Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 4- Palos Verdes

This week I decided to take a trip with some friends to Palos Verdes, which is approximately 30 miles from UCLA. Palos Verdes is actually a group of several small cities on a peninsula. These small cities include Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills, and Rolling Hills Estates.  This beautiful area, called P.V. or the Hills by the residents, is an affluent community that enjoys a fairly close proximity to Los Angeles but at the same time it is not on any major highway making it isolated.  I went there to visit a friend who lives in a very beautiful home in an area where most of the homes are estates and some have stables and horses. The city is on the coast and my friend’s home is within walking distance of the beach. As I walked around her neighbourhood I noticed that the majority of her neighbours were older Caucasian couples that had probably lived in that area for the past 40 or 50 years. One thing that was fun to see was that on her street there were several peacocks that would randomly roam around. Beautiful plumage but terrible sounding. Of course this got me very excited and I asked my friend about them. Apparently one of her neighbours breeds them on their estate and there are now several peacock colonies in the city. This was an interesting surprise and an indication of what life might be like in the Palos Verdes area.  Of special interest to me was the fact that some of the scenes from the Disney movie ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ (my favourite movie) were filmed off the coast of P.V.

            We went walking along the beach, about a 15-minute walk from her house, and I noticed that there was a sort of pattern in the type of residents there. We were there around 3:00 pm on a Thursday, which was probably the reason that there were very few children on the beach and people we saw were mostly elderly couples and mothers and their babies, others were probably at work or school. The people who had the opportunity to go to the beach on a Thursday afternoon were people who were either retired or probably not the main income provider for their families.

            In our lecture discussions we talked about the migration of families in the middle and upper income brackets to the suburbs. The city of Palos Verdes is a perfect example of this type of relocation. Decades ago families moved out of the city centers, which had become overbuilt and industrialized, and moved out into the periphery, where small communities of homes, schools, and shopping centres were created. Many of these families (including that of my friend’s) derive their incomes from businesses and jobs that are in the city centers so they have to commute every day into the city for their work. Unfortunately Los Angeles has a very poor mass transit system and this has forced these commuters to use their cars. This in turn has over burdened the already busy highways of the Los Angeles area and the daily commute is quite a nightmare. But suburbanites accept this as one of the costs of living is a relatively safe environment. Their main concern is the well being of their children and so twice a day they will sit in the two-hour plus traffic jam and accept this as a consequence of their desire for a better life. 

            The contrast to the hustle and bustle in major cities was quite evident. People seemed friendlier and more relaxed as they went about their daily lives.  I can well understand why they are willing to put up with the inconveniences of traffic and distance because the rewards are quite wonderful.

Best photo I could take without getting attacked

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 3- 3rd Street

This week I decided to go the 3^rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. The Promenade is a three block-section of 3^rd street between Wilshire Boulevard and Broadway Street and ends at the Santa Monica Place Mall. It is in the heart of the downtown area of Santa Monica and a major tourist attraction for the city. Santa Monica prides itself on its ability to attract peoples of diverse backgrounds.  Residents and visitors are drawn to this city because it has beautiful beaches on one side and easy access to the Metropolitan Los Angeles area on the other. 

It is interesting to see that even though the Promenade and the Mall are adjacent to each other, the types of clientele they court are quite different and therefore the types of stores they house are similarly different.  For example my observation shows that the mall has stores that are bigger brand names, as opposed to the stores along the promenade.  Of course the bigger the brand the higher the price tags, so the people walking along the promenade were generally more relaxed and perhaps there less for the shops and more for the social atmosphere presented by a carnival type of environment.   The mall having recently been completely renovated has a more ‘clean’ feel and presents the customers with more sophisticated surrounding. This means higher prices and even the food court presents a slightly more expensive fare than the comparable venues on the Promenade.   The 3^rd street Promenade has become a focal point for many homeless people in the area and on the sides of the street as well as on majority of the benches one sees pan-handlers and vagrants.  I noticed that the passers by would go out of their way to avoid any contact with these people. The Promenade having been last revamped more than 20 years ago is in need of a major makeover.

When the 3^rd street mall was first built in the 1960s, it brought a fresh approach to the shopping experience to the area but as newer malls were created in the nearby cities people gravitated towards the newer and cleaner malls.  Shopping areas like The Grove, Century City, and The Beverly Center pulled shoppers away.  This led to the rebuilding of the Santa Monica Place replacing shops like the Warner Brothers Store and the Candy Factory with Tiffany’s, Louis Vuitton, and Michael Kors.  I remember refusing to accompany my parents to the Promenade because of how dirty it was and the shabby stores. But now I think of the area as a fun place to visit.  

