The Brief

Whether it’s TV, film or books, the Vietnam War and its aftermath are often told through the eyes of American GI’s.

But nearly 50 years after the fall of Saigon, some Vietnamese American storytellers are changing up the narrative.

“What was I going to do — rehash the Vietnam War?" said filmmaker Elizabeth Ai. "That wasn't in my history at all.”

Instead, in her new documentary “New Wave,” Ai delves into the 80’s music that teenage Vietnamese refugees embraced as they searched for belonging in their new country.

The Vietnamese New Wave movement saw teens and young adults adopting mohawks and teasing their bangs with Aqua Net.

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Courtesy of New Wave

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“New Wave,” playing at the Laemmle in Glendale through Thursday, turns out to be more than a music documentary. It’s also a meditation on family, trauma and healing.

The years-long making of the documentary – and a companion book called “New Wave: Rebellion and Invention in the Vietnamese Diaspora” set Ai on a personal journey. More than mid-way through, she found herself moving from behind the camera to being on camera.

“It was a VH1 Behind the Music documentary that turned into something else,” Ai said.

A Secret World

Six years ago, Ai was looking for a project to do during maternity leave — she’s a self-described workaholic — and knew she wanted to make a film about the Vietnamese American community. She dug through old family photos, some in photo albums, others stored in suitcases.

The photos that popped out to AI were of her uncles and aunts who fled with their family to the U.S. as children before she was born. They came of age in the 80s, wearing heavy eyeliner and teased their hair mile-high.

Elizabeth Ai was raised by young relatives like her aunt, Myra.

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Courtesy of Elizabeth Ai

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They listened to U.K. New Wave bands like New Order and Depeche Mode. But what they really loved was the synth-pop coming from Italy and Germany, known as Eurodisco, exemplified by acts such as Modern Talking, C.C. Catch and Bad Boy Blues.

“It was the deep cuts,” Ai said. “They felt like this was their own little secret world.”

The music inspired a Vietnamese New Wave movement, centered in Little Saigon.

Singers would put their own spin on European hits when they went on Vietnamese-language entertainment shows produced in Little Saigon, the most famous being Paris By Night.

Lynda Trang Dai was one of the top stars of the Vietnamese New Wave movement.

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Courtesy of Nancy Nguyen

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And the biggest star was Lynda Trang Dai, who dressed in bodysuits and bustiers reminiscent of the Material Girl.

“Lynda is the Vietnamese Madonna, and she represented so much to this community through being the artist that covered all the top hits,” Ai said.

Looking in the mirror

Dai’s chirpy cover of C.C. Catch's “Jump in My Car” was part of the soundtrack to Ai’s childhood in the San Gabriel Valley, where her teenage aunts and uncles were her de facto parents.

Ai’s dad was out of the picture. Her mom was never home because she was busy moving around Southern California, opening nail salons — more than a dozen by Ai’s count.

“She would help other relatives start a salon, and then be like, ‘Okay, you take it over,’” Ai said. “She would get it to a certain place where there was clientele, and she would move on and open another one.”

Her mother’s absence left Ai feeling abandoned. The distance between them stretched into adulthood. They’d go for years without talking or seeing each other.

In the course of making "New Wave," Elizabeth Ai crowdsourced photos of New Wavers from around the world.

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Thái Tài

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“I try not to think about like what it would have been like to have had a mom, because those are just kind of infinite possibilities,” Ai said.

But as Ai suppressed those feelings, she kept hearing about similar experiences from the New Wavers she interviewed for the film. Many had gravitated to the music scene because they were looking for a second family.

“They didn’t have parents who were present in their lives,” Ai said. “Either they were separated or they would be present, but they would be working around the clock and trying to figure out how to learn English at night.”

Ai began to see her family in her subjects. There were so many parallels between her mom and Dai, the Vietnamese Madonna. Dai too was the breadwinner for her family. To keep performing, she would often leave her young son in the care of relatives.

“All of a sudden, unraveling their stories led me to my own,” Ai said.

That’s when Ai, at the gentle prodding of her producing team, turned the camera on herself.

Reconciliation

The film shows Ai reaching out to her mother, whom she hadn’t seen for a decade by that point.

It was scary to share anything about her life, “let alone air my family's dirty laundry.'"

"What I've been told my whole life is 'You don't talk about this,'" Ai said. "Everything is about saving face.”

Filmmaker Elizabeth Ai made "New Wave" over six years.

