warning Hi, we've moved to USCANNENBERGMEDIA.COM. Visit us there!

Neon Tommy - Annenberg digital news

Downtowners Come To Terms With A Changing L.A.

Emily Frost |
March 4, 2011 | 10:50 a.m. PST

Staff Reporter

Leo Viegas likes to pass the time with his good friend Luc Topor at her Spanish bookstore on Fourth Street. He first arrived downtown Los Angeles on March 24, 1964. The Beatles ruled. You could get two wings, salad, potato salad, fries and a coke for 79 cents. He made $1.20 a day at a shoe factory at 7th and Stanford. His families’ two kitchens and four bedrooms went for $30 a month. 

Leo Viegas (Emily Frost)
Leo Viegas (Emily Frost)

You could pay 25 cents to see five cowboy movies, Viegas remembers. To him, downtown was better back then.

“Everybody was friendly. The food wasn’t fast food. It was beautiful. And everything was cheap: the bus, the rents, the theaters. There was healthy air. It was beautiful, beautiful L.A.”

He’s not happy with the city now, or with the people running it. Viegas and a handful of other downtowners in District 10 shared their competing views of the area. Despite an approaching March 8 city council election, they weren’t too interested in voting. But they did talk frankly about their city – about what irks them and gratifies them on a daily basis.

Viegas came to the country legally from Guadalajara, Mexico with his eight siblings and his mother. His father arrived here first and arranged their papers. Viegas is so happy that his mother stood firm on entering legally. He’s living off of Social Security now, and he’s paid off his home in Monterey Park. America, he believes, has been very good to him. He has two daughters – married, professional. The boys, he says, have some growing up to do.

“They got so many homeless people. Some areas smell so bad. Some areas they’re beautiful – because there are rich people. But some areas where the Latinos work, it’s kind of dirty and filthy. “

Flies swarm on a nearby sidewalk. The Mexicana bookstore front is open to the street, and the passing traffic.

“The government, these days, doesn’t do anything for the people. The gas – they’re killing us. I think the government doesn’t fight for the citizens – doesn’t fight for food prices, gas prices for the middle people, the poor people, only the rich people,” says Viegas.

The contrast between now and then is marked for Viegas. He stayed away for 20 years while he was building his life in Monterey Park.

When he first came back, two years ago, Viegas cried.

“I cry a lot. Sometimes when I pass through those theaters where I went to the movies with my girlfriends, I cry a lot. I feel… sad. And I feel sad because a lot of homeless people, a lot of drug addicts on the streets, a lot of bad things.”

There aren’t as many spaces Viegas can move through anymore, places where he feels welcome. He’s an older man, 61, and he often can’t find a bathroom. Where there used to be lots of restaurants where you could stop in casually and use the restroom, now you have to hunt, or pay 25 cents -- 25 cents that used to go towards a fun evening.

The bathroom problem is part of Viegas’s sense of the change that’s come to downtown. No one’s smiling.

“This is the city for lawyers. Everything they sue you. For anything, they sue you. This is where people come and say, I’m going to sue you and sue you. The lawyers take advantage of middle people. The new condos are for lawyers – not for middle people.”

Around the corner from Viegas’ favorite bookstore, sits a man who loves lawyers. Unlike Viegas, Octavio Huerta is hoping successful professionals will feel inspired by the changed downtown, sign a lease with him, and move into Title Guarantee Building, at Fifth and Hill. Its 74 units are at 98 percent occupancy. A one bedroom starts at $1,850.

The building opened in 1929 and has survived two depressions. In the most recent (the “recession”), occupancy was down 30 percent, until they dropped the prices from market rate.

“A lot of the character of the building is preserved – like the paintings in the lobby. A lot of the marble is preserved,” said Huerta. But, in other ways, none of the character is preserved. The three-story penthouse, currently rented, has an infinity pool, a sundeck. “It’s unbelievable,” said Huerta.

Title Guarantee is emblematic of the colossal division between then and now, and the rich and poor who live downtown.

“Will it be New York City in two years? No. But it’s going to slowly pick up, ” said Huerta.

Huerta was more careful than Viegas in his characterization of the homeless downtown. They can be “overwhelming,” he said.

Viegas can visit downtown, but as he said, the condos and new apartments aren’t for him, and they wouldn’t have been when he was still a working man.

At the window factory downtown, he “was making peanuts,” until it closed in 1986, just in time.

“Let’s face it. When you are a labor man, you only have twenty-five years. No more.”

He suffers from arthritis and pinched nerves. Though he owns his home, he’s on a tight budget now, and looks for freebies around town – like dental care from USC students.

So is this a young town now?

Brandi Hussouna and her husband moved downtown about a week ago. They’re a professional couple. He’s an architect and she’s a nursing student. They’re comfortable walking their small dog Basil and going to Spring Bar, their current watering hole. They hail from Pasadena.

“Pasadena is very nice, but the age of the average resident is much higher than it is down here…People kind of keep to themselves and it’s very sterilized in many places. It’s nice to be in a place with a mix. “

Hussouna appreciates the diversity – “It’s part of what makes up the beating heart of most cities.”

Unlike Viegas, Hussouna, a thin, tall white woman with closely cropped brown hair and glasses, doesn’t follow politics. She hadn’t heard about the upcoming city council race. Like Viegas though, she rides the bus; she supports public transportation and wants more of it. Gas prices were also hurting her family – it’s why she and her husband moved in the first place.

If Hussouna likes to walk her dog on Fifth Street, across from the Central Library, perhaps she’ll wander over to Mexicana bookstore sometime. Leo Viegas loves to reminisce about her new neighborhood.

This story is part of our March 8 election preview series Irked and Inspired: Los Angeles Residents Speak On The Issues. 

Reach Emily Frost here.



 

Buzz

Craig Gillespie directed this true story about "the most daring rescue mission in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard.”

Watch USC Annenberg Media's live State of the Union recap and analysis here.