Talk:Highland Park, Los Angeles, California
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NOTE: User Decius, responsible for many of the comments below, is apparently a known trouble-stirrer who has been banned from Wikipedia. I don't think he has been a very helpful influence in making this page more useful. Perhaps we should delete all of his belligerent and subjective bullcrap and start from scratch?
Hardly NPOV. "Gentrification"? "Scenic area". The Avenue's "origin" is here? It sounds like a quaint historic place to visit, not the dumpy ghetto it really is. I asked a friend who lives in Highland Park about "Gentrification" and he laughed at the idea that this was becoming a nice area....
- The northern end, near the increasingly-fashionable Eagle Rock, as well as the eastern Garvanza district, near expensive South Pasadena, is indeed getting an influx of middle-class whites who are fixing up their houses. However, it may be more accurate to qualify it by saying that it may be undergoing the early stages of gentrification. -Willmcw 22:51, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
There is nothing subjective about the statement that much of Highland Park is still rather below par: a collection of photos taken on any given day will prove that. Highland Park is in fact somewhere between a quaint historic district and a shithole full of winos and street gangsters, but I didn't want to rub it in peoples' faces at that particular moment. Decius 04:11, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
The Avenues Gang indeed has its origin in those steets, as I know this from having studied the subject---and by the fact that a member of that gang was a former associate of mine (his Gang name was 'Grumpy', etc.). Decius 04:13, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
I admit I was trying to emphasize the scenic aspect of the area (it is rather scenic from most points due to its hilly terrain, old homes, etc., not much of an exaggeration) because I would like to see Highland Park become gentrified, but the cold truth from the streets is that it still has a very long way to go. Decius 04:42, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
As you can see, on 5 May the 'below par' comment was removed by Anonymous, with the intent to present a gentrified image of Highland Park; but as you can see from the comment made by another Anonymous on May 10th, you can't just hide the fact that much of Highland Park is not at all at that level. I'm trying to represent reality by keeping it somewhere inbetween. Decius 04:56, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks for keeping reality in mind. Like many communities, Highland Park is probably large enough to be going in more than one direction at once. Parts are indeed slums, while others are surprisingly nice, even quaint. If the characterization of the area is still disputed by editors then the best thing to do is to fall back on verifiable sources. -Willmcw 06:10, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
The original comment here on May 10 was mine (made from my college). My point about the "origins" of the Avenues gang was that gangs (likely including the Avenues) are still active in the area. I didn't see that Apr 30 version before but I think it presents a much more balanced view of Highland Park. Someone reading the current version doesn't get an accurate picture of the reality. I know from family experiences that Highland Park is not a safe area to live in. Methinks looking at the average family income of the area might be interesting... --Gjetost 03:22, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- Never mind not really that interesting http://www.losangelesalmanac.com/LA/la09.htm http://www.lani.org/highland_park.htm --Gjetost 03:28, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
The guilty party here is the still Anonymous user who repeatedly attempts to present Highland Park as being near to achieving gentrification, while ignoring the pervasive slummy aspects and the crime & gang problem. None of that covering-up-and-hiding-shit will be allowed. It's pointless to try to work that angle. Decius 05:56, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Is the current edit reasonable?
I figure that all the stuff about hipsters balances out with the gang problem. As for "slummy," well, my mother says that Los Feliz looks "slummy," so YMMV.--Slightlyslack 00:05, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
- Good work. Thanks for editing the article mercilessly. Cheers, -Willmcw 20:04, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I am the anonymous person who I guessed caused all the problems by taking out Decius' comment that it's "rather below par". Doesn't anyone agree with me that this is a vague and subjective statement? Who defines what par is? As for the gentrification thing, the word is not an adjective, and is not synonymous with "nice". It is a general term for an inner city neighborhood that is currently being improved and seeing an influx of relatively more affluent people. It would be ridiculous to argue that Highland Park has not improved drastically over the past 10 years. 10 years ago, you'd be risking your life by just going out into the streets in certain areas. These days, many of those same areas are much improved. Drive around on any given day, and you will see many homes being improved and renovated. New businesses are being opened.Rents and home values have increased. The list of signs of gentrification goes on and on. It might still have a long way to go, but it most definitely meets the criteria of "currently undergoing gentrification". For further clarification, simply read the wikipedia article for gentrification. Again, the term in no way implies that the place is an affluent middle class suburb. Anyways, the current page edit seems reasonable, although I dont really see the connection between the fact that Reservoir Dogs was shot there and the gentrification process.
...i hope someone from Occidental College isn't responsible for the incredibly lame article i just read. Dr. Trey 11:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
--- I popped in along time ago (I can't rememer the dates, early 2005?) and really ripped into the tiny article that used to be here, adding as much as I knew about Highland Park. The small article was so skewed toward "gangs" filling a "social vacuum" or whatever, that I purposely added facts and tidbits of history in a non-sequitur fashion, including the reference to "Reservoir Dogs" simply to stir up the pot (and so that all my fellow geeks would watch the movie again, realizing that most of it was shot in Highland Park) and spark a more refined and insightful re-write. Highland Park is mostly poor, but not destitute. Gentrification is nascent, but in progress. There was a gang problem (as there was all over southern california) but to highlight that as the centra, identifying element was misleading. You could say the same thing now (social vacuum filling) about skateboarders, now. You could say the same about taggers, or "dog owners". I grew up in Highland Park and my experience of it was as multi-cultural. During my childhood it was like Venice California in representing seemingly every ethnicity. It did go pre-dominantly Latino, but now I've lived long enough to have seen the whites leave (we bought our house from whites), and to witness their return. And I welcome them if it is for me to do so. I live near Franklin High School, and the biggest problem with the neighborhood is the garbage genereated by high school students, the taggers it attracts (Franklin High School is the de facto center of town: around school hours, it provides much needed green and recreational space that the city has not been able to prioritize for the area). The area is not as attractive as it could be, but it's nice enough that social service agencies have targeted the area as a near perfect to build their group homes (forgive me, but if it were a pre-dominantly white area, the nimby ethic would have kept this phenomenon at bay). While I welcome the changes to the community, I hope that it will never get "Starbucked." It would take exactly that for some people not to think of Highland Park as a shit-hole, but I'll sacrifice an outsider's biased opinion for a sense of place, any day.
- elmo
27 June 2006
Yes, this article is most certainly needs cleaning. Very poor writting indeed. This article needs a history tab, better geographical data, statistics, and footnotes. I will simply have to dedicate myself to this task. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_District for an example.
Just a note on the western boundary -- that should be Alumni Avenue from Eagle Rock Blvd to the college. Anything in the area between Alumni and Ave 50 could be considered part of the eastern college neighborhood, but isn't really Eagle Rock. It's just the west terminus of the York Valley.
York Valley, the hills above it, Garvanza, the hills between Ave 50 and Division, and the Figueroa cooridor have always had distinct personalities. The current demographic of...recent immigrants...have eradicated those differences to an extent, and those whose acquaintence with the area began after 1980 would have missed the time when it was a pleasent working class area of...American...diversity (except for the absense of African-Americans).
Also remember that gang culture shifted after 1980, and with the onset of meth, crack, and free-basing, turned young men primarily concerned with turf into a more malignant problem. Next, when identity politics became the norm, the loss of Art Snyder, the long time council champion for the area, for a Mexican-American representitive who, unfortunately, was inexperienced in the ways of City Politics and liked drugs too, may have spurred unnecessary decay.
