Eastside

Speaking about her new 35,000 square foot gallery space, located in the western industrial edge of Boyle Heights, art dealer Michele Maccarone told the New York Times, “It still has a dangerous quality — I kind of like that. I like that we spent a fortune on security.”

Last week, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University published a story declaring that "Most Cyclists Are Working-Class Immigrants, Not Hipsters."

What was I writing about, a woman wanted to know.

"I'm here to ask that you really take into account accessibility [when implementing any new improvements]," Boyle Heights resident and advocate for those with disabilities, Hector Ochoa, said as the meeting discussing phase two of the Eastside Access Project came to a close Wednesday night.

Moreno's perspective is one I've written about many times while tracking changes in this lower-income and largely Mexican-American community over the last few years, most recently with regard to developments Metro had planned for a complete overhaul of Mariachi Plaza.

While counting pedestrians and cyclists in the transit-dependent and heavily-pedestrian community of Boyle Heights for the Bike and Pedestrian Count this past Saturday, I got to thinking about street trees.

Tracking the Great Streets program as it has begun to unfold around town has, at times, been a bit of an exercise in frustration. Which never fails to strike me as odd, given Mayor Eric Garcetti's declaration that the transformation of the 15 chosen streets into gathering places would happen via a "bottom-up and community-based process" in which the city "[worked] with neighborhood stakeholders to develop a vision for each corridor."

"I want you to take a good look at me," the fragile-looking young man with a curved spine, hunched shoulders, and gangly arms addressed members of the Exide Community Advisory Committee (CAC), representatives of the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and Department of Public Health (DPH), and concerned residents and environmental justice advocates from the communities surrounding Exide Technologies' now-shuttered lead-acid battery recycling facility.

Twenty-three days is not a lot of time to get community buy-in on a complete streets pop-up event/project and raise $10,000 in support of it. Especially in lower-income communities like Boyle Heights and parts of South L.A., where the stakeholders who would ideally be buying into the projects tend to be less familiar with concepts like "tactical urbanism," are generally of lesser means, and/or are often unreachable via a social media campaign (or wholly unable to make online payments to it).