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Yudi Echevarria

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But it was freeing to acknowledge the family dysfunction — and to work through it. The film shows Ai and her mom reuniting far from Southern California — in Jackson Hole, Wyoming where her mother had moved.

Since the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this summer, Ai’s not only heard from New Wavers, but others grappling with family trauma.

“People [are] telling me 'I am estranged from my sister',” Ai said. “Some guy told me, ‘Oh, now I know why my mom doesn't talk to her sister. Auntie is out of our lives.’”

Ai started out thinking she was making the film for her community and her daughter, now five. While that's true, the film is also for her.

“I got to know my mom, and it's healing for me,” Ai said. “I made something and I learned so much about myself that I never would have had I not done it.”

A percussion instrument deeply-rooted in African music, the marimba shows up in everything from atonal avant-garde pieces to modern American pop songs. And yes, many people might know about its clear, playful tones through the iPhone ringtone of the same name.

But with its couch-sized layout of wooden bars and metal resonators, it's not always as accessible as say a guitar or more compact instrument.

Enter a man and a local non-profit on a mission to bring marimba to the masses.

From his home studio, Ariel Campos remembered one of the first times he really got intrigued by the marimba. He was listening to local radio.

“And I hear Tom Waits ‘Swordfishtrombone.’ That was like before Shazam and all that. And I was like, ‘what’s going on over here?!’” he said.

Campos teaches percussion at Mt. San Antonio College and he’s director of Southern California Marimba, a group dedicated to the promotion of marimba performance.

With its roots in Africa, Campos said American history is rich with the sounds of the marimba. That includes musicians like Clair Omar Musser, who toured with the instrument -- which can weigh hundreds of pounds -- back in the 1920s.

Musser might not ring a bell. But the marimba master was a big deal in his day, even organizing a 100-piece marimba orchestra for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933.

In his studio filled with an array of other percussion instruments, Campos explained that the marimba is usually played with two, four or even six mallets. When I met with him earlier this month, he demonstrated the dexterity needed to pull that off on his own antique marimba: A hulking Deagan marimba he estimates was built in the 1920s.

Campos said he’s also interested in the rich marimba heritage of countries like Mexico and Guatemala, where the instrument is still very much alive.

In Guatemala, where the marimba is the national instrument, it’s not uncommon for three or more people to play the same instrument at the same time, Campos said.

“There’s a great band right now from Mexico. They’re called Son Rompe Pera,” Campos said. “Their slogan is like: cumbia is the new punk. And so they play cumbia punk music on the marimba.”

A working musician who’s played marimba with acts like Brooks and Dunn, Campos has a wide repertoire: from classical to pop songs like the Los Bukis classic, “Tu Cárcel.”

For over a year now, Campos and his colleagues at Southern California Marimbas have brought an eclectic array of live marimba music to audiences in L.A. He calls them ‘marimba salons’ and they even include some of his weirder, more avant-garde creations. For some of his atonal pieces, Campos uses his fingers, bare hands and even a bass bow to bring out the more subtle sounds of the instrument.

Campos said his goal with the marimba salons is to bring the marimba out of the academic setting and into neighborhoods where people can experience it up close.

“It’s the idea of bringing people together, especially now, in these times. We need to build a sense of community. And that can look however we want it to look,” Campos said.

“And I think using the marimba to do that is a great opportunity.”

The next SoCal Marimba salon is coming up on Sunday March 22 at 8pm at Sunspace in Shadow Hills.

Marimba Salon

Sunspace
9683 Sunland Blvd.

Shadow Hills, CA 91040

Sunday, March 22
8 - 9 p.m.

Mt. San Antonio College will also host a marimba festival and competition July 25-26. Check out Southern California Marimba’s website for more info as it becomes available.

In early 2020, Frank Ledezma and Jennyfer Gramajo moved into a new storefront for their event photography business on First Street in East L.A.

But like the story of so many small businesses during the pandemic shutdown, the husband-and-wife team soon found themselves needing to pivot.

 "We would do events for quinceañeras, baptisms, weddings," Gramajo said. "At that moment, all of our events were canceled."

But unlike the roller-coaster experiences that have defined so many mom-and-pops, their East L.A. Film Shop has been a story of unexpected success.

Inside East L.A. Film Shop.

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

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"Film Foos" hats for sale at East L.A. Film Shop.

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Fiona Ng

/

LAist

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Selling rolls

Gramajo and Ledezma went from shooting photos to selling film to photographers, during a crazy-making time when there probably wasn't a better way to kill time than to take your camera out and capture a suspended world.

