The café closed just before the pandemic, a victim of Merced’s own success. Ever since, it has been a specter—a ghost of the Merced I had known and a reminder of progress’s voracious appetite.

I didn’t have any expectations the first time I visited the eatery, for a Saturday brunch, after I moved off campus in 2016. But as my friends and I walked up to it, I was instantly charmed. It was a light-green building with art-deco features, trimmed in rusty red and faded gold. Green letters on the marquee announced the headlining act: CINEMA CAFÉ. What served as the entrance when the movie theater first opened in the 1920s was now a cozy patio space, shadowed by the marquee itself. Orange Tropicanna lilies and lush banana trees lined the sidewalk, a little paradise in the concrete grays of downtown.

The first meal Anh had at the café. Courtesy of author.

I remember my first meal fondly: chicken-fried steak, eggs over easy, hash browns (extra crispy), and coffee. And a spoonful of that house-made salsa—so bright orange, and so redolent of savory garlic and chilis that I had to try it. You could just taste the care and effort that went into it.

Each meal at the café brought me closer to Merced’s history and community. The Cinema Café’s owner, Gerardo Olvera, was an immigrant and transplant like myself. He moved from Guanajuato, Mexico, to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s and got his start as a dishwasher at the now-shuttered Butterfields on the Sunset Strip, working his way up to chef (he impressed the restaurant owners so much that they paid for his cooking school tuition). After living in L.A. for many years, Gerardo and his wife Joy moved to the Central Valley to be closer to her mother. As they passed through Merced, Olvera noticed the Mainzer building,and commented, Wouldn’t it be nice if it was for sale? Later that day, Joy made some calls and surprised her husband with the news that indeed, it was. The couple took the plunge and started their new business in Merced.

“It was scary at first because no one knew me in Merced,” Olvera said, regarding the early days of the café in the late 1990s, “but once I started cooking and people tasted the food, it soon became busy.”

At the time, Merced was a quiet town, and construction for UC Merced hadn’t even broken ground yet. Merced’s low cost of living offered more spending power for families to establish livelihoods and settle down, and its small community meant neighbors knew neighbors and businesses were owned by the same friendly, recognizable faces you’d bump into at the grocery store. The café reflected this community-centered approach, operating from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., seven days a week. It became a watering hole for anyone looking for a filling meal, especially those who worked downtown or were passing through Merced, as no other eatery downtown was open as early or even all week, save for fast food. Once construction began on the newest campus in the University of California system, the development sparked excitement and concern among locals: some embraced the UC as a boost needed to rejuvenate the local economy after the Castle Air Force Base closed in 1995; others feared the presence of a UC would skyrocket housing and cost of living. One thing was certain: the Merced around the Cinema Café was changing. But the beloved eatery stayed the course, continuing to offer a space where all members of the community, including this new and growing university crowd, could gather over pancakes.

When I arrived in town as a student some 14 years after the Olveras, there was always a line to get in, and I was always happy to wait. Sitting down at the café felt like sitting down at someone’s kitchen table. The chefs razzed each other, and the waitstaff spoke to you with caring familiarity, with “here you go, mija” and “careful it’s hot, sweetie!” It felt like you could meet the whole town if you ate there. I dined next to university professors, office workers in slick suits, church ladies with fine pearls, construction workers in heavy boots, classmates in various stages of exam panic, and everyone in between. I met people’s families, friends, and pets. Specials were inspired by local landmarks (the El Capitan Omelet, for example, was filled with greens to fuel and nourish hikers on their way to Yosemite). A local artist who frequented the café even drew a tableau of the waitstaff and cooks; Gerardo loved it so much he made it the front of the menu.

To me, the Cinema Café was the very heart of downtown Merced. And then, one day, it was gone—on January 8th, 2019, the Olveras posted on Facebook that the café’s last date of service was just weeks away. A developer had plans to renovate the historic theater building, and the restaurant wasn’t part of the vision. With its growing population and newfound interest, investors were flocking to Merced, seeking to “improve” it and make it a “real” city.  The same appetite to grow and develop that had attracted me to Merced in the first place had now swallowed the café whole.

