My parents, no doubt, preferred me to stay within the gated community or the surrounding areas ("There is a mall across the street from where we live, why do you need to go there to watch a movie?") and thus practically all my childhood friends came to me, to my house, to my neighborhood, and it was a rare occasion if I ever busted out of my bubble to visit friends at their neighborhoods, in "Koreatown" where, according to my parents, was "unsafe" ("Did you hear that a woman got mugged in broad daylight the other day?").
As high school rolled along, my friends consisted of people whose families lived West of here, near my school, and therefore I spent quite a bit of time exploring the greater West LA area, past Beverly Hills and in Culver City.
Then, college came and I was across the United States, completely out of my safe zone and living in West Philadelphia (in Philly, I quickly learned, that East = "good" and West = "bad") - but I never really got to understand or explore Downtown LA.
Until today.
I had a lunch date with a friend at a little cafe located in the Central Library in downtown - and although I barely spent 2-and-a-half hours there, I got a glimpse of Downtown that I never had in the 12 years that I had spent growing up in Los Angeles.
In recent years, Downtown LA, which had been notorious for being the "scum" of the city, has been undergoing incredible transformation. It is becoming more and more of what the downtown of a city stereotypically is; "prestigious" (which equals "expensive" in this case) apartment and condos have been built, inspired by the Renaissance time period (such apartment communities are named "The Orsini", "The Piero" and "The Medici"), the Staples Center area - home of my beloved Lakers - is filled with flashy lights and digital screens, and the Homeless that used to occupy the streets of Downtown LA are being pushed further and further back (ironically) to the suburb cities.
As I was standing in front of the Central Library waiting for my ride to pick me up, I encountered the odd mixture of people that compose today's downtown. Businessmen in extravagant suits were walking around the streets, with PDAs in hand and their briefcase in the other while a group of Homeless was sitting in front of the library, exchanging cigarettes and who-knows-what with one another. And there was me, standing timidly with my $250 hairdo anxiously grasping my pink Blackberry on the lookout for a Kia Sedona.
I looked around and saw how much downtown had been transformed since my childhood. A "modern" look had been imposed on every single street; little cute cafes had popped out everywhere, gorgeous fountains could be found every couple of blocks, a little mall with Johnny Rockets, Starbucks, and Robeks Juice had been built in a building with pretty Silver letters.
Yet, within the Central Library and on its surrounding streets, the Homeless and the Corporate World still met to form some weird representation of the unique history of my beloved city. In an odd way, I wondered if the high-end business men and women who walk on those downtown streets everyday ever stop to think back on the implications of poverty and the costs of democracy. I wonder if I ever would, if I worked in Downtown.