This visit to the area was completely different from my previous ones. This time I was observing with a reason and a goal. Now I saw the different people who were there and why they came to the promenade. The store workers are there at regular hours doing their job and perhaps not aware of their social environment. The shoppers come with specific items they wish to purchase from the Apples store or the Victoria’s Secret store. Then there are the visitors and the looky-loos who are enjoying themselves and treat the place as an entertainment park. And at mean times, especially lunch-time, the office workers and various staff members fill the restaurants and the fast food outlets. This little universe of sellers and buyers, of capitalists and consumers is a perfect example of Durkheim’s division of labour theory.  One sells and one buys and some cook and some eat.  However, I did notice that the lower priced goods were definitely moving faster than the others.  Fast food stores were very busy and the restaurants not so much, and many more people were carrying bags from Forever 21 and H&M thank from Barneys or Nordstrom’s.  Of course that’s probably just an indication of our current financial condition. The high number of ‘On Sale’ and ‘Reduced’ signs will hopefully dwindle as our economy recovers.

This three-block area is a center promoting consumerism and materialism. It is obvious that there is a huge disparity among the people. In our current economy there is the assumption that people do not have the ability to buy all products that they fancy, so there are endless sales and gimmicks trying to convince people to spend money on something they really don’t need and cannot afford by making it seem like a great “deal”.  Until people change their priorities this situation will not change. 

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 2- The Big Blue Bus

This week I decided to take a couple of friends and go on the #2 Big Blue Bus from UCLA to Santa Monica. Once we got settled into our seats I looked around to see our travelling companions.   It was clear that bus riders are not from one type or one group of people. There were men and women of all ages and people dressed from formal office wear to casual social attire. But everyone basically kept to themselves and kept themselves busy in a variety of ways until they reached their destination. Some were reading a magazine or a book, others were listening to music while some were texting or speaking on their cell phones.  These distractions serve as a way to pass the time because the bus, having to constantly stop to pick up and drop off passengers, takes a little longer to reach the various destinations. So seasoned bus riders plan accordingly. The drive that usually takes me 15-20 minutes in my car took about 45 minutes. Riding the bus is something that is done out of necessity and not pleasure. In Los Angeles if you have a car you drive it. I was grateful to have my friends with me because at first the bus system can be confusing to navigate and had I been alone I probably would have taken the wrong bus. Los Angeles is not a city known for its public transportation, and the bus routes and schedules are not as efficiently coordinated as other cities like San Francisco for example. In the future as the need for public transportation grows in Los Angeles then perhaps a better system will be put into place.

            Those who ride buses either don’t have access to a car or find it difficult to pay gas and even more difficult to find and pay for parking.  Most people on the bus were alone and didn’t seem too happy. Very few people talked or even looked at the other passengers. The bus that I took was relatively clean with very little advertisement. The majority of the time that I was on the bus it was nearly empty with only a handful of the seats occupied. Compared to the other buses that I've taken this one was quiet and my friends and I were not disturbed during our ride. I got on board at around 12:30 pm so the people on the bus seemed to be either students getting to or from class or people who needed to run errands, because by this time most people were already at work, which would explain the number of empty seats. The further along we got between Westwood and Santa Monica the neighbourhoods got dirtier and more dilapidated. Also the further down we went the more crowded the bus became. Most people tried to find a section of the bus where they could be alone as opposed to sharing a seat.

            In the reading by Durkheim we discussed the division of labour and how our society was fixed around this new idea of wants and materialism.  We now live in a society that has divided tasks according to the abilities and strengths of individuals. Since these neighbourhoods cannot meet all our needs we find ourselves having to travel further and further out to find work or food or materials for our daily lives. Public transportation can be an effective and efficient method to move the population to the areas that can supply them with the materials they need. The bus routes for example enable people to go where they can either purchase goods or work in order to purchase goods.  We passed by all kinds of shops, boutiques, and restaurants, which promote a sense of communal working.

The bus was like a mini Metropolitan Los Angeles.  The riders were from different economic and ethnic backgrounds.  Their reasons for riding the bus were are varied as the number of people on the bus, each person with a unique need and reason for choosing this method of transportation. It was really interesting to observe how functional and helpful the bus system can be for those who truly depend on it.

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 1

Having lived in Los Angeles all my life I have concluded that life in a metropolitan area can be interesting but also challenging. Many of the conflicts that arise in this diverse population are as a result of misunderstandings and miscommunications.  I believe that understanding our neighbors and their way of life will lead to a more harmonious community and a more united community. 

My fascination with other cultures and my interest in their customs and traditions drew me to the field of geography. I find that each of the many diverse ethnic groups that surround me bring to life the words that I read in my textbooks. 

Here in the greater Los Angeles area we have what is often referred to as a melting pot, however in many cases the different ethnic groups are not melting into one synchronous whole, but rather each group is carving out a certain section of the city as their own.  Each creates communities that are exclusive and independent of each other. There are entire populations that only speak a language that is not English.

Since in Los Angeles there are too many such ethnic areas to write about I will concentrate my blog on just five of them.

It will be interesting to see how these areas change for me once I explore them with a more critical eye trying to observe the social differences and similarities that take place within each.