Pero I don’t know ingles! (Yes, her Spanish is perfect! But I don’t know English!)

(I ask her what she thinks is a problem in Los

Angeles. Edgar and Mafalda talk for a while.)

Edgar: Ella tiene twenty-eight years here in America. (She has been in American for twenty-eight years.)

Mafalda: Sí. Pero no tengo paper. No tengo papel. (Yes. But I don’t have papers. I don’t have papers.)

(And for a while longer.)

Edgar: The police… este es problem porque no es…this food, for the police, is problem. (The police... this is a problem because it is not... this food, for the police, is problem.)

Mafalda (shrugging): ¿Pero por qúe? No entiendo eso. (But why is it a problem? I don’t understand that.)

Edgar (to Mafalda): Porque, porque por su puesta en la

calle, ustedes estan preparando la comida y cargaron el dinero… y no tienen la persona indicada… y este es por su puesto problema. Pero, para mi no problema. I’m happy! I like the food!

(Because, because of course in the street, you guys are making food and charging money for it… and you don’t have the right person…and of course this is a problem. But for me, I don’t have a problem. I’m happy! I like the food!)

Mafalda (laughing): ¡Exactamente! (Exactly!)

(Edgar leaves temporarily to chat with Mafalda’s son.

I ask her for a memory in the city, good or bad.)

Ooooh! Cuando yo vivía en ochenta y ocho y aqui… te puedo hablar de Alvarado? Alvarado y Wilshire? Near Koreatown?Dos calles… Liiiimpio estaba. No… vendedores. Clean! No rayones en las paredes. Clean.

(Ooooh! When I lived here in ’88…

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can I tell you about Alvarado? Alvarado and Wilshire? Near Koreatown?The two streets… they were cleeeaan. No vendors. Clean! No marks on the walls. Clean.)

Sí. Toda estaba limpia por allí. Wow.

(Yeah. Everything was clean there. Wow.)

What is Los Angeles?

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Conclusion

On the level ground in Los Angeles, it is difficult to see the whole horizon. As I illustrated scenes from the city for this anthology, this became even more apparent. No one of these skylines offer a holistic vantage point of the city. Sneak a little sliver of it through traffic lights, palm trees, power lines, skyscrapers, but never the whole, crisp line pouring in from end to end. During the day, Los Angeles is a shiny golden chalice, its horizon hollow and yellow. Sometimes, from some angles, it will fill with a rich, red wine sunset. Some nights, it is topped with rosé—pink, palm-treed, and out of the movies. When dawn comes, the glass sky sometimes reflects the blooming jacaranda trees. Other times, it is filled with a chardonnay paleness that we endure morning traffic in and glimpse briefly between overpasses and concrete workplaces. We may peep this spectrum, yet the horizon is never complete to our eyes—nor is it static. You simply cannot see it all at once.

When I first arrived, I designed my own postcard for this city. The horizon’s yellow was my metaphor for all the dichotomy, all the shock factor. Packaged and prettied, yes, yet still somewhat ignorant. My conversations with Los Angeles revealed the city’s east and west, good and bad, past

and future. These postcards illustrate that these dichotomies exist, but what I failed to mention originally is that Los Angeles is constantly oscillating between these states. The horizon is not just yellow nor just red nor just purple. It is every shade in between, transforming. My design-minded approach is too narrow for a horizon so vast: we may try to peg these glimpses of the sky as the full, branded postcard, but we cannot. The reality is that Helen, Santiago, Keïta, Victor, Mafalda, and I all coexist under this same sky, yet to each and every one us, Los Angeles is a different metaphor, a unique memory, another color. In these conversations beyond my own postcard, I find an infinite, exciting conundrum. Five conversations that are impossible to reduce to colors and metaphors. Impossible to completely illustrate, package, and brand.

Yet as a designer, in spite of all this, I still try. My yellow, shock factor Los Angeles is an attempt to make sense of the sensory overload, the glory and the bile. But in my conversations, I have discovered that the horizon is every other color in the spectrum, too. Los Angeles is not always only a city of extremities and noise and construction sites and yellows. I encourage myself to defy my own brand guide and wonder how Los Angeles is the opposite of its first impression, and the opposite of yellow is purple. And

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in the mornings when I go on runs, I do not see a drunken, obnoxious Day-Glo sky. The sun does not ceaselessly shine. Instead, the horizon looks like glass, awake and sober. It is tinted lavender just after dawn, and the city is calm and quiet. There is no commotion but a slow fog. Old flowers fall from the jacaranda trees above me, turning concrete purple. I hear only my own breath, the breath of Los Angeles, heave this color—one of living mystery and majesty and heart—into the new day.