I live in East LA, but I am not Latino.

Came across an interesting story by the AP a couple of weeks ago:

East L.A. — birthplace of the lowrider, Los Lobos and Oscar de la Hoya — is to Mexican-Americans what Harlem is to the black community. Now it wants to become its own city. Commonly mistaken for a part of Los Angeles, East L.A. is actually an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County, with more than 130,000 people — 96 percent of them Latino — packed into 7.4 square miles.

[CLIP] While outsiders often see the area as gang-plagued and poverty-ridden, East L.A. possesses cultural and political symbolism for Mexican-Americans.

I live in Silver Lake, right next to Los Feliz, which is certainly the East Side of Los Angeles. (My favorite story is how the former writer of the Green blog for the LA Times – www.latimes.com/emeraldcity – said she lived “all the way in Santa Monica, so I know nothing about Silver Lake…”) Hee! Yet, so far I don’t identify with this East LA article. What symbolism in Silver Lake? Let’s read on.

For decades, East L.A. has been a first stop for immigrants just over the border, though these days there are nearly as many Salvadoran pupuserias selling filled tortilla patties as Mexican taquerias selling tacos.

Photo from netstate.com. We could rename the California Poppy, the Western USA flower!

I don’t like Mexican food, can’t comment on this.

East L.A. is a fusion of cultures north and south of the border. Spanish is the predominant language, but it is a hybrid version, Spanglish, punctuated with Hispanicized English words: “breka” for break, “marqueta” for market, “cora” for quarter.

While nortena music booms from downtown stores, East L.A. has also produced artists such as Los Lobos, who have combined Mexican oompah sounds with American rock rhythms. Lowriders, often with customized Chicano-theme paint jobs, cruise the streets.

No, English is spoken in Silver Lake and Los Feliz, quite well, actually. I have seen lowriders in Hollywood, and I have heard of Los Lobos, however.

Auto dealer Louis Herrera said local officials would be more motivated to attract businesses like the Starbucks that opened last year. That would boost the downtown shopping district, which is dotted with 99-cent stores, dusty windowfronts filled with gowns for first communions and “quinceaneras,” or Latin sweet-16 parties, and signs advertising Western Union money transfers to Mexico.

I’m not sure what downtown they are talking about. Not Silver Lake, obviously, because the Starbucks on Glendale Blvd did nothing to boost that shopping center. But I happen to like the 99-cent stores. And I notice a lot of dust in my apartment when the windows are open.

The same week I read this article a new blog started up, called the Eastsider, by Jesus Sanchez, formerly part of one of the few LA Times blogs that seems balanced to me, LA Now.  The Eastsider includes links and articles about Echo Park, Silver Lake, Atwater, and even Griffith Park!

(Unfortunately, it’s part of Google’s damned Blogger, so that means Google itself can’t find it, and Technorati ignores it, and when you leave a message, you have to sign in each time if you’re not on Blogger, and you can’t return to the original post or blog, because Google stops you with a pop-up each time. Can you tell that I hate Blogger?) So anyway, Jesus knows east means east, not just some arbitrary area a particular group has staked out.

(Although he had a comment on there that has since disappeared, which said he shouldn’t be including these different areas, because they’re not the REAL East Los Angeles. Territorial, much?)

So let’s agree,  by East LA, we do mean Silver Lake and Los Feliz. I wouldn’t mind being my own city!

This isn’t a half-bad idea for other regions, too. I think the state of California could benefit from this strategy: we could declare ourselves Western USA. The other states (what states?) can go to hell.