A Small Town in the Big City

My husband and I have just bought a home in Echo Park, where we had lived as renters for the last 12 years.

We checked out other neighborhoods before we bought, but living here for 12 years means that I know that the carne asada is terrific at El Chavo restaurant in East Hollywood, that the Pioneer Market in Echo Park carries well-priced meat and Ho fish deli has good fresh fare. Ernie is always friendly at the Post Office, along with the waiter at El Chavo who, one time, didn’t even hand us a menu--food and drinks just appeared. The same is true for Eam Taing, who runs the local doughnut shop. He knows exactly which doughnut my husband wants and how he likes his coffee.

In short, we really know our neck of the woods. And the people here know us.

“Neck of the woods.” Not a phrase one normally associates with Echo Park or, for that matter, any community in the sprawl of Los Angeles. The phrase suggests a small-town atmosphere. But gang graffiti and garbage are hardly “small town.” The time I swung into the Pioneer market parking lot with an out-of-town friend, she could barely conceal her horror. “Is this, uh, safe?” she asked.

Similarly, when a friend took me to her grocery store in Queens, N.Y., I gulped myself. She, on the other hand, seemed oblivious. We were in her neck of the woods, after all.

We chisel out territory in the middle of large, indifferent cities, filled with millions of strangers. We take custody of our turf. Even the daily, practical apparatus of our lives--the video store, the quick mart--all become ours, claimed from anonymity.

Feeling comfortable in our own territory is part of an often unconscious survival strategy. “Whenever we are presented with a problem too large to handle, we break it down into smaller, manageable pieces or we reject it entirely,” said Barry Glassner, chairman of the sociology department at USC. “Angelenos do this by finding comfort in their areas while demonizing others.”

We do this for two reasons: First, if we didn’t demonize certain areas, we would feel obligated to take on their problems; second, our own areas look better by comparison. “It’s so hot in the San Fernando Valley!” I cried when someone suggested looking there. “It’s much breezier here.”

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Glassner has friends in the Valley who are nervous about parking their cars in Silver Lake, where he lives, and who flatly refuse to join him for dinner anywhere near USC. To them, the Valley is safe and downtown is not. Similarly, I have friends who seem amazingly matter-of-fact about the problems in their own areas even while they exclaim over mine.

One couple I know lives in an expensive area of West Los Angeles. Yet the host insisted on walking me to my car at evening’s end. It turned out they had been having a spate of carjackings. Another friend chained down her patio furniture on the front porch of her Santa Monica home to discourage thieves.

But these same people say to me, “Echo Park? Isn’t it dangerous there?”

The first time I laid eyes on this small, hilly community 12 years ago, I saw the roosters. I saw the geese. I saw quaint houses tucked up against hills. Many of those hills are dotted with stairways, perfect for rambling walks. I saw Baxter Street--on which I now live--with its San Francisco-style vertigo-inducing curves.

I liked what I saw.

Studies have shown that our first impression of a neighborhood colors our perception of it years. The image of an area that exists in our minds is just as important as the factual reality of it.

“Where we choose to live is most often a rational choice,” Glassner said, “based on our personal preferences. It’s not that we don’t objectively see the negatives in our areas, but those negatives are not the defining factor of them for us.”

It is not that I don’t see, for instance, the gang graffiti that defaces street corners here. What I do see is a community of people of widely ranging backgrounds who get together to do something about the graffiti.

Dr. Carl Bell of Chicago is an expert on community psychiatry. “The basic principle of our field is that if people take ownership of their areas, their sense of safety will increase,” he said, “and, more importantly, their sense of personal power.” Ultimately, he said, community psychiatry is about taking control rather than being controlled.

Susan Borden echoes Bell’s words. She is a community activist and spokesperson of the Echo Park Improvement Assn., an organization that, like similar groups scattered throughout Los Angeles, actively works toward bettering the community.

“The gunshots I hear, the gang members I see, all give me this hollow feeling of uncertainty,” she said. “But when I do something about the problems I see, I feel active rather than passive. If I didn’t feel I could do anything, I’d just get depressed.”

Rene Castro is a community outreach consultant for the city of Long Beach and teaches in the master’s of social work program at Cal State Long Beach. He finds that “study circles” are another effective neighborhood tool.

Study circles are focused, structured meetings with a set group of people who meet weekly to discuss a specific topic, like crime or racial tension. The sessions last for about a month.

“Their purpose is to create dialogue between people who otherwise may never cut across their differences to find their often common concerns,” Castro said. Long Beach, for example, has the largest Cambodian population in the United States, along with an assortment of African Americans, Latinos and whites. Through study circles, these groups interact on a personal level, often for the first time.

Of course, there are the more casual ways in which we create a sense of familiarity. “I have two dogs,” Castro said with a laugh, “and I’ve found that there is this whole subculture of dogs in the neighborhood. You take your dog for a walk--hopefully you have a personable one--and end up meeting your neighbors that way. First I know their dogs’ names; then I know theirs.”

“Where do you work out?” the owner of Ho fish deli wanted to know recently. She had observed me often in gym clothes and she was thinking of joining a gym.

When I handed in our change of address form to Ernie at the Post Office, I learned that he had also just bought a home in the area. We compared notes as nervous (but proud) new homeowners are wont to do.

And, unlike Castro, I am a cat person. My new neighbor, Kathy, and I are monitoring our cats’ introduction to each other.

A classic 1938 sociological study by Louis Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” was the first time urban areas as a whole were not demonized in contrast to the “good” ways of the country. Wirth wrote that large populations necessarily make relationships impersonal, that density compels people to interact within their own specialized groups, that heterogeneity leads to weak social ties. It all sounds pretty negative. But he went on to conclude that all these conditions result in urban residents who are more liberal, tolerant and progressive than residents of rural areas.

And that is exactly the way I’d describe most of my Echo Park neighbors. I suspect the same is true for Compton, the Valley, West Hollywood and other places.

I realize that, as one who has lived in or near large cities all my life, I am more accustomed than I know to all their amenities. I set my car alarm as a matter of course, but I also take for granted the mere 5-minute drive from my home to the choice of excellent Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Mexican restaurants.

And yet, what city dweller has not fantasized about chucking it all--those same accursed car alarms going off at 2 a.m.--for life in a small town. But not only is that not often possible, for some of us it may not be all that desirable.

Creating that sense of a small town for ourselves, even while living in a big-city environment, may well be a positive compromise. I tell myself that I have the best of both worlds.

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YOUR TURF

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Dick Barnes

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