S Barbara

Last Saturday, after more than 2 months I had my first experience of driving in heavy freeway traffic. Direction west and north towards S. Barbara on the 101, formerly called Ventura Freeway, or within LA, Hollywood Freeway. It was not a gridlock, but was very slow getting out of LA. And was packed on both directions. To see a 4 or 5 lanes -on each direction- freeway full of immobile cars is quite a sight. And the usual dumb question comes to your mind, where are all of these people going on Saturday at 11 am? Are they going to have lunch at the in-laws with their packed "pastarelle" sitting on the back seat? Are they going to the seaside beaches north, to the parks? to their weekend jobs?

After 3 hours and more of driving and radio, with L. we finally arrive to S Barbara, some 90 miles away, the average speed is after all not too bad. Just in time for lunch at the house of a couple of friends I know from Italy. They have a house overlooking the city from the south east. The weather is very misty and one cannot see very far into the sea where some islands are supposed to be. However from downtown looking to the hills I am very struck by how much familiar it looks. Could well be anywhere in southern Italy. Or Spain? Could it not? The white flat-roofed houses, the green hills, Only when you look closer then the size of streets and the quantity of palm trees tells you are not in the Mediterranean.

Infinite variations of what it is called the Spanish style line up in the streets.

Downtown S Barbara is very pleasant, a seaside resort kind of atmosphere, overpriced shops, fancy restaurants, many of which are Italian. However, and in this it differs from a seaside resort, downtown and the main promenade area are all inland. As you get closer to the freeway that runs parallel and close to the coastline shops disappear and buildings get rougher.

Why is it that seaside cities tends to center away from the coast? And why the upper classes prefer the hills to the ocean view? It is such a general phenomenon that involves both medium and large cities, I am sure somebody must have written something clever on this.

earthquake

Yesterday evening there was a small earthquake in the LA area. It started at 839 and lasted for about 15 seconds. The house in west hollywood where I was having dinner with L. started to tremble. We looked into each other eyes and then I said. "it is!" and we movedunder a door-arch. I would have rather runned outside, however I am told that outside is dangerous because of the possibility of power lines hitting you. I wonder...
The television reported that a 4.7 shock was registered with center in the LAX airport area.
today I look at this website, it is impressive how many shocks there are almost every day.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/

how do you eat your tomato?

Yesterday at lunch, there was a talk from somebody from National Public Radio, usually referred as NPR but pronounced for mysterious reasons empiar. The talk was not very interesting. If the talk is labelled brawn bag talk, than you can bring your lunch and eat while you listen to the talk. At my Armenian grocery I have found some very good tomatoes, red juicy full of pulp. As I wait for the talk to start I grab a couple and start biting them, like bela lugosi in the good old days, careful for the red juice not to spill away from the victim. A fellow researcher looks at me in amazement and says, "I had never seen anybody eating a tomato like that, for they are a fruit aren't they?" I am a little embarrassed and try the individual solution, "well I am" but I know it will not work, in a minute or two cultural explanation makes its way in the conversation. At this point the only possible fun is pushing the pedal of the stereotype: "I am from Sicily you know, we all eat tomatoes like this, but only in the summer when they are ripe" Actually, I wonder how widespread is such a practice among Italians. Around me, in the meantime, a general agreement has been reached that the spectacle of the exotic creature eating tomatoes with his bare hands and mouth has never been seen before. And the discussion then lean on the nature of tomatoes, fruit or vegetable, their content in vitamin C and so on. At this point I decide to keep the two bunch of grapes in my bag for another moment...

horror at the doll house

Sunday breakfast and outing with L. She takes me to a trendy place off Fairfax on the 3rd avenue, the place is called Tart. Breakfast is as usual excessive even if you try to limit your orders and for instance renounce to French toast or the grated potatoes. The quantity of food das always in the US is beyond human need. In any case I have breakfast once a week and I think it is enough.

The crowd at Tart is very mixed in terms of age from the 4 ten years old girls having breakfast on their own, to a older couple. It is mixed also in terms of race. Many customers are well dressed and behave like if they are displaying themselves. Across the road there is Grove, a mall that has been built, as I understand on the location of one of the first farmers’ markets in LA.

http://www.thegrovela.com/ The farmers market in theory is still there but really there are no more than few stands and the rest is all coffee and restaurants, and deli shops. We buy the ingredients for a pesto, I want to show how to make fresh pesto. The mall is an open air one like the one in Glendale I have already described: a central square, fountains, shops and restaurants, in this one the statues and the buildings have a mix of styles including a sort of 1950s soviet style.

