Is My Gentrifying L.A. Hood Getting Worse or Better?

A Resident on the Frontline of Urban Change Weighs the Pros and Cons

If you want to know what it’s like on the front lines of gentrification, you only have to look at the corner of Avoca Street and Yosemite Drive in Eagle Rock, my Los Angeles neighborhood.

When my father was a kid in the Eagle Rock in the 1960s, there was a tiny corner store called Joe’s Market that provided eggs, milk, and other necessities. The owners were two brothers from Korea who, whenever customers lacked the funds to buy groceries, allowed them to write their name down on a piece …

by Melanie Gonzalez | June 15, 2015

As L.A. Gentrifies, Who Gets Left Behind?

With New Development and Organic Markets on the Rise, Many Working-Class Neighborhoods Are Transforming—Maybe for the Worse

June 12, 2015

When a British sociologist coined the term “gentrification” in 1963, she wrote that it happens when “working class quarters have been invaded by the middle class … until all or …

An Outsider’s Guide to Running—and Losing—a California Election

Pete Peterson, a Republican from Santa Monica, Learned How Much the Deck Is Stacked in Favor of Career Politicians

by Pete Peterson | June 11, 2015

Though Ted White’s classic, The Making of the President, is far better known, the best book I’ve read about what it’s like to run for political office is To Be …

A Pharmacy that Dispenses Homeopathic Remedies Instead of Drugs

Why My Grandparents in Santa Monica Became Pioneers in Alternative Medicine

by Steven Litvak | June 10, 2015

My grandparents, Norman and Mary Litvak, founded the Santa Monica Homeopathic Pharmacy back in 1944, originally planning on selling the usual items found in drug stores at the time—medicine, alcohol, …

Why Asian-Americans Shouldn’t Chuck Affirmative Action Out the Window

Some Southeast Asians Can Use a Boost in Education, But the Real Need Is to Break Through the ‘Bamboo Ceiling.’

by Jennifer Lee | June 9, 2015

A group of Asian-American organizations recently held a splashy press conference in Washington to announce that they will file a federal complaint against Harvard University. Their allegation: Harvard and other …

The Real Fault of San Andreas Is How It Maligns Californians

Even This Jaded Journalist Was Shaken By the Cynicism In Hollywood's Latest Disaster Movie

by Joe Mathews | June 4, 2015

After sitting through a matinee of the new earthquake disaster movie San Andreas, I experienced my own dark seismic fantasy: as the Big One hits California, a giant hole opens …

Thinking L.A.