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November 17, 2007
CNN: It's Easier to buy a Gun in South Central than Fruit?
Zuma Dogg was nice enough to post this video on Mayor Sam today which lays out a proposal that Jan Perry wants to inflict on the residents of South Central.
Even though the councilwoman is ignorant in regards to the neighborhoods in her district, she does know that the people she represents are fat. They're so fat (and in her mind, ignorant) that she seems to want to protect them from themselves. It's her plan to ban all new fast food chains in South LA for the next year so that it would encourage more sit-down restaurants and grocery stores to open up.
It's ironic that a woman who doesn't seem to think that it's necessary to have a map or even a list of all the official neighborhoods in her district, and appears comfortable in that ignorance, seems uptight that her constituents are not interested in knowing what a healthy diet is all about.
And doubly ironic that Perry herself looks to be someone who is more than familiar with KFC, Taco Bell, and Burger King.
If the councilperson wants the freedom not to know - or care - about information, why is she demanding that her fellow residents of her district get edjumacated on what to dine on?
In the piece CNN paraphrases the controversial councilwoman who told them that it's easier in South Central to buy a handgun than fruits and vegetables. Last we checked LA was part of the free market economy and if any of the citizens of the district really wanted some fruit instead of a Big Mac, we're pretty sure they could figure out where to get it.
Sorry Ms. Perry, LA doesn't need a Diet Tsar, we need representatives that listen, learn, and represent what the people want. And if the people want fast food and maps of the hoods, you should give it to them. You work for us, so leggo my deep fried Jack in the Box tacos, yo.
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nice.
I'm sorry, but this is really a non-story.
First of all, capital flows don't move according to the whims of local communities. So, it is not as if the residents of South Central are begging for more KFC and this cruel councilperson just won't let them have it. The oversaturation of fast food restaurants in South Central is hardly the product of impersonal supply and demand -- that sort of classical economic Adam Smith bullshit assumption will get you nowhere. What is this, the Wall Street Journal?
Plus, the whole neighborhood map thing is kind of ridiculous. IMHO, city councilmembers have better things to do than try to compile maps based on totally subjective neighborhood signs. The signs don't help elected officials do their jobs, they just reflect the parochial nationalisms of our glorious city. It isn't that these identities aren't important, but rather that they do not have a significant bearing on public policy that would legitimate the devotion of time required to produce a (totally contested) neighborhood map.
corey,
may i suggest that commenting late at night isnt your forte. pretty much every sentence you wrote was completely wrong.
we're not asking our officials to "compile maps..." we're asking them to show us the maps that were approved when the neighborhoods were deemed official.
the neighborhoods and boundaries didnt just pop out of the sky. there was a process which lead ultimately to an approval. part of that process included a boundary for the proposed neighborhood as well as a name.
all we asked for were the names and the boundaries and the maps.
as for your concept of "over-saturation" - if that were true, the businesses in question would fail. instead they have prospered, so much so, that this councilperson would like to fix whats not broken.
foolish practice. just like you trying to prove LAist wrong while drunk.
my advice, stick to drinking and let us do the blogging.
Let's be nice to Coreyander. this person makes some good comments. And if there were no drunk blogging, half my band reviews would never get posted.
Speaking of drunk, this reminds me of the issue of there being too many liquor stores in South LA.
Although I am totally against the idea of franchised fast food, these businesses are providing jobs, taxes, and nice brightly lit sidewalks and parking lots in the community and she knows it.
This is just something getting her on the news. Or maybe she just got diagnosed with diabetes and is freaking out.
Because I can usually buy oranges on every dang corner of LA
sure guys
you just hug your Big Macs to you like the Native Americans hugged those smallpox-infested blankets
and you smile and nod when the man tells you it's called "free will"
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised for a minute if it were easier to buy just about anything in a neighborhood such as South LA besides good quality, fresh produce. It is a fact that densely packed, lower-economic, predominantly non-white, urban communities in LA suffer from a lack of viable, affordable, and reliable sources for good, fresh, food.
Grocery stores are fewer and their prices are higher than in "nicer" neighborhoods, mostly because the store knows they have a consumer base that has little choice but to shop there, and also because things like produce are sold to them from the "nicer" locations of the chain when they no longer deemed attractive enough to sell, and the store then must mark up the price in order to cover its purchase.
When the kids in these communities go to school, they are not being fed nutritious food or taught about nutrition, but instead are being given tater tots and high-fat, high-salt processed food that the district buys in bulk. This is why we need to be far more strident about health education in schools, from cafeteria fare to things like the amazing Garden in Every School program.
