Lady GaGa in South Gate
It’s always odd to hear of famous people or celebrities in South Gate, Huntington Park, etc. I don’t talk about Saúl Viera or Chalino famous, I mean well-known because the media has anointed them as such. I was amazed to read that Bobby Brown and Eazy-E were at the same Bell High School dance in 1986 hosted by KDAY and DJed by Julio G. It’s befuddling.
In that vein, Lady GaGa was in South Gate this past week. A friend posted that link on Facebook and while I was initially skeptical, I wasn’t after I saw the pictures. The first picture (posted below and taken from the article) shows her crossing Elizabeth towards Greenspan’s. Looks like she wanted to shop. I don’t blame her, Greenspan’s is a great place to shop.
The apartment complex in the background of the first picture is on Elizabeth, behind the parking lot for Giant Dollar (which in my heart will forever be La Barata). Here’s a link to Google Maps Street View for comparison. I’m guessing someone told photographers to come down with her because there is no way in hell they were so conveniently in the neighborhood.
To the right is a picture I took on Feb. 6th of the same apartment complex (there was something wrong with my camera, I apologize). While she possibly entered Giant Dollar, the pictures tell that she really went to Greenspan’s. Greenspan’s confirms her visit via their Twitter account. The picture they link to is this one.
Utterly befuddled.
#635
I’m pretty sure LAist has banned me from commenting at their site. My most recent comments have never gone through; I don’t know if the problem also appears when I comment at other sites in the -istverse. No bother, it just goes to show that I’m important enough to be banned. The following paragraphs are a response to LAist posting a link to a story at the L.A. Times about people trying to ban openly-carrying firearms at Starbucks.
I welcome the initial shock that comes to people when they see someone lawfully open-carrying a firearm. It’s the beginning of a process that I hope will culminate with the public learning that they can, in fact, openly carry a firearm in public, provided it’s holstered, and reverting the law to once again deem loaded open-carry lawful (what’s the use of an unloaded firearm?). If it’s holstered, I have no problem with them.
In the case of Starbucks and business, they are private property and policies regarding firearms should be at the discretion of the owner and/or manager. If I don’t like their policy, I’ll take my business somewhere else, simple as that.
The moment I see someone reach for their holster, I’ll reach for mine.
Preface
Hola.
I know that the frequency of posts has decreased steadily once I started college and I have not been a regular contributor to L.A. Eastside. It has reached the point where I received two emails inquiring about the status of my site. For your information, this site is still alive and I check and approve comments once a week.
I have been working on a series of posts about my education and me. They will not be published until I have read a few more books so I can properly frame my experiences within an intellectual framework. The posts will begin to appear in late-February. I plan each post to be long, informative, discursive, provocative, and a myriad of other adjectives. In the meantime, there might be a few music related posts.
The coming months will be interesting and I hope you keep reading this site. To make sure you receive my posts, subscribe to my site’s RSS feed or sign up for email alerts at the top-right corner of the site.
See you again in a few weeks,
Diego
There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men
John Harvard statue with balloons and "Obama-Biden" placard, Nov 5. 2008
Maybe you’ve noticed the absence of politics-related posts at this site. I grew tired of openly talking about politics sometime in high school when it became clear that the time-honored tradition of civil debate and discourse had coarsened into catchphrases and paranoia. I compared Walden and other essays by Thoreau to essays by William F. Buckley and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and more contemporary essayists who focus on politics and matters of the state to assess the changes in language, tone, delivery, etc. While I feel that there are still a large number of well-articulated essays on politics published each year, the majority appear in academic publications or what are considered “high-brow” publications (The New Yorker), while the popular essays are poorly articulated and generally unappealing to me.
If I want to make myself feel bad and disillusioned, I visit any public forum (whether it’s on a social media site or chat forum) and I see exactly what I wish was not the norm in the United States when it comes to public discourse: half-truths masquerading as facts, scant usage of facts, and people who can’t articulate any ideological basis for their beliefs.
When I arrived at Harvard, I considered becoming involved with political organizations on campus. After two weeks at Harvard, I knew I would never be part of such an organization due to the sheer size of some (the Harvard Dems bill themselves as the largest partisan political organization on campus; I think they are the largest group on campus) and my voice would be lost in the crowd. With the then-growing anticipation for the 2008 presidential election, I saw a lot of fervor, much of it misguided, from fellow students and realized that I was better off letting others immerse themselves in politics while I carved my niche somewhere else. It was this same sentiment that shifted my intended major away from Government and towards studying human relations (Sociology and Psychology).
With the end of the election, the rise of a new level of vitriol in politics that I never believed I’d see (especially after the level of vitriol during the Bush administration) and the ensuing changes in the political landscape, I’ve removed myself from almost all political advocacy because I’ve tired of it. I’m changing my political affiliation to “Decline to state” this week.
Rather than membership in an organization with a broad scope, I prefer to be in smaller groups that, while advocating some sort of goal tied to politics, do so via the usage of research, facts, and statistical models (hence why one of my prospects upon my return Harvard is to remain as a Sociology major but focus of my studies on statistics). I grew tired of advocacy by canvassers, political operatives, paid lobbyists. My work and my vote are my advocacy.
The title of this post is taken from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience.
This past year in hits
So, what posts were the big hits in the past year? Here’s a list of the top five posts and the number of hits they received in 2009 as of 9:00 p.m. Los Angeles time, December 31st.
- Saúl Viera, “El gavilancillo,” ten years – 3,595 hits – published April 11, 2008
- “El cartel” by Jesus Blancornelas – 801 hits – published July 17, 2007
- Saúl Viera, «El gavilancillo», diez años – 651 hits – published July 17, 2009
- Mascaras – 510 hits – published January 13, 2008
- De domingo a domingo, te vengo a ver – 505 hits -published January 5, 2008
I’m still amazed at the number of visits the Saul Viera posts get. I googled “Saul Viera” and I think my post is the second thing that pops up. Thanks for the traffic, Google!
