Reflections From Our One Year Anniversary Celebration

Samanta:

A little over a year ago, I was thinking about ways Ali, J.T., and I could continue the work we started with the multimedia project and panel series “Making Our Neighborhood: Redlining, Gentrification, and Housing in East Hollywood.” That project and panel series was highly successful, and I received countless messages from people who learned something new about their neighborhood and the city they call home. Not to be cliche or corny, but working on that project collaboratively, I finally felt what people meant when they say they’re “aligned with their purpose.” I didn’t want that to be the end. I wanted to continue finding ways to tell these stories, ask these questions, and help deepen people’s relationships to their built environment. That’s when the idea for this newsletter came to mind.

Of course my fellow collaborators, who I consider family, were down. We met at Vista Hermosa Park for a picnic to map out what this collaboration would look like. Two months later we launched. 

It’s been a year and we’ve since published 48 posts ranging from photo essays and reported articles to cultural analyses and intimate creative non-fiction. To say I’m proud of us is an understatement. To say I’m thankful for all the support is also an understatement. 

A couple weekends ago we celebrated this momentous occasion by gathering at yet another park, this one closer to home. Amidst family birthday parties and kids playing sports at Bellevue Park, readers, friends, and family got together to share stories, drink cafecito, and continue building community.

People came through from Ontario, the SGV, Chinatown, Pico-Union, and down the street. There were current and former residents. There were teachers, writers, city workers, chefs, creatives, mothers, elders, and babies. It was a confluence of so many different people, all united by a connection to this newsletter and wanting to learn more about their surroundings, the places they live and grew up in. It was beautiful.

I am eternally grateful for your support. I truly can’t believe this idea became a reality. Thank you thank you thank you.

Ali:

I’ve spent many hours at Bellevue Park in the ten plus years I have lived in this neighborhood. I started going there when I first adopted my dog and needed a place to expose her to the sights and sounds of kids and families and all the other dogs that populate this city. I’ve run around the sandy track when I’ve needed a place to clear my head. I’ve climbed the baseball diamond fence with friends to play kickball when the gates were locked. I even took a first date there not long ago to extend what would have otherwise just been a short coffee date at nearby Cafecito. 

I almost always run into someone I know at Bellevue, but my favorite people to run into there are the kids who live on my block. I watch them as they practice whatever sport someone’s dad is coaching and when they’re done, we talk together to the small yellow van that is always parked in the parking lot selling gatorade, candy, and other snacks. My neighbor kids decide on their sports drink color, we pay, and they twist the orange lids off as we make our way slowly across the grass past millennials doing circuit training, young guys playing basketball, parents walking newborns around under the tall trees that make the park feel like an oasis in the middle of this otherwise gridlocked city. 

The few hours our team spent at Bellevue two weeks ago as we celebrated our one year anniversary was a joyful confluence of people from different generations, different cultures, all with different relationships to this city. The longest-time resident of the area in attendance at the event was Karen “Kiwi” Burch, who drove an hour to get out here from where she now lives in Ontario, back to the neighborhood her great-grandparents helped build. The newest resident in attendance was my partner, the one I met on that first date some months ago as we walked the track at Bellevue while I told him about this place I had long called home, a place he had only just begun to know after four months in the city. Watching my partner talk to Kiwi was a cacophony of community—two disparate timelines colliding in a place already filled with overlapping memories and connections for me, my collaborators, and thousands of others who have passed through this park over the years.

In attendance at our celebration were also three generations of a family from my block, the very family whose kids and I drink blue and red gatorade some nights after their sports practice. This time the kids came with their mom and their grandma and once again, everything felt intertwined through history, through these streets, these trees, and everything that makes this place home to all of us.

J.T.:

I had such a great time among so many friends and “chosen fam.” Our event also took place two full years after the launch party for our magazine. I know of no other small and independent publication in Los Angeles at the moment with such a unique backstory and support. I look forward to bringing together even more of our community again soon, and I’m so grateful for my friends, neighbors and colleagues, who I’m still growing so much with. The same is true for our invaluable readers and other community stewards; lastly, I want to express my gratitude for our friend Wendy’s piñata, which allowed us to celebrate the anniversary with no less than a BANG!