CHANFLES!

You all thought I’d forgotten, eh? Nah, I’ve just been a tad busy. So yeah, it’s more than a week late but I had too many pictures to pick from, too many to process, very little time to spend, and not enough wisdom to edit this post down to a more appropriate size. Thus, I give you close to 100 picutres of the Lincoln Heights Xmas parade! Oof, que desmadre. Sorry about that. But I figure at this time of night on a X-mas Eve you’ve already had all the tamales and buñuelos you can stomach, finally got tired of the work stories from your Tio that’s just a tad into borracho territory, and can’t make it thru another hour of christmas programs on TV. But you don’t want to leave the party just yet, you just need to kill some time until midnight. Well as a gift to you trapped-with-the-family readers, I submit this long boring post about the LH X-mas parade, which will help to kill some time but might actually increase the boredom. Oh well. You can send me those thank you cards later!

Listo? Siganme los aburidos!

The decorations are coming up and it’s starting to look like the holidays around LH. I think I’m gonna go caroling!

Yesterday I read on the Lofty Thoughts blog that the LH Vons was closing down, but I didn’t believe her, that just seemed crazy. But I apologize for my skepticism because today I found out that yes, it is indeed closing down, Vons will be gone and suppossedly Smart & Final is going to take over the space. That’s pretty messed up. Lots of the people shopping there tonight were also surprised and saddened that this local supplier of food items was closing down on us when it seemed like it was doing pretty well, at least judging by the long lines and packed parking lot. But no doubt the Corporate Kingpins have other calculations in mind (mostly consisting of profit margins) and this particular outlet is expendable. It’s certainly going to be an inconvenience not having that store around, but I kinda don’t care if they leave. For as long as I can remember, that store has cultured an antagonistic relationship with the neighborhood, so fuck ‘em. Click ahead to see some of those reasons.

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After a few days of too much tofu turkey it was time to take a break from that holiday fare and be thankful for some new HR opportunities! My friend Chimatli had a brief chat with Jonathon Gold recently at the Archives Fair and asked him about his favorite Huevos Rancheros, it turns out he’s partial to those from this small but popular restaurant in Bell. I’ve always wanted to try the place out as they get lots of press coverage (even in La Opinion and some Univision tv news shows) so I might as well kill two birds with one stone. Err, I mean, two tofu “birds” with one, umm..Oh never mind, you know what I mean! Vamos!

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One of my LH homies let me know about this cafe that was set to open “in the heights”, but last week I saw this sad sign postponing the grand opening until further notice. That can’t be good. I’ll keep an eye out pa ver que pasa, hopefully they get it going.

But “the heights”? That’s a terrible name.

I like living in Lincoln Heights, it’s a nice neighborhood. Despite all the efforts some have made to portray it as an “up and coming” area (whatever the fuck that means) it’s still a mostly working class community, which is fine by me. I now work near a neighborhood that is considered “nice” (I guess it up and came!) but I think of it as mostly sedate, much more car based, with sidewalks that are practically empty during the day. Not my cup of tea coffee. At all.

One thing that I have noticed is that even though they still get their services from the same City of Los Angeles, they get a different class of service: take a look at how these trash cans are neatly lined up, even AFTER the trash pickup. And this is quite usual on a weekly basis. Now click ahead to see how they line up the trash cans over on this side of the river!

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