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Am I the people I meet?
Feb. 7th, 2008 | 7:04 pm
My tiny apartment building consists of four one-bedroom units: two upstairs and two downstairs. When I
moved into one of the bottom units a couple of years ago, another person, David, moved into the other
bottom unit at the same time. We run into each other occasionally and compare notes about our unusual
upstairs neighbors.
There's a Mexican family of seven or eight living above David, always coming and going with grandma
grocery carts and bags of fruit. Above me is the apartment manager, a 50-something gal, Maria, living with
a few men, one of whom is retarded, and most of whom she calls "uncle." I believe they own a church and
she walks around her apartment wearing wooden clogs.
One of my first conversations with David involved a weird experience he'd had with his home telephone.
While he was on the phone one night, he heard a click as if someone had picked up another extension.
Then he heard dialing. Obviously, someone who was not him was using his home phone line and he
suspected one of the upstairs neighbors. He wanted to know if anyone was tapping into my phone line,
but, no, my phone line didn't work at all.
However, I had noticed some utilities pilfering of my own: I can hear when Maria and The Men above me
start to wash dishes or take a shower. Mysteriously, my own hot water heater clicks on and starts pumping
water whenever they do.
"Could they be using my hot water?" I asked David.
"Absolutely!" he answered, incensed. "Look, have you ever been upstairs? It's a dump! They fixed up our
apartments to attract people who would pay a decent amount of rent."
Then he said something that really bothered me:
"We walked right into their trap. Their plan is to have the yuppies pay for everything."
"Yeah," I said absently, and then thought: Wait, who are the yuppies? We're YUPPIES? I'M a yuppie?
Yuppies are those people from the 80s who drive Volvoes. I'm just a young lady who has a whitecollar job
and...
Well, what am I?
Los Angeles isn't one urban city center surrounded by suburbs. It's a sprawling metropolis made up of
disparate towns, each with its unique character and allure. My apartment is located on the border of two
worlds: gritty, diverse East Hollywood on one side, and the half-gentrified hipster enclave of Silver Lake on
the other. Basically, I'm in between the barrio and the bourgeois boheme.
I'm always trying to figure out my label, and where I fit in my neighborhood. Am I the yuppie sandwiched
among the non-natives and the hipsters? Or am I in an open city, a gray zone that cannot be named?
Maybe I defy a label. I have olive skin and dark features. I get a discount at the drycleaners because the
Filipino owner thought I was a paisan. (Of course, I set the record straight, but only after three visits when
he asked me something in Tagalog.) The owner of the bodega down the block where I buy fresh papaya
juice talks to me in Spanish.
But then, I walk over to a cafe at Sunset Junction, and the vintage-clad barrista asks me if I was at the show
at Spaceland last night while another customer asks if it's OK for him to give Little Dog a vegan dog biscuit.
Once, a co-worker asked where I lived and I told her Silver Lake and she said, "Figures. All the cool people
live there." Hearing this was as much of a shock as the Yuppie Proclamation.
I hate to burst her bubble, but I'm not one of the cool people: I wake up early. I don't drive a hybrid or a
vegetable oil burner or an ironic beater. I have a normal job involving suit-wearing in an office completely
unrelated to the entertainment industry. I don't listen to indie music and I don't care for the smell of used
clothing. Anyhow, is struggling artist angst, thrift-store tees, ugly prescription glasses, and bedhead really
that cool? I think that not having to think about if I'm cool or not... is cool.
Not everyone in Silver Lake is starving because they've shunned jobs with The Man. There are a lot of
young couples, both hetero and gay, whom the Urban Dictionary would call DINKS-- Double Incomes No
Kids. These are the successful hipsters and they dwell in owned, gorgeous redone Craftsmans and
Mid-Centurys surrounded by high modern cedar fences. I admit that I'm jealous of their little compounds
they've created, but I'm definitely not them either. I'm more of a non-hip SINK who supplies her building of
fellow renters with hot water.
My morning runs are on a jogging track at a Rec Center built to keep kids busy and curb gang activity. I'm
obviously not their target audience, because if I weren't running, I'd be at home in bed and not tagging a
wall with paint. I'm welcome there, though. In the blocks of apartments surrounding the Rec Center are
people living on the edge and barely making it, entire families living in one room: I breathe in their breakfast
wafts of chorizo and eggs as I round the track, and it feels real.
So lately, I tell people East Hollywood when they ask where I live. Maybe I can better relate to people who
work hard and aren't native.
Maybe I'm a yuppie. Maybe I'm hip because I don't try to be hip. Maybe I'm just a person living in the gray
area, and damn lucky to not be on the edge. Or maybe, on my best days, I'm a chameleon who can drift in
and out of both worlds, in an open city, without sticking out.
At least Little Dog knows who HE is... and he's definitely not a vegan.