"You couldn't find film. People were still shooting," Ledezma said. "People still wanted to go out and shoot."

The couple was already selling some photo supplies before the pandemic, but not much. After the lockdown, Gramajo said Ledezma asked her if he should pour their savings to go all in on the switch, based off a friend's suggestion, on a wing and a prayer.

"I'm like, 'Well, I think you should just buy a couple of rolls and see how it goes,'" Garmajo remembered.

Frank Ledezma and Jennyfer Gramajo, the husband and wife owners of East L.A. Film Shop.

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Fiona Ng

/

LAist

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East L.A. Film Shop

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Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

With that, East L.A. Film Shop was born.

The couple started advertising their goods on social media. As word of mouth spread, customers sought them out.

" We started meeting people like at the Jack in the Box parking lot. We would go deliver film like if it was Uber Eats," Gramajo said.

" They were like, 'Oh, go with Frank. They have it in stock. They always have it in stock,'" Ledezma said.

After reopening, the demand for film rolls stayed strong, so much so that East L.A. Film Shop expanded their offering to include film development and other services. Their clientele, Gramajo said, has always run the gamut, from seasoned pros to novices, including an elderly man who needed help loading a new roll into his old camera, or a woman who brought her kid to get a crash course on all the different knobs and buttons.

Since last year, East L.A. Film Shop has relocated to the storefront next door, a much bigger space to accommodate more equipment and a growing staff.

The extra room also allows the couple to create a community space for music, photo exhibits and more.

On Sunday, East L.A. Film shop is hosting its monthly "Barrios Sunday," where small local vendors are invited to set up shop for the day to sell their goods and get the word out about their business.

The couple is also asking photographers — analog and digital — to post their photos on the walls of the shop. The works will be displayed for a week.

As for Ledezma and Gramajo, they still go out and shoot. It's a kind of second nature — especially for Ledezma, who grew up helping his father, an event photographer himself, on his shoots.

"When I open a fresh roll, like the smell, it takes you back [to]  when I was a kid and my dad's like, 'Oh, gimme this roll,’" he said. "You still get that smell of fresh film. You know, it just takes you back."

Barrio Sunday

East L.A. Film Shop
3541 1st St., Los Angeles
Feb 22. Sun., 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

After copper wire theft left the Sixth Street Bridge in darkness for years, the city of Los Angeles has hired a Pasadena-based engineering firm to restore the lighting, a move aimed at improving safety for Boyle Heights and the surrounding neighborhoods.

City officials contracted Tetra Tech to relight the bridge, which has been plagued by copper wire theft since its opening in 2022. The outages have frustrated residents and commuters who use the bridge to walk, run, bike and drive between downtown LA and the Eastside.

Aging infrastructure, copper wire theft and delayed repairs led to nearly 2,000 streetlight service requests in Boyle Heights in 2024. Nearly seven miles of copper wire have been reported stolen from the Sixth Street Bridge.

Tetra Tech began working on the project’s design in January and is scheduled to restore the wiring to all lights along the bridge, including along roadways, barriers, ramps, stairways and arches before the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games come to Los Angeles that summer, according to a Feb. 18 news release from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office.

The firm – which was selected by the city’s Bureau of Engineering – will fortify the pull boxes, service cabinet and conduits to protect against copper wire theft. Tetra Tech will also install a security camera system to deter vandalism and theft.

“When our streets are well-lit, our neighborhoods feel safer and more connected,” Jurado said in the news release. “The Sixth Street Bridge plays a vital role in connecting Angelenos between the Eastside and the heart of the City.”

Jurado – who pledged to look into fixing the Sixth Street Bridge lights when she was elected in 2024 – said the partnership with Tetra Tech “moves us one step closer to restoring one of the City’s most iconic landmarks as a safe, welcoming public space our communities deserve.”

According to officials, the total contract value with Tetra Tech is $5.3 million, which includes work on the Sixth Street Bridge as well as the Sixth Street PARC project, which encompasses 12 acres of recreational space underneath and adjacent to the bridge.

The PARC project will make way for sports fields, fitness equipment, event spaces and a performance stage. PARC’s grand opening is anticipated later this year.

Because the work for the PARC project and the bridge is connected, the Board of Engineers recommended using the existing PARC contract with Tetra Tech to ensure completion ahead of the 2028 Games, officials said.

The cost for the design work on the bridge alone is roughly $1 million.

