The Best Things in Los Angeles are...........UNDER THE RADAR!

Being a lifelong Angeleno, I've come across people who fall into 3 categories (how Virgo of me! -):

1.  Those who come to Los Angeles for film, tv, and music fame, who start living and leaving the "Glamour Ghetto" ( La Brea Ave. west to the Pacific Ocean; Burbank west to Woodland Hills), believing this is Los Angeles and it conforms to the images on tv that they see (made by men and women who live and work in the Glamour Ghetto). To these people, "Downey" and "El Sereno" are places on Jupiter, as far as they're concerned;

2. Those who are born and raised in Los Angeles but live their lives in a limited circle and are not usually tuned into the artistic or cultural events going on in the city; AND

3.  Immigrants who, by virtue of their newness to not only to Los Angeles but to the United States, are clueless or are uninterested in that that makes the city unique.  Their world is that of survival and safety, physical and cultural, having others from the same country and/or ethnicity as they are.

The vastness of Los Angeles exacerbates the tendency of all three groups to not seek out or who remain unaware of the historical, cultural, artistic, and ethnic richness that are unique in the way they play out in the daily lives of Angelenos.  I first was clued to that richness when the 1984 Olympics were held in Los Angeles.  The Olympic Committee created the Olympics Arts Festival, which, for those of us who experienced it, was the first time Angelenos came from all over, put their fears and prejudices aside, got their "adventurer" on, and discovered that this vast city was really a larger village with "villagers" coming from different countries, different regions of the U. S., mixing with those who were born or lived much of their lives in Los Angeles.  I attended the Soccer Semi-Final match between Morocco and Brazil as well as a fashion show of Middle Eastern fashions at Al-Amir, a long-closed Lebanese restaurant next to E Entertainment on Wilshire Blvd.  I went to two free Shakespeare plays and Spanish tabla dancing in Griffith Park.    Every day, in the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner published the daily and weekly listings of the Olympic Arts Festival.  It was the first time in my memory where the city was alive in the way Rio is during Carnival.  It was the first time I felt that I was in a brother- and sisterhood with people I'd shied away from knowing.  That was one of the singular moments of my life.

I will be highlighting areas that not only continue to be this eclectic in their ethnic makeup but eclectic in their art, music, food, and their relations with their neighbors.

Stay tuned for further entries into "L. A. Under the Radar"!