Blogging Social Difference: Week 4

The Wonders of West Hollywood

In my three years at UCLA I had never been to West Hollywood – a place that is so close in distance yet so far in overall atmosphere from Westwood – until last week. A few friends and I drove up there for a night out at a club. West Hollywood is pretty known for its gay and lesbian population and overall trendy/young/”hip” atmosphere. And it’s pretty obvious that the people who live there fit that description (trendy, young, and hip) when you enter that part of Santa Monica Blvd. All along the street are lined with specialty restaurants, gay clubs, and yoga studios. The curbsides were pretty much all parked up, often with stylish, and probably expensive, cars. (It took us a long time to find a place to park. And even then we had to do valet parking.) There is quite an extensive median in the street that lines the road with trees and some very colorful abstract sculptures. It made me feel like I was in a very artsy part of LA. The difference in view from driving along Wilshire when we first left Westwood to driving along Santa Monica when we got to West Hollywood was maybe like the difference between walking through the Court of Sciences in South Campus and then making it to the Sculpture Garden in North Campus. One seems a little more refined and defined, while the other is a little more ambiguous and remarkable.

Even the people are noticeably different in the ways they act and the things they wear. It seemed pretty clear to me that homosexual people in West Hollywood are either a lot more prevalent or are just more comfortable being open about it (or possibly both) than in other places I’ve seen. It’s unfortunate that there are places, even in LA, that people can’t be publicly affectionate with their significant other without getting nasty stares or comments simply because they are part of a same-sex couple. But in West Hollywood, this doesn’t seem to be an issue. The clothing people wear also seemed to be kicked up a notch in the “bold, daring, and fashionable” department. Overall, it just seems like a place where people are more likely to be comfortable expressing their personalities in every way. I think in a way this can relate to the Giddens reading from Geography 133. There is some amount of risk in the decision to openly walk down the street holding the hand of your partner, or wearing some otherwise outrageous outfit. But in this community, people seem to trust that their differences are what make them feel like they belong there and are connected to each other.

 

Looking at the Robert E. Park quotation (stating: “The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.”), I think this example of the Santa Monica strip in West Hollywood shows concurrence. Once you’re in West Hollywood, it’s quite apparent. This trendy little community draws a lot of attention to itself. It is an area of entertainment and dining; an place to go for a night out; even somewhere that draws the attention of celebrities. There is a place called “Millions of Milkshakes,” which has seen its fair share of celebrities who have come in, ordered a customized milkshake, and now have milkshakes named after them. It’s practically a tourist spot. We made a stop there. It was amazing and was a delicious end to an evening of awe and observation.

Blogging Social Difference: Week 3

In lecture on Wednesday, we talked about the Chicago school of thought. Part of that discussion included the topic of transportation systems and how everything could lead from the peripheral parts of the city into the center. Of course, this theory doesn’t fit in Los Angeles. So here, the public transportation systems were built in such a way as to connect the many centers together.

Last week, I took the Big Blue Bus to Santa Monica. Until I came to college, public transportation was never a way I would get from one place to another. But with the scarcity of places to park (especially without paying), the bus is often the best option. After finally figuring out which bus we were supposed to take, we got on and started our thirty minute adventure down Wilshire.

The Big Blue Bus was pretty clean and seems to be a common daily mode of transportation for pretty much anyone. There were kids getting on the bus on their way home from school, business people out on their lunch breaks, young people, old people, an occasional homeless person. No characteristic (possibly with the exception of income) seems to be a determinant of whether or not you could find a certain “type” of person on the bus. I think it’s sometimes easy to tell the people who ride the bus regularly; they’ll usually be listening to music or reading something. On the other side, it’s pretty obvious who doesn’t take the bus on a regular basis (i.e. college girls like us who chat the whole ride there). People don’t generally talk to each other or sit in seats next to each other if they don’t have to.

Going back to the topic of income, I rarely ever see “wealthy-looking” people on the bus. This probably speaks to the stereotype that the bus is more commonly used by people of lower socioeconomic status. In some ways, it seems that those who are able to separate themselves from those who are different than they are try to do so.

Overall, it’s interesting to observe people as they get on and off the bus and to speculate where people are coming from or going to. The bus serves as a mode of convenience for some and of necessity for others. It really is an experience worth examining.