Business owners in neighborhoods like the one you describe want to make money. They will make money on fast food because the people in the neighborhood eat there. Why? Not because they have no free will, but they may have less time, hungry kids, less money, and fewer resources in terms of transit. Is this okay? Absolutely not. So yes, we can educate them about alternatives, but we also have to have a realistic way for them to make these alternatives a part of their lives. It's a hard task to undertakes these days, when the rich keep getting richer and everyone else just struggles to get by.
i just saw this story from the LA Times about Fresh & Easy's delayed South LA store. right on point with what i'm saying. the article references research done by Occidental College's Urban and Environmental Policy Institute; a number of professors from that department collaborated on a book (which is my main source for what i wrote about above) called The Next Los Angeles.
The article's last sentence: "The residents of South Los Angeles are still waiting for affordable, fresh food."
oh yeah, also, what Lindsay said.
Remember the fight for the South Central Farm last year?
When I buy my organic food at Whole foods my weekly bill is over 200 bucks. At Ralph's it's $90-$110. If I just ate small McDonalds hamburgers for a week it would be around 35 bucks.
We are ALL being fattened up by big corporations. Big Macs ARE the smallpox blankets of our era. I love you Carrie! (You know, as a friend. ahem.)
Elise, I TOTALLY AGREE and it's so fucked up I can hardly see straight.
Maybe you should eat some carrots - I mean, depending on where you live.
The neighborhood boundaries didn't pop out of the sky? Wow, you have sure got me there.
I don't imagine you read my lengthier comment on the previous thread on this subject, but I noted the fact that these are fundamentally contested boundaries. That is why you will find that there are no clean, politically neutral maps of all the blue sign neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
You are "just asking" every city councilperson to solve their local neighborhood boundary conflicts once and for all, so that we can all have clear, comforting boundaries. Regardless, a blue sign does not make a neighborhood "official" from a public policy perspective, so the mock outrage is kind of pointless. What is wrong with the neighborhood maps on the website of the Neighborhood Council or the Alliance of Neighborhood Councils, besides the fact that they don't go to the level of the blue signs? It isn't as if the blue sign designated neighborhoods are actually administrative units, anyway.
I am not even going to go further with you on the economics of fast food, because you clearly believe in the magical power of supply and demand. As with all beliefs premised on blind faith, there is really no rational argument sufficient to change your perspective. Enjoy the free market and its mystical ability to provide everyone with exactly what they want and need: fast food and liquor stores for the poor and Bristol Farms and wheatgrass shots for the rich.
baby, again, the drinking... its becoming noticeable.
first of all, the signs dont matter as much as the maps. but the people who put up the signs had to be told where to place them - and that order came from the city - and the city acted on an approved proposal that included the name of the hood and its boundaries.
you say the boundaries of the hoods are "contested". fine. then quit writing us, and write the council - like we did - and ask them to hand over the boundaries of the neighborhoods, that they approved.
your question about the neighborhood council is really the only good thing youve added to this topic, so i will address it.
neighborhood councils incorporate several neighborhoods. for example the east hollywood neighborhood council includes Thai Town, Little Armenia, and other hoods.
we want to know, what those other hoods are named, where the boundaries are, and we'd like a map.
if you are a councilperson with 30 neighborhoods this shouldnt be that difficult, and at the most basic level if you have been representing your people properly it should be a joy to share the information.
however, since there are only 180 neighborhoods spread among 15 councilpeople, that means each council member only has 12 hoods in their district, on average. the fact that they dont even know where those 12 neighborhoods are is a fucking joke - and again, your attention should be placed on them, not us, because it's people like you who let people like them off the hook, enabler.
you kid that you know the signs didnt fall out of the sky, but then you act as if they did.
we want to know the information that got those signs up there. and since some hoods dont even have signs, we'd like to know where the boundaries of those hoods are too. and their names.
and yes, if a councilperson is too lazy, or too stupid, or too foolish to know their neighborhoods, we will continue to ridicule them for not knowing or caring about a basic part of their job.
The ad hominem bullshit does nothing to further your case, but I can play along.
I'm sure that my crazy use of punctuation, capitalization, and grammar is confusing you, so I will try to be brief.
You will not find a nice clear map because there are no nice, clear boundaries. You may see the neighborhoods in a cut and dry fashion, but that isn't how the city sees it. They care about boundaries insofar as they affect public policy, and you care about boundaries insofar as they make nice maps for your blog.
Put differently: "neighborhoods" in LA are created through several different and overlapping bureaucratic processes. Until these processes are streamlined, you will not find a nice, clean map. Whether or not city councilpeople are "doing their jobs," the conflicted boundaries of LA neighborhoods will still be an issue.
