Untold LA on KickStarter

The amazing homes and stories of the West Adams District

This Los Angeles Life,

Untold LA is a project seeking funding on KickStarter. Jett Loe is proposing to create a Photo iBook and website showcasing the amazing homes and stories of the West Adams District of Los Angeles.

As Loe said on KickStarter:
“Many people think they know LA, but there is one extraordinary district that seems forgotten to all but a few: West Adams.

Home to the greatest architectural treasure West of the Mississippi of Victorian, Queen Anne, Beaux Arts, Egyptian Revival, Mission and Craftsman homes, the stories of West Adams are just as wild as the houses.

Which is why I need to do Untold LA.”

Click over to KickStarter to see the beautiful homes, all located in West Adams, featured in Loe’s video.

After the recent tragedy and negative stories in the news about South LA, I am happy to see someone focusing on the positive aspects of our neighborhood.

Comments { 0 } May 2, 2012

ZERO

What happens when street prostitution invades an otherwise quiet neighborhood?

This Los Angeles Life,

We have been told that the police have made 100’s of arrests in our area since June. As impressive as that sounds, you know what? The only number I care about is ZERO. Zero women standing on the corner selling themselves. Zero pimps parking on my street. Zero traffic from Johns. Zero used condoms in my yard. Zero girls getting beaten up. Zero children being robbed of their innocence. Zero attitude from my elected officials who somehow seem to think this is all an accepted part of living in South LA.

I have asked a pimp to please move his car because it was blocking my driveway. I have looked out my dining room window only to see a man getting oral sex in his car. I have stepped over used condoms to get into my vehicle and pulled condom wrappers out of my garden. I have been unable to sleep at night because ‘Johns’ keep driving around and around the block waiting for a prostitute to become available. I have seen women standing on the corner at 7am wearing long shirts or maybe very, very short dresses with no underwear while young children walk past them on the way to school. I have been awoken in the middle of the night by 2 pimps beating a 13-14 year old girl because she didn’t want to sell herself and “just wanted to go home!”

Now imagine this was happening outside of your house. Imagine the neighborhood children are your children. Imagine the elderly ladies who are afraid to go outside are your grandmothers. Imagine the 14 year old girl who is walking her dog and getting cruised by men looking to buy sex is your niece. Now imagine this wasn’t happening for one day or one week, but every day for over one year! How would you feel? What would you do?

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Comments { 20 } September 15, 2011

West Adams Neighbors Fight for Their Streets

Los Angeles Times

This Los Angeles Life, ,

Over the past 2 years street prostitutes, pimps and Johns have invaded our once quiet inner city neighborhood. You may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging much lately. It is hard to get excited about paint colors and wood trim when there are people engaging in illicit acts directly outside of our house. I have a lot to say about the prostitution plaguing our community, but am still trying to find the words. I am so heartbroken over this situation, but I am also really angry. More to come…

I was recently interviewed for an article in the Los Angeles Times about the prostitution in our neighborhood: West Adams neighbors fight for their streets.

David gave an earlier interview to Intersections South LA on the same the same topic: South LA neighborhood fed up with prostitution.

Our area even has it’s own twitter page!

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Comments { 3 } July 26, 2011

Was-alow? It was a Bungalow…

Now it is something else

Bungalows,


Business in front, bungalow in the back.

Our neighborhood has many buildings that began their lives as bungalows but have been converted, sometimes almost unrecognizably, into buildings now used for commerce. This is what happens when a predominantly residential area is rezoned for a commercial corridor.


Local Dentist

Bungalows have been converted into little shops, markets, dental offices and even churches.


Church


Realty Office

Comments { 6 } June 25, 2007

More Tales From The Hood

Uncategorized,

A continuation of Tales From The Hood…

Gun Fire Too Close To Home
The other night we were sitting on our sofa watching television when we heard really loud gun fire outside a home 3 houses up the street from us. It was so loud that it sounded like it was in the same room with us. I flew off the sofa and plastered my body flat against the floor. David ran over to the window to see what was happening. All the while I am screaming, “Get out of the window! Get out of the window!”

David saw two Hispanic teenagers running up the street, right past our house. We assume it was a gang related incident. No one was hurt but it definately scared me.

Selling Crack Across The Street
My sweet neighbor from across the street saw me in my yard and came over to talk. She asked me if I had seen a green Buick parked in front of her house. I told her I had but admitted that I hadn’t really paid much attention to it. She told me that I needed to start paying more attention because the man was selling crack from his car. This woman lives directly across the street from us!

She handed me a slip of paper with the car’s license plate number written on it. She asked if I would call the police on her behalf since her English is not that clear. I called the police department for our area directly. The officer who took my call wanted to know how my neighbor knew for sure the man was selling crack? I explained that it is happening in front of her house so she was able to observe the transactions and it was pretty obvious the man wasn’t selling Avon.

The officer told me to call 911 the next time we saw the car because the police would need to catch the man in the act of selling crack. At this point I became frustrated and asked if the officer could at least run the license plate number. He did and said it was registered to a Buick. The officer again requested for me to tell my neighbor to call 911 the next time she saw the vehicle.

The whole exchange was infuriating. I can see why most of my neighbors are of the opinion that the police don’t care. The car hasn’t been back since I reported it to the police. I almost wonder if someone at the police department tipped off the crack dealer?

The Attempted Burglary 4 Hours After We Left Town
Last summer David and I flew to D.C. for a vacation. Our flight was right before noon. We usually schedule an early morning flight so that we can leave our house under the cover of darkness but that didn’t work out this time. The taxi picked us up and took us to the airport. Four hours after we left town we received a call from our alarm company letting us know that an alarm screen had been tripped.