Initially there had been hope, Olvera told me, and he thought that the new owner might help the café relocate. But eventually he learned that “it wasn’t in their budget.” (I reached out to the current Mainzer business to learn more, but they declined to comment.)

“Nothing came of it,” Olvera said, when he contacted the city council for assistance. Today, a combination eatery/bar/theater taking the historic building’s name, Mainzer, stands in place of the café—a Hyatt Hotels venture. The building has been painted a crisp white, the banana trees have been replaced by manicured potted plants, and though there’s a Mainzer sauce on offering, it’s not the café’s salsa.

A popular slogan for Merced nowadays is “city on the rise.” Thinking about the Cinema Café makes me think about which communities are lifted with the growth and which are left behind. In a downtown where homey small-business establishments are increasingly replaced by trendy, upscale brands, what chance does a mom-and-pop joint like the Cinema Café really have? I worry about my other favorite local places that make Merced feel like home. Which will survive in the years to come?

It’s been more than three years since the Cinema Café closed its doors. I’ve referred to it as a specter, but maybe I’m the one who haunts it. I still return regularly to the café’s last post on its Facebook page to mourn, to remember, to hope for a sign it will come back to life. I know what I’m really hoping for is that the older, familiar Merced that grew out of its ethos will prevail.

These days, it’s always jarring when I find myself wandering downtown and end up at that familiar corner of N and Main. Looking up at the blinding marquee lights, I can still make out a glimpse of a young Gerardo and Joy Olvera, who saw an opportunity in an old movie theater. Then I’m jolted back to the present, and I can’t help but wonder—if they had driven through this changing city now, would they still choose to stop? And if they did, would they see a place to open the restaurant they dreamed of?

The post Where I Go<span class="colon">:</span> The Specter of the Cinema Café appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This is the downside of regulations, enacted after the Great Recession, that made banks safer than ever. Unfortunately, those same regulations also caused banks to focus on mortgages and publicly traded loans, rather than lending to growing private companies. This dislocation may explain why the economic recovery since 2007 has been the most tepid in the past 50 years.

Middle market companies in the U.S., defined as companies with between $10 million and $100 million in revenues, account for 24.6 percent of all U.S. jobs and almost $6 trillion in total revenues. These 351,148 companies have been left behind by requirements that banks hold larger reserves against potential losses. This effectively penalizes banks for providing customized loans to private companies which must be retained on their books, and encourages banks to engage in activities that can be bundled up and sold to investors. Banks today will also lend to companies owned by private equity firms, because they are deemed to be less “risky” since they are under the control of professional investors, who have become huge players in buying control of middle market companies.

So when you operate a firm independently or family-owned and without a major financial sponsor such as a private equity firm, you fall under the category of “non-sponsored.” If you’re “non-sponsored,” banks won’t lend you enough to grow to seize the emerging opportunities in the economy.

The result: while large corporate behemoths like General Motors and Apple are sitting on piles of cash and still raising more with cheap debt, their suppliers and partners—smaller private companies that make car seats or manufacture iPhone accessories—don’t have financing for working capital or capital expenditures to keep up with growth.

Banks are required by regulators to hold a minimum amount of cash in reserve and they can lend the rest to borrowers. Under Basel III rules adopted by the Federal Reserve, banks are required to hold at least 8 percent of cash against the simplified measures of risk in their loan portfolios as determined by the regulations. Prior to Basel III, the minimum was 2 percent. The result? A giant chunk of money that could be going to borrowers is now sitting idle, in bank reserves. In 2011, bank reserves zoomed to $2.6 trillion, from just $55 billion in 2008, according to the Federal Reserve.

It gets worse. For loans to small and medium-sized businesses, banks must hold up to five times more in cash reserves than for rated public debt to larger companies. If a bank makes a loan to a small business, it must hold the equivalent amount of cash in reserve in case the business defaults. In contrast, if a bank provides a commercial mortgage or a large company loan, it only needs to hold 20 percent of the value it lends. That is because those loans can be packaged and sold by the bank in large bundles to the public markets, (For those of you who have read or watched The Big Short, this process is called securitization). And for the biggest banks, which account for 95 percent of the industry, Basel III requires those institutions to maintain double the ratio of cash reserves to their total potential losses.