Comments
Feb. 7th, 2008 | 7:04 pm
My tiny apartment building consists of four one-bedroom units: two upstairs and two downstairs. When I
moved into one of the bottom units a couple of years ago, another person, David, moved into the other
bottom unit at the same time. We run into each other occasionally and compare notes about our unusual
upstairs neighbors.
There's a Mexican family of seven or eight living above David, always coming and going with grandma
grocery carts and bags of fruit. Above me is the apartment manager, a 50-something gal, Maria, living with
a few men, one of whom is retarded, and most of whom she calls "uncle." I believe they own a church and
she walks around her apartment wearing wooden clogs.
One of my first conversations with David involved a weird experience he'd had with his home telephone.
While he was on the phone one night, he heard a click as if someone had picked up another extension.
Then he heard dialing. Obviously, someone who was not him was using his home phone line and he
suspected one of the upstairs neighbors. He wanted to know if anyone was tapping into my phone line,
but, no, my phone line didn't work at all.
However, I had noticed some utilities pilfering of my own: I can hear when Maria and The Men above me
start to wash dishes or take a shower. Mysteriously, my own hot water heater clicks on and starts pumping
water whenever they do.
"Could they be using my hot water?" I asked David.
"Absolutely!" he answered, incensed. "Look, have you ever been upstairs? It's a dump! They fixed up our
apartments to attract people who would pay a decent amount of rent."
Then he said something that really bothered me:
"We walked right into their trap. Their plan is to have the yuppies pay for everything."
"Yeah," I said absently, and then thought: Wait, who are the yuppies? We're YUPPIES? I'M a yuppie?
Yuppies are those people from the 80s who drive Volvoes. I'm just a young lady who has a whitecollar job
and...
Well, what am I?
Los Angeles isn't one urban city center surrounded by suburbs. It's a sprawling metropolis made up of
disparate towns, each with its unique character and allure. My apartment is located on the border of two
worlds: gritty, diverse East Hollywood on one side, and the half-gentrified hipster enclave of Silver Lake on
the other. Basically, I'm in between the barrio and the bourgeois boheme.
I'm always trying to figure out my label, and where I fit in my neighborhood. Am I the yuppie sandwiched
among the non-natives and the hipsters? Or am I in an open city, a gray zone that cannot be named?
Maybe I defy a label. I have olive skin and dark features. I get a discount at the drycleaners because the
Filipino owner thought I was a paisan. (Of course, I set the record straight, but only after three visits when
he asked me something in Tagalog.) The owner of the bodega down the block where I buy fresh papaya
juice talks to me in Spanish.
But then, I walk over to a cafe at Sunset Junction, and the vintage-clad barrista asks me if I was at the show
at Spaceland last night while another customer asks if it's OK for him to give Little Dog a vegan dog biscuit.
Once, a co-worker asked where I lived and I told her Silver Lake and she said, "Figures. All the cool people
live there." Hearing this was as much of a shock as the Yuppie Proclamation.
I hate to burst her bubble, but I'm not one of the cool people: I wake up early. I don't drive a hybrid or a
vegetable oil burner or an ironic beater. I have a normal job involving suit-wearing in an office completely
unrelated to the entertainment industry. I don't listen to indie music and I don't care for the smell of used
clothing. Anyhow, is struggling artist angst, thrift-store tees, ugly prescription glasses, and bedhead really
that cool? I think that not having to think about if I'm cool or not... is cool.
Not everyone in Silver Lake is starving because they've shunned jobs with The Man. There are a lot of
young couples, both hetero and gay, whom the Urban Dictionary would call DINKS-- Double Incomes No
Kids. These are the successful hipsters and they dwell in owned, gorgeous redone Craftsmans and
Mid-Centurys surrounded by high modern cedar fences. I admit that I'm jealous of their little compounds
they've created, but I'm definitely not them either. I'm more of a non-hip SINK who supplies her building of
fellow renters with hot water.
My morning runs are on a jogging track at a Rec Center built to keep kids busy and curb gang activity. I'm
obviously not their target audience, because if I weren't running, I'd be at home in bed and not tagging a
wall with paint. I'm welcome there, though. In the blocks of apartments surrounding the Rec Center are
people living on the edge and barely making it, entire families living in one room: I breathe in their breakfast
wafts of chorizo and eggs as I round the track, and it feels real.
So lately, I tell people East Hollywood when they ask where I live. Maybe I can better relate to people who
work hard and aren't native.
Maybe I'm a yuppie. Maybe I'm hip because I don't try to be hip. Maybe I'm just a person living in the gray
area, and damn lucky to not be on the edge. Or maybe, on my best days, I'm a chameleon who can drift in
and out of both worlds, in an open city, without sticking out.
At least Little Dog knows who HE is... and he's definitely not a vegan.
Comments