On Thursday, Jurado announced that her streetlight repair crew had restored lighting and strengthened infrastructure for more than 400 streetlights across her district, including Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, and El Sereno. Next, they plan to tackle repairs in downtown L.A.

For the last 70 years, the  27th Street Bakery hasn’t just been the go-to place for people who want to spend less time in the kitchen — it’s become a staple in South Central, providing jobs and security for people living in the neighborhood.

The bakery is Black-owned and in its third generation as a business. It’s co-owned by sisters Denise Cravin-Paschal and Olympic gold-medalist Jeanette Bolden-Pickens, as well as her husband Al Pickens.

“My grandfather employed a lot of people around here as he was growing his business and so have we,” Cravin-Paschal told the LA Local. “They feel that this is a safe place to come. We have the respect of being here for 70 years and so we enjoy it.”

The bakery sits on Central Avenue, the focal point of Black Los Angeles between the 1930s and 1960s. As segregation laws were struck down, Black people in LA began to move elsewhere and took their businesses with them. The bakery, though, is still Black-owned and operating 70 years later.

Today it is considered the largest manufacturer of sweet potato pies on the West Coast, the bakery’s website states. Last year, the city and District 9 Councilmember Curren Price Jr. presented the bakery with a plaque that reads: “A Walk Down Central Avenue — A legacy of community: powered by the people and its places.”

It hangs on the wall in the bakery’s lobby along with several other photos and recognitions they’ve received over the years.

“Our goal is to keep this legacy alive and we’re celebrating 70 years of being here in business. We are so grateful to the community,” Bolden-Pickens said.

In celebration of its anniversary, a sign in the bakery says it is offering one slice of sweet potato pie for 70 cents on Saturdays starting this weekend through Oct. 31.

The bakery was a restaurant at first bringing Southern flavor to LA

The bakery began as a restaurant in the 1930s on Central Avenue founded by Harry and Sadie Patterson, according to the family and Los Angeles Conservancy. Back then, Central Avenue was the epicenter of LA’s Black community and Patterson, who came from Shreveport, Louisiana, decided to bring his Southern recipes to life in Los Angeles.

The restaurant later became a bakery in 1956, according to the bakery’s website. Patterson’s daughter Alberta Cravin and her son Gregory Spann took over the bakery in 1980. After Spann passed away, Cravin’s daughters — the sisters who are current owners — took over the family business. Five other relatives also help them out, Cravin-Paschal said.

These days, the bakery is open Tuesday through Saturday each week and the bulk of their customers are other businesses. They serve nearly 300 vendors including convenience stores like 7-Eleven, Ralphs grocery stores, Smart & Final, ARCO gas stations, restaurants and other mom-and-pop stores. Louisiana Fried Chicken has been a customer since 1980, Cravin-Paschal said.

An average delivery today is usually 45 dozen pies and they also ship orders out of state, Cravin-Paschal said.

She also told The LA Local they have six full time employees and most of them have worked for the bakery at least 25 years.

“I like working here, I like the people,” Maximina “Maxi” Rodriguez, a longtime employee, told The LA Local. After 32 years at the bakery, she said she plans to retire in June. “I’m going to miss it.”

Rodriguez said working at the bakery is a family affair for her, too. Her sister, Guadalupe Garibaldi, has worked at the bakery for over 40 years and her niece, Yoselin Garibaldi, is now a cashier and driver.

Patterson’s lessons inspired 3 generations to keep the business running

For Bolden-Pickens and Cravin-Paschal, running the bakery is a labor of love. Both told The LA Local that their grandfather taught them to stay true to the fresh ingredients they use and not to cut corners.

These lessons helped Bolden-Pickens in her life before taking over the family business. She won a gold medal as part of the U.S. 4×100 meter relay team in track and field during the 1984 Olympics.

“What I learned from being an Olympian is that it takes a lot of hard work. I learned that from my grandfather,” she said.

Bolden-Pickens said it hasn’t been easy running the business, but they’ve been able to stay afloat because of the lessons learned from their grandfather.

“I remember during the pandemic, we actually had to go to the egg farm and stand in line for a couple of hours just to get the eggs that we needed,” Bolden-Pickens said. “We use the best spices. We make our own vanilla.”

Cravin-Paschal said after the death of their brother Gregory Spann, who was the main baker for nearly two decades, they struggled for a few years to keep the recipe and taste consistent. But eventually they figured it out.

“We had a little rough spot because we all know the recipes but you have to put it together (correctly),” Cravin-Paschal said. “Now we’re back to the original taste.”