As I’ve mentioned before, Boyle Heights is a 94% Hispanic (as of 2010) neighborhood just east of booming downtown Los Angeles. It shows up in the news a lot recently for anti-gentrification brouhahas, such as vandalizing art galleries.
From CBS local news in Los Angeles:
Residents of a rapidly gentrifying enclave of Los Angeles tried to shut down the grand opening of a new coffee shop, saying the owner’s support of President Donald Trump’s stance on immigrants is reason alone to want him out of the neighborhood….
“So what’s the connection? This is what I don’t understand. I’m confused — the connection between Donald Trump and good coffee,” Israeli-born businessman Asher Shalom told CBS2 News.
The kosher cafe was set to have a grand opening on July 12, the day anti-gentrification activists were met by Los Angeles Police officers blocking the entrance.
According to Eater LA, about 30 protesters associated with the group Defend Boyle Heights (DBH) showed up to speak up against Shalom, who they called “an anti-immigrant trump loving gentryfier” in a Facebook post.
… “It was very scary,” said Shalom’s daughter Yael. “There was a lot of people protesting outside wearing masks […] and they threw a significant amount of feces at our windows.”
… In a letter from chamber president Jennifer Lahoda, she mentions a photo shared by Shalom on his Facebook page reading, “I wish Democrats would fight as hard for Americans, as they do for illegals.”
… “Boyle Heights thrives because of our diverse immigrant population — The Chamber will always celebrate and support this fact. We will not support anyone who chooses to conduct themselves in a hateful manner, especially toward members of our community.”
A commenter says: “95% Hispanic so 95% diverse.”
I spent a little time in Boyle Heights about a year and a half ago and, in reality, it wasn’t all that exciting. There aren’t that many cool white people there yet, and the locals didn’t seem to have much of a problem with an uncool white person like me.
In contrast, I spent a couple of days recently in the gentrifying Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn, on the far side of beautiful Prospect Park from yuppie Park Slope. Flatbush is one of those great old Dutch names from the 17th Century and the neighborhood was famously associated with the Brooklyn Dodgers (although under today’s neighborhood boundaries, Ebbets Field would have been just north of Flatbush in Crown Heights).
It looks like young white people are slowly pushing blacks out of Flatbush, but in the meantime, Flatbush looks like a Tiny Duck dream come true with a huge number of black male-white female couples. In general, stereotypical black male-white female couples appeared to be much more common in Manhattan in 2018 than the last time I was there in 2014.
In contrast, in the more fashionable parts of Los Angeles, black male-white female couples aren’t as common as they suddenly are in NYC. Conversely, in L.A. white male-black female couples are less rare than in other parts of the country, probably because black women in the nicer parts of Los Angeles tend to have some connection with the entertainment industry and thus are rather good looking on average. For example, on Ventura Blvd. a beautiful young black woman with extraordinarily long legs walked past me recently. “Who was that?” I wondered. “Tina Turner’s granddaughter?” I did a little math and decided that there was no more than a 5 or 10% chance that she was Tina Turner’s granddaughter.