As a result, banks avoid unrated and highly customized middle market loans that can’t be bundled up and securitized. Instead, they now focus heavily on the syndicated loan and public bond market, where the loans range from $100 million to $1 billion. Bank lending peaked in 2000 at $500 billion in quarterly volume and remains below that level today.

In contrast, corporate bond issuance has grown from $2 trillion quarterly in 2000 to $4.5 trillion quarterly this year. Banks prefer to take lower returns from potentially risky bonds and syndicated loans because they don’t have to maintain the same level of reserves to cover potential losses. Banks can buy five times as many of these readily available bonds and syndicated loans with lower operating costs than is required to maintain a national network of loan underwriters and the required reserves.

These realities have made the local community bank an endangered creature; the number of banks in the U.S. fell from 15,000 to 5,000 over the past 30 years. The shrinking number of institutions has been driven by consolidating branch networks, community bank failures, and by the rise of non-bank finance companies specializing in consumer mortgages, once the bread-and-butter for local banks. Adding to the problem is the Dodd-Frank legislation. Named after its co-sponsors, Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, the act aimed to curb the financial risk that led to the meltdown in 2008, but it has had multiple unintended consequences, among them additional costs and compliance pressures on community banks, forcing them to engage in further consolidation.

Finally, there’s the Volcker Rule, which is nested inside of Dodd-Frank. First put forth by former United States Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the rule clamps down on banks’ ability to make speculative investments by prohibiting them from engaging in proprietary trading activity.

This rule led to the dismantling of large proprietary trading desks at major banks, which engaged in both private equity and private debt activity. That means fewer avenues of financing for mid-sized firms.

That’s why I left a career in private equity, where there is an overabundance of capital and talent chasing a handful of big ideas and too many small ones. Instead, I started a firm, Lateral Investment Management, that addresses the growth capital needs of growing and independent companies that have no private equity sponsor.

The company is built on the belief that there is a huge opportunity to partner with great owner-operated private companies that want to stay independent. Opportunities abound for growth amid upheaval in the healthcare industry, the rebirth of domestically oriented manufacturing firms, and pressing needs for infrastructure upgrades. For investors, non-bank lending to the most successful middle market companies may be the most compelling investment opportunity available today.

While the stock market continues at all time highs, the U.S. economy sputters along and struggles from the bottom up. There’s no question that the U.S. banking system is much safer than it was in 2007, but the price tag of the solutions cobbled together by the Bush and Obama administrations, Congress, and the Fed may have been more expensive than we can afford. The American ideal of the successful and thriving independent proprietor business—which has traditionally been an important engine of growth for the U.S. economy—is at risk.

The post Why Your Bank Wants No Part of Your Business appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But there are stories of renewal here, too. In 1992, the bakery chain that defined Northeastern Ohio became the latest business to close its doors. As it turned out, that wasn’t the end of the story, but the beginning of mine.

At its height, Hough (pronounced “Huff’s”) Bakery was a $25 million business with 1,000 employees and some 81,000 square feet in operating space spread over 30 locations across our region. Hough’s bakeries were beloved for their cakes, butter cookies, coconut chocolate bars, and “daffodil” cakes, all of them made from scratch and with top-quality ingredients, not mixes.

The business began with Lionel Archibald “Archie” Pile, who was born on August 29, 1879 in Barbados and immigrated to New York City, where his brothers lived, at age 21.

In 1902, Archie Pile moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he also had relatives living. He worked at a local grocery store on Hough Avenue, earning $8 per week. After saving $57, Pile made a down payment on what would soon become the first location of Hough Bakery.

On May 25, 1903, Pile opened his doors for business on Hough Avenue. Shortly after, he fell in love with and married Kate Welker. Together, they raised their six children during World War I. As their family grew, Hough Bakery also prospered, despite the ensuing Great Depression. The Piles’ four sons eventually joined the family business, and by the 1950s they led the operation with their father’s wisdom.