I have known doctoral students who have worked on this issue for years with no resolution. If you think your poorly edited whining is going to be any more productive, you should start drinking too.
Now, I think the whole hostile tone is stupid, but I'm adopting it since it seems to be the only way that you communicate.
I will give you one big hint before I get back to my life (ha ha, drinking)... the blue signs are put up on a case by case basis... not all at once according to a map.
sweetheart, youre the only one whining here - "how dare LAist expect each member of the city council to know their 12 neighborhoods".
and just because your loser friends cant get shit done, doesn't mean it cant be done.
maybe they argued with bloggers after wakin-n-bakin instead of keeping their eye on the prize?
keep enabling mediocrity in your lil universe and pretending like signs fall from the sky, and let us know how that works out for you.
Well, darling, I can see that having a conversation with someone who actually knows what they are talking about is a little threatening for you!
First of all, in the English language we use quotation marks to indicate an actual quote. Unlike the other people you debate with, I am not fool enough to let you put words in my mouth. After all, it is pretty full of smoke and vodka anyway.
Second, I am not whining at all. I'm commenting. That's why there is that "Comment" field... I'm sorry if I incorrectly interpreted that as an invitation to comment. If you spent three seconds thinking about what I'm saying - rather than coming up with adolescent taunts - you would realize that what I am telling you should help, rather than hinder, the Neighborhood Project.
You are posing this issue exactly the way my remedial undergrads do: completely black and white. In your mind, either there is a complete and clear map of every neighborhood with a blue sign OR the signs were given to us by god.
At least, that seems to be your position, since anyone who disagrees with your position is simply "pretending like signs fall from the sky" (see I used quotes because that's what you actually said!). Well, sweetheart, that isn't how it works. The blue signs are not produced as part of a single process for deciding which neighborhood is which, they are put up because community groups lobby to have a sign put at a particular intersection. Multiply that contested process by all the signs and that is why there is no "map". No one ever sits down and maps the whole city, because it is specific locations (like intersections) that are debated, not entire neighborhoods. The truth hurts, don't it?
And, EVEN IF the blue sign neighborhoods DID just fall out of the air, it still doesn't make them administrative units. In simple terms: just because there is a sign doesn't mean that the sign means anything in terms of governing. They are symbolic. Do you really give a shit whether or not city councilpeople keep track of the symbolic neighborhood labels? Wouldn't you rather them spend their time dealing with administrative distinctions with a bearing on public policy? No, of course not, because that would actually be practical.
Also, who the hell raised you? Wolves?
This is a topic of interest to me, but it isn't worth discussing with someone so openly hostile to opposing views (or facts, as the case may be). I suppose this could just be your (rather effective) method for assuring that no one disagrees with you or your incredibly thoughtful posts. This could have been a rational conversation, but instead I find myself imitating the rhetorical tone of a middle schooler.
Check your ego, buddy. You write for a fourth tier blog best known for its commentary on late night junk food. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it just doesn't exactly make you the authority on local politics. Until it does, I hope you entertain the idea of respecting other peoples' opinions.
no wonder you drink - your thoughts conflict themselves.
yes, a lobby does go to the city to propose an official hood. they provide reasons why Thai Town, for example, should be deemed a neighborhood, in that proposal there are boundaries. eventually a hood is approved and if things work out (unlike in Frogtown) signs are erected.
that paperwork - which includes the boundaries and the name of the hood - might not be realized on a map, but it should, and it will once the councilmembers give us the information that they signed off on.
i dont use proper punctuation and spelling in these comments to you on purpose. and you can probably guess why.
whether the neighborhoods are "symbolic" (omg quotes)and unofficial, or actually official is neither here nor there. we have them, they are prominately displayed by the city, and we are asking the city for more details about the neighborhoods that they govern and that we live in.
and again, because your friends are quitters, and accept nonsense from city hall like "dur we dont know where the neighborhoods are" might work in your coffee clutch, but it doesnt fly on this blog.
the fact that you are probably telling your students to quit, to accept mediocrity and laziness, i suppose it to be expected from our failing educational institutions. but lord please correct people in regards to punctuation in the comments of blaaawwwwggs.
you keep fighting yr little games regarding commas, we'll handle important LA things that matter.
kthxbi
Let's all be real about this. It's bush and his neocon agenda that is screwing over not only the good people of south central but all the people around this globe.
If bush wasn't concerned about putting $$ into the pockets of his contributors would there be any fast food in south central.
Make sure everyone you know votes democrat, then things will be fair.