Van Nuys: The Beverly Hills of the San Fernando Valley
The truth finally came out when my son David invited Arnold over. They planned to walk six blocks up to the movie theatre in our neighborhood. Arnold’s mother put a stop to that. “I don’t think that’s safe.” Arnold, mind you, walks all over his Sherman Oaks neighborhood. But that wasn’t gonna happen in Van Nuys.
“Why the heck is everybody scared of our neighborhood?” my daughter Emily asked over dinner. I had no ready answer. We have kids over all the time, because we’re a popular house. Only because I cook a lot. I make homemade Doritos and bake honey wheat bread. And up until recently, the parents didn’t mind making the drive to Van Nuys and letting little Arnold come by for a play date.
But now Arnold is bigger, thirteen, and he’d love to walk the mean streets of Van Nuys with David. Something our kids do a lot. They walk to McDonalds, to Maria’s Pupusería for Salvadoran food. Just to get out of the house.
I try to put myself in the other parents’ shoes. We’re seen as the rough area. More homeless, fewer Starbucks. The streets in our neighborhood have been quietly ignored by Town Hall, so the potholes work on the bottom of your car. Unlike neighboring Encino and Sherman Oaks, most of the faces you see on my block are Guatemalans and Armenians, Vietnamese and Salvadorans. Ironic, as I remember a friend in West Hollywood warning us when we first moved here, “Oh, you won’t find any culture in Van Nuys.”
Pawn Shops, 99 Cent Store, & Salvadoran Pharmacies (where they sell magic candles)
I try to empathize with our friends’ fears; but it’s gotten old. Have they seen drive-by shootings in my neighborhood? Have they witnessed bank heists, or drug busts? (Okay, so I’ve witnessed a few drug busts when I walk my dog) I don’t think that’s what they’re afraid of. I think it’s what they see when they drop their kids off: the struggle of working class America. The inevitable growth of poverty during economic chaos. I think, just maybe, they’re afraid that the way things are going, they’ll be living here soon.
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I grew up on Crenshaw in Los Angeles and people assumed my life mirrors that of the classic movie “Boys in the Hood”. Yes, I witness people get arrested but I was as safe as my friends who lived in Santa Monica. Now, that I live in Woodlands hills my neighbors seem shocked that I would venture into what they call “Bad Ares” or they say I am silly for taking the Metro to work into LA because I can get robbed.
I stopped trying to explain to them that what they think they know is no where close to how it really is.
I once made a comment to my neighbors “we may not have neighbors that get arrested for drug dealing or murder. But, we do have neighbors that get arrested financial fraud and child abuse. We are surrounded by criminals and crime here as much as those in other parts of LA are. They are just different types of criminals”.
THANK YOU Mr. Mora. So, you know that fear-drenched classist attitude. M