Archie Pile and I share a first name, and a devotion to quality baking. I was born in 1948 in Wildwood, Tennessee and grew up under the care of my grandmother. There were very few black families in the small rural area. As a young child without many other children to play with, I would watch my grandmother as she baked and helped out whenever she allowed me to. Seeing her make breads, biscuits, and pies fascinated me, and planted a seed that would eventually grow.

I visited relatives in Cleveland every summer and decided to move there in 1966, after I graduated high school. Once I arrived, I knew several people who worked at Hough Bakery, and they were able to help me get a job.

Customers form a line outside of a Hough Bakery in 1945.

My first position was in the sanitation department. As a black person, it was difficult to rise in rank and join the bakery’s production team. I was denied advancement and told I needed more experience—the very experience they were denying me. After I filed a grievance with the union, the Pile family became aware of my situation and immediately promoted me up to production. This was where my passion for baking reignited, and from that point on, I was unstoppable.

The bakers were very temperamental, and wouldn’t teach everything they knew right away. I had to gain the confidence of the two head bakers. So while one baker was off, I would tell the other one working how much more talented he was. Doing that with both bakers led to them teaching me secrets they wouldn’t ordinarily teach anyone.

After working in various departments, I finally landed my dream job as one of the head bakers in the Specialty Bakery department, a.k.a. the Swedish department. It had gotten its name from an old Swedish baker who worked there and who wrote most of his recipes in Swedish. When he left, it was a nightmare trying to translate his work, which helped the name stick around. The department handled all large-scale catering orders as well as any special requests that customers might have.

This was the department that handled the millionaires; we catered all of Bob Hope’s birthday parties back in the ’70s and ’80s. The largest dessert I created was a brownie cheesecake topped with fruit for an event at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, which served approximately 3,000 guests.

Shortly after the Canton party, Hough Bakery closed. The chain had become so large that when the economy took a turn for the worse, it couldn’t maintain. The original owners sold the brand to a Wisconsin company that promised to retain all our employees, but was ultimately unable to do so. They began to consolidate locations, and eventually the whole operation went bankrupt.

It came as a shock that August day, as we discovered our loss of employment on the six o’clock news. The labor union called a meeting for the remaining 400 employees. They wanted to assist us, but the local baking industry could not absorb that many jobs.

I had the idea to reopen Hough Bakery as an employee-owned company, which led to many meetings and the formation of committees. But, unfortunately, we couldn’t raise the capital needed to move forward. The assets of Hough Bakery were then sold in bankruptcy court. Kraft Foods bought the bakery division just so they could lock up the recipes. People had tried to mass-produce imitations of our most renowned desserts, such as our seasonal daffodil cake, but even at twice the price our original recipes kept customers loyal. Getting ahold of those recipes let Kraft remove some of their biggest competition from the market.

Our lack of success left me disappointed, but not distraught. I had always wanted to own my own bakery, so I went around to auctions buying used baking equipment, which I stored in my basement. To pay the bills, I worked part-time in various catering departments as well as doing odd jobs like planting flowers and washing walls. A few people I worked for took a liking to me, and one catering company even went so far as to give me a three-compartment sink for washing dishes, free of charge.

Things seemed darkest as I looked in vain for a place to open up shop. Finally, I stumbled upon an old, unused bakery that still had a working oven, located in the neighborhood of Collinwood on the east side of Cleveland. The area wasn’t that well off, but at the time was a haven for people of Irish, Italian, and Hungarian descent as well as many black families. As soon as I signed the lease, I became paralyzed with fear. Would anyone show up?

The day that I opened Archie’s Lakeshore Bakery in 1994, I knew things were going to be OK. Almost instantly, people flooded the place, many of them from the surrounding neighborhoods. They had feared they were never going to eat their favorite treats again and were grateful to me for keeping the tradition going. We still make everything from scratch and refuse to alter the quality of our ingredients.

Because Hough Bakery had been a much larger operation than mine, my recipes were cut down in size, making them just different enough from the ones that Kraft had purchased to allow me to legally use them. A few years later, Kraft lost the national rights to the Hough brand, at which point I stepped in and acquired the name for myself.