I wonder where they took the inspiration from.

Then the unexpected come. A most incredible store.The Grove mall is one of the seven locations in the entire country where a American Girl doll store is located. It is a relatively new store, people I am told come from all over the west to visit the store. http://www.americangirl.com/ It is a store where you can get a customized doll, they come with different skin colors, different hair styles etc etc. But the game seems to be that you can get a doll like yourself, thus they sell twin dress set, one for the girl (whether old or young) and one for the doll, so that the girl (young or old) can go around dressed like her doll. Inside it is full of mums and their daughters. The store offers a restaurants where you can go with your doll and eat with your little twin, a doll hospital if the doll is sick and a photoart studio to have your picture taken with your doll, of course a beauty salon….. In brief the perfect setting for horror movies and deranged stories. I would rather be shut at night in a cemetery than be trapped here when the light dims and the dolls start to talk with each other and plan how to take over the city. In the bookshop they publish the stories and biographies of individual dolls…. Each year a doll is elected miss of the year. and so on and so forth. You wanted the Americans to be American, well… they are.

Bloody Suntan

Paradoxes of California N.1. You think of all those sunny days and the infinite beaches and then you think of sunglasses and of suntanned beautiful people, those you see in TV, but also walking on Sunset. However having a tan from the sun is very inappropriate. Here is the story: between coffees in the gardens, going to the pool, and a few times at the beach or taking a sunbath in the patio in my house, I developed a good tan, carefully built over the last two months by means of small amounts of exposure to direct sunlight. I wore my 70 maximum protection to minimize risk of burning. As southern Italian I have been socially raised to consider it shameful to appear with a library-grey skin at the onset of August. California might be considered to have a Mediterranean climate, but not a Mediterranean culture: in the last days I have been confronted with a number of remarks coming from both senior and junior American colleagues, and from library employee about my suntan. hey you got a suntan! However, they were not complimenting me, they were reproaching me something. It was not either the kind of comments suggesting you-have-been-having-fun you would get in Europe, no, these comments contained a deeper concern. I made a few inquires on the subject and here is the results. White people here do not go about with real tan, they get it sprayed onto their skin in beauty salons. The alleged reason for such perversion is of course the usual terrorist pseudo medical discourse on skin cancer we also get in Europe via prostituted journalism, with the difference that here it has developed in full common sense. One should were eyeglasses not to appear cool, like in the old song by a Sicilian singer, but because the sun is bad for your eyes; one should wear sunscreen every day because the sun is bad for your skin; than, for the sake of beauty you should go in a salon and paying for a sprayed on suntan. If you do not behave like this, you must be a Latino.... or working class.

academic nausea

Today I have a presentation, it should not be a big deal, however it has been very very hard to work on it and getting it ready and together. I have been feeling nausea for a week. I do not know what happened in the back (bottom) of my head that sparked this reaction. Fortunately I will be presenting shortly and I do not think is going to be too bad. I hope I do not start to throw up in the middle of my speech.

update: I got over it, and paddled through my talk. Good feedback.

International Workers Day

This is the formula used to denote the first of this month, usually used alternatively with May Day. As you know May Day is not an holiday in the US, and so I am today in the library working on my next week presentation I feel a bit strange not being in a march or an outing as it would happen in italy enjoying the blossoming red poppies. Here I could be among orange poppies. The way I am celebrating my May Day is by staying tuned on my radio here in LA. This is KPFK http://www.kpfk.org/ also known as PACIFICA radio which is a nice name for a combat radio. The tone is very much similar to that of Radio Popolare in Italy.
For the commmitted American left wing the one that stands critic of Obama from the left this is a day for the struggle. Moreover, (poor) immigrant people from many countries where May Day is celebrated use this day to make rallies and demonstrations. Thus May Day main political issue in this country becomes immigrants workers rights and condition of life. There will be some sort of celebrations/demostrations in 26 of the US states.


In Los Angeles there will be at least three demostrations. The largest is the rally that will start at 1 pm from Broadway and Olimpic and will end in front of the illegal immigrant detention center, free T-shirt to the first 20 000 people gathering there. You can see the flyer here below.

The other gatherings, one at Echo Park, and the other in Artesia ( a multi-ethnic working class suburb of LA) will then converge to the first one. (From Artesia by car? I wonder).