1950s Suburbia Meets Latin America & Asia

Wanderlust consumed me and having forgotten to re-load my TAP card (the stored value card for buses and trains in LA County), I decided to just walk around my neighborhood, North Hills, and adjacent Granada Hills. Let me tell you about my neighborhood. Formerly ranch land, (up until the mid-20th century my "town" was called Mission Acres and was chicken farms and zoned equestrian), in the 1950s the area was instantly highly populated when developers mass produced tract homes and small apartment buildings for returning GIs starting families and white collar aerospace workers working at nearby Rocketdyne, Boeing, and Lockheed. The area was renamed Sepulveda after a historic powerful Southern California Mexican family of landowners in the late 1700s and 1800s, and the area was renamed "North Hills" in 1992 after crime (particularly prostitution and drug sales) had marred Sepulveda Boulevard and by association, the entire neighborhood. The sidewalks are a great visual representation of this history, since the various segments bear the name of the contractor that poured them and the year in which they were poured. The sidewalks in my area say "1953" and some are "1956". My apartment building sat on vacant land up until "1971". The dated references to low-riders and surfers as well as the dates besides people's names are a testament to this. Since there is no homeowner's association dictating how the homes must appear, the houses have changed over time. Upon closer inspection, however, you can see that the entire neighborhood is full of pretty much the same 3 or so original designs. There are the ranch-style "cottages" with built-in bird houses, there are the sparse cheap mid-century modern minimalist ornamentations, and there are the "upper-half glass wall" element. Both the houses and the apartments make excessive (by contemporary standards) use of earthen stone features, usually in corners. But today's North Hills (and Granada Hills) would be a shock to the inhabitants of 1950s-1970s Sepulveda. Begining in the 1980s, escalating in the 1990s, and plateauing in the 2000s, the area has been home to a large Latino and Asian population. The local pharmacy is owned and operated by Armenians. The local water filter and convenience store flies the Armenian flag.  The neighbors don't get the Daily News, they have the Korea Daily news delivered. The local Protestant churches are all Korean. A house has been converted into a Vietnamese Buddhist temple. The soccer store serves the Latino futbol fans of the area. The park snack vendor sells churritos,elote and raspados. Good AUTHENTIC tacos can be had. The bakeries are Armenian. The produce market is Russian-Armenian and community bulletins stress a desire for English-Armenian tutors.  The lunch truck is Vietnamese (and vegan). The real estate offices are Korean and advertise almost exclusively to Koreans. (the Granada Hills area has one of the most significant populations of Koreans in the United States, outside of Central Los Angeles, which IS the most significant population of Koreans in the U.S., with LA's Koreatown being the size of most cities' entire downtown). At Granada Hills High School, more than 40 languages are spoken by the student body. In my apartment building alone, the surnames on the mailboxes produce the following: 38 Latino surnames, 3 Vietnamese surnames, 4 Armenian surnames, 2 Korean surnames, 7 Iranian surnames, 4 Arabic surnames, 2 Russian surnames, 2 East African surnames, 1 Italian surname (my mother) and 5 Indian subcontinent surnames (specifically from Gujarat and Rajasthan). As a child I attended Granada Elementary School. My best friends were Thomas (Korean-American), Armin (Armenian-American), Gerardo (Salvadoran-American), and Hoan (a young immigrant from Vietnam). My father was a Mexican immigrant, my mother of Italian-German descent, and my step-father a Japanese immigrant . All of us were (with the exception of my mother's side of my family) First Generation Americans, a hybrid culture in a hyrbid city/suburb.Yes, here is a surreal scene: a 1950s TV set but without the Leave It To Beaver and the Brady Bunch inhabitants. In their place, insert a diversity that gives places like San Francisco and New York a run for their money. It's a city hiding within a suburb.  But despite these changing demographics, the gentle Mediterranean climate,  the swaying palm trees, and the rows of funeral Cypress remain the same, and in the distance loom the millenia-old mountains above the San Fernando Valley.