To date, our most popular dessert is undoubtedly our white cake, which blends the taste of almond with other flavors in a way that is only possible to achieve when you make it from scratch. We’re also known for our “Hungarian Delight,” made by sandwiching raspberry and fudge filling between two butter cookies. We can only make them in the colder months of the year, as the fudge will melt in the summer.

The bakery has been open at the same location for 22 years now. People come from all over to visit us, but the majority of our customer base is still from greater Cleveland. Customers often come to share memories about growing up eating Hough baked goods. (The town of Davidson, North Carolina, which is home to many ex-Clevelanders, has asked us to open an outpost there).

One time, a woman walked into our store and demanded that we allow her to cut into one of our white cakes, as she didn’t believe they were really Hough’s. I was working in the back when I heard a noise coming from the counter.

When I investigated, I found the woman in tears. I asked her what was wrong, and she explained that this cake was a part of her childhood, and that she never thought she’d get to taste it again.

But she had. At Archie’s Lakeshore Bakery, we’ve created a bit of magic of our own.

 
In “Beyond the Circus,” writers take us off the 2016 campaign trail and give us glimpses of this election season’s politically important places.

The post The Double Rise of an Iconic Cleveland Bakery appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But South L.A. has a way of surprising you.

The growth and success we’re experiencing are raising new questions for residents and businesses alike. For example, how do we continue to grow and still preserve what we have? How do we attract new businesses so residents can access conveniences in their own community? And at the same time, how do we make sure that the local mom-and-pop businesses that have been part of our growth don’t get pushed out by the likes of CVS (coming soon) or Trader Joe’s (rumored)?

I’m sensitive to the concerns of the mom and pops, because I am the mom in one—as were my mom and my grandmother.

My parents, Alice and Horace Bowers, purchased Smith’s Cleaners from my mother’s parents in 1950 and renamed it. Originally it was on the corner of Westlake Avenue and Temple Street in the Westlake District, and it grew quickly, though the cleaning was done by a subcontractor.

In 1964, my parents purchased a small dry cleaning plant at 2507 South Central Avenue. Bowers & Sons then became a “full service” cleaning operation servicing downtown Los Angeles and surrounding areas from two locations. The Bowers’ served retail and wholesale clients and provided pickup and delivery services. As the business grew, my parents purchased an adjoining building (2509) for expansion. Eventually, they bought the entire block of storefronts on the 2500 block of Central Ave., now Bowers Retail Complex.

Like many families who own their own business, my brothers and I worked at the store. Each of us has held the helm of the ship! We’ve succeeded because we’ve adhered to the business philosophy coined by my parents—“We Care Enough to Add A Personal Touch.” We’ve also maintained the cornerstones of our business—professionalism, quality, reliability, and affordability. Additionally, we believe in being good stewards of our community and giving back to people in need and to community causes. My parents were always there to give financial, business, and even family advice, assistance or employment. My dad would often hire the men down on their luck to do general maintenance, like sweeping, mopping, or painting.

Still, I wanted my own life and career. I married and had two sons, now wonderful young men. For over 20 years I worked in retail sales and management and then as an account executive at Kaiser Permanente, where I earned a good salary, full benefits, and five weeks annual vacation.

In 1994, my parents decided to retire. My dad wanted to close the doors and sell, unless one of their children would take over the plant. Neither of my brothers, who both managed the plant previously and were well into their desired careers—one was a writer, the other an actor-singer-performer—wanted to take it over. Nor did I.

Vivian Bowers-Cowan at Bowers & Sons Cleaners.

Alas, I decided I couldn’t stand the idea of the building going into decline and adding to the community’s blight. My thinking was this: If my parents had succeeded and stood the test of time, I would also. Besides, I’d always enjoyed working in the community and providing a good service.

Many people asked me why would I take over a business in South Central and give up my career. I answered, why not?

I was a single mother, and it was 1994—just two years after the riots—and the neighborhood was having a rough time. My sons, who had worked at the store, asked me not to take over the business, saying it was dangerous and “We’d starve!” But I felt the community consisted of good, hardworking people who deserved professional service. So, I put my faith in God, in the family’s reputation as pillars of the community, and in our location’s proximity to downtown, freeways, and USC. It’s a timeless truth that people will always need to get their clothes cleaned.