The police responded about 45 minutes after the alarm company contacted them. Of course, by this time there was no intruder to be caught. They filed it as a false alarm and the city of Los Angeles stuck us with a $115 fine.

When we got back in town a few days later I called the police department to file a report. They sent out an officer who basically said there was nothing he could do because there were no witnesses or any evidence. He believed that someone in our area had observed us leaving and did try to enter through the kitchen window because it is shielded from the street. The officer said the alarm served its purpose and scared the would-be burglar off.

It wasn’t stated but the innuendo was that $115 is probably a small price to pay when being faced with having our house broken into. I see his point of view but I’m angry because it WASN’T A FALSE ALARM.

The other incidents were people coming into our neighborhood and doing illegal activities. The people who actually live here are hardworking. They take care of their houses, manicure their lawns and generally make great neighbors. I am most bothered that someone who actually lives near us is either tipping off a friend or is willing to steal from us directly, i.e. is generally not a great neighbor.

Most of the time our area is a quiet, peaceful transitional neighborhood. Hopefully, the negative elements will completely transition on out of here.

Comments { 10 } December 19, 2005

Tales From The Hood

This Los Angeles Life, ,

After we graduated from college, my friend Amy Jo and I moved into an apartment located in downtown Indianapolis. It was a charming little place. Built in the 1920′s, it featured arched doorway openings and sconces on the walls, 2 bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bathroom in between. It also had a living room, dining room, small kitchen, and a front and back entrance. The front entrance had a dramatic hallway leading you into the living and dining rooms. The unit was positioned on the corner so light streamed in through the many windows along three sides of the apartment. A bonus feature was the back of the apartment faced an open field and high school track. We would walk around the track several times a day. The best part about the apartment was the price. We split the $500 a month rent and could actually afford it on our minimum wage salaries.

After we moved in we realized that we were the only white people living in the apartment complex other than the property manager. The realization wasn’t a negative one, simply an observation. Early one evening we heard the woman who lived above us screaming a stream of obscenities out the window at her boyfriend who was standing in the parking lot adjacent to our dining room windows. The crescendo of her words accelerated to the point where they became jumbled together and unintelligible. Her words kept coming louder and faster, without pause. At regular intervals her boyfriend bellowed back, “Ghetto bitch! Ghetto bitch! Go get your hair done. You’re a ghetto bitch. You live in the G-H-E-T-T-O, bitch.”

That was our first realization that we lived in such a bad part of town. The whole fight culminated with our neighbor’s boyfriend storming off into the open field behind our apartment and firing a round of bullets straight up into the air. At that point Amy Jo and I dove to the floor of our apartment. We were shocked by the brutal, raw emotion of the exchange. That fight was completely outside our frame of reference for the world.

I looked at Amy Jo and said, “I guess this means we live in the ghetto.”

She quipped, “Yeah. We should get some tee shirts printed up. GHETTO BITCHES.”

That experience was good training for living in our current neighborhood.

The Pimp – Ho Fight
On a warm summer afternoon David and I were doing the typically mundane task of unloading groceries from our car. A little black hatchback car erratically pulled up to the stop sign at the intersection catty corner to our house. I didn’t really pay much attention at first but soon heard a commotion coming from inside the vehicle. Suddenly, a fairly average looking man jumped out of the car and roughly pulled a woman out behind him. This instantly caught my attention. I was halted dead in my tracks by the words the man was yelling.

“I’m the pimp! You’re the ho! Give me my money bitch or I’m going to hurt you.”

The fight continued along these lines for several more minutes. Then there was something that I didn’t quite understand about being from East Los Angeles verses West Los Angeles. This man, the pimp, was apparently from West Los Angeles and because of this fact the woman was lucky. If he had been from East LA she would be dead, but, because he is from West LA, he is more compassionate. The woman did not appear to be intimidated by this information. On the contrary, she seemed angry and defiant. She mentioned seeking employment opportunities with a pimp who “hadn’t lost his mother (insert the mother of all expletives here)-ing mind.”

A neighbor’s sprinkler was watering his lawn, I could hear the sound of children’s voices playing in a yard up the street and in the distance I faintly heard an ice cream truck rattling it’s bell and playing “Pop Goes The Weasel.” In the middle of our tranquil summer setting was this absurd exchange straight out of a really bad made-for-tv movie. I stood in the yard, transfixed, mouth agape.

The pimp saw me standing in the middle of my yard staring at them. He pushed the woman back into the car, drove around the corner, parked and pulled the woman back out of the car to yell at her again. By this time David walked up to me and asked what was going on. After I told him he ran inside and dialed 911.

David waited on hold for 10 minutes before he reached an operator. The 911 operator said they couldn’t do anything since we didn’t have the car’s license plate number. She instructed us to get a license plate number the next time this occurred. David requested that a squad car be sent to our location anyway. By the time David hung up the phone with the police the pimp and ho had resolved their dispute and driven away. They were long gone by the time the police drove through our area 45 minutes later.

The discussion in the Comments refers to the continuation of this article: More Tales From the Hood

Comments { 9 } December 17, 2005

Realtors

Find out more about realtors working in the West Adams area of Los Angeles

Resources, ,

I’m sure there are other realtors working in West Adams but here are the two we know personally. They also both live in West Adams. I think it is an advantage to work with a realtor who personally knows the area you wish to buy in.

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Comments { 0 } August 13, 2003