Blogging Social Difference: Week 2

On Tuesday, I went to  3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica with a couple of friends. I’ve been there on several occasions during my time at UCLA, but I’ve never paid particular attention to the aesthetic details of the area before. In the center of the street (or walkway), there are several large dinosaur bush sculptures that are also fountains. The whole street is paved and blocked off from cars driving through. The buildings are quite diverse; there are a few newer buildings built around the old ones (like the old movie theater). There are a variety of businesses: sit-down restaurants (with types of food that range from hamburgers to frozen yogurt to crepes), clothing stores, shoe stores, a movie theater, etc. And on top of all of that, there are kiosks selling even more all down the center.

The types of people I saw there are also pretty diverse. I noticed that most of the people shopping in clothing stores were women, a lot of them probably between the ages of fifteen and fifty (I was among them). There were families, groups of friends, individuals. I saw a few homeless people sitting in the shade or lying next to a wall to get away from the cool wind. There were people of several races and ethnicities. One group of people that I’m always interested to see when I go to 3^rd Street is the street performers. A lot of times I find myself impressed by their musical or physical talents and want to watch their performances.

Something I thought about while I was in Forever 21 shopping for clothes was specialization. After the class in the Metropolitan LA class I took last quarter where we talked about how much money goes into (or out of) each stage of production, I found myself doing a little analysis of how much the shirt I bought cost and what went into making it. It’s interesting to think about how (knowingly or not) we need the people who sew the clothes we buy and wear. And following that idea, our little definition of “division of labor” came into mind. In order for these shops and restaurants to stay in business, they need people to operate the place (i.e. waiters, hosts, cashiers, sales associates), but they also need us: the consumers. We all have “different, but integrated” roles in keeping a business, or business district even, alive.

Santa Monica really is an interesting place to visit. Once you hit the end of the promenade (opposite the end that touches Santa Monica Blvd.), there’s a fairly new 3^rd Street mall. I ate lunch in the food court there and noticed the difference in the kinds of people I saw in the mall compared to those I saw walking around the promenade. The mall is full of high-end stores like Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co., so the clientele sort of fits that. Most of the people were white, and were dressed up a little more. The whole atmosphere of my surroundings literally changed just from crossing the street between the mall and the promenade. It was almost strange.

Anyway, I think a place like the 3^rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica is a neat place to observe today’s culture. You can find people there who are looking to make some money (the employees, the street performers, and even the occasional beggar), and those who are looking to spend some money (the shoppers and the eaters). There is a mix of ages, ethnicities, and financial backgrounds. It’s remarkable to find so many different people in one place.

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 1

Having grown up in a suburb approximately seventy-five miles away from Los Angeles, I never really considered myself an Angelino. I thought I was outside of LA's influence. However, now that I’ve lived in the city of Los Angeles for three years I can see that, while Redlands is by no means the same as “the city,” it definitely is influenced by it in some ways.

I used to think I had LA all figured out and wrapped up in a little box. But when I came to UCLA and met people who had already explored the city a little bit, I quickly began to realize how much I hadn’t discovered yet. I took Professor Wilford’s Metropolitan LA class last quarter, and became intrigued by the history of this area and how it came to be the way it is now. I was able to explore questions such as “why are certain areas of the metropolitan region demographically organized the way they are?” and “how did certain groups of people who may work in downtown end up living so far away from there?”

I hope to expand on those and other questions through my own experience this quarter. My plan is to use this blog to dig deeper into my understanding of how Los Angeles is laid out socially. Robert E. Park’s quotation (“The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.”) inspires curiosity in me. I hope this project helps me discover aspects of LA that both prove and disprove his statement. I think both exist.

I think that individuals can be part of a number of those “little worlds” that exist in a city through their connections with each other and the activities in which they’re involved.  I’m eager to dig deeper into this idea by looking at every aspect of people’s lives: race, ethnicity, income level, family life, culture, interests, etc. Hopefully the places I visit will shed some light on how the people who are from there live their lives, and, furthermore, how their differences may or may not bring them together in their communities.

Mostly, I am excited to have an excuse to get out into LA, whether that is the city of Los Angeles, somewhere in the county of Los Angeles, or somewhere in what many consider to be the “greater Los Angeles area.” As a fourth-year student at UCLA, there is so much I have yet to see and discover here.