Because this was post-riots, I essentially took on two, related struggles—one for the business, the other for the neighborhood. In those first years, I saw drive-by shootings, drugs, and prostitution. At one point I thought about installing bullet-proof glass!

Initially, we had only three employees and there were days the business made little more than $200. I wanted to develop a business plan, and my search for help led me to the Rebuild L.A. program, which referred me to USC’s Business Expansion Program. I completed the Fast Trac II entrepreneurial course, creating a working business plan that I put into action. Within three years, Bowers had grown over 75 percent, added two employees, and redecorated the lobby.

Slowly, the neighborhood also improved. Community members began complaining to the council office and police department about the crime and lack of resources. In response, policing increased resulting in a raid of one of the largest dope houses in the area, which to my surprise was directly across the street. (There’s a bakery there now.) Shortly afterwards, Maxine Waters held a press conference on the corner of Adams and Central, declaring that we wouldn’t tolerate any more violence and unrest in our community.

We didn’t. On our block, I had pay telephone stands used by drug dealers removed, while sweeping and repainting. I had a local graffiti artist paint a mural on the side of the building to discourage other graffiti. Residents and business owners developed neighborhood watch groups and worked with the Community Police Advisory Board. When the local police division moved from Newton Street, which was above Washington, down to 35th Street on the Avenue, the community welcomed their presence.

But the biggest shift was the sea change of residents. South Central was largely an African American community. Over time, many of these longtime residents relocated to other areas of Los Angeles in search of employment and a better quality of life, some passed away, and unfortunately, some went to prison. By 1997 the area was 75 percent Latino and most of the small businesses along the South Central corridor were owned and operated by Latinos. I eventually added staff who were bilingual—I only had so much Spanish from my days at L.A. High.

We also benefited from public and private investment and more attention from our city council office under the leadership of Jan Perry. The vacant lot in the block next to ours (once a super market) was acquired and developed as a mixed-use property with affordable housing and retail space on the street level. Several other senior and affordable housing units soon followed. A shopping center with a grocery store and other services was developed on 20th and Central. A city moratorium on new fast-food places and liquor stores also created space for new kinds of businesses to develop.

Councilwoman Perry built a constituent service center in the 4200 block of Central Avenue—a beautiful LEED-certified building with rooftop space that is great for public use. And our store and several other businesses took advantage of the city’s façade improvement program to beautify our storefronts. The rehab of the Somerville Apartments and of the Dunbar Hotel, the latter famous as a venue during South Central’s jazz heyday, also gave us a lift.

I was fortunate that God sent me a wonderful husband, Greg Cowan, in 1997. He is now fondly called Mr. Bowers in our community! Initially, he’d come down to the plant after work and help me close the shop and service machinery. And after he got laid off from JPL in 1999, he filled in as the delivery driver. I couldn’t let him go! I needed every bit of his help; I was working from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and barely getting a couple full days off per year. He’s helped me survive recessions and the 2008-09 credit crunch, when small businesses had their credit lines pulled. Currently we have nine employees, we are eco-friendly, and we have three computerized point of sale stations. We continue to provide quality, affordable service, and “A Personal Touch.”

Greg and I have become my parents!

Location – and delivery – have seen us through. Our business succeeds because we are less than a mile from the growth and development downtown. We provide dry-cleaning and laundry service to lofts and private residences within a 10 mile radius, corporate clients such as the L.A. Music Center, Los Angeles Convention Center, MTA, various departments at USC, and the Department of Homeland Security. Today, more than 70 percent of our business comes from such routes.

The other businesses in the Bowers Retail Complex are long-term tenants including a dentist, a soccer store, and a computer repair shop, which have all been here for more than 10 years. There’s also a tattoo supply store and a corner store, Amigos Variety, which has been there forever. The newest, A Taste of ChiBas Café, is my mom’s catering kitchen, which she now leases out to qualified licensed caterers.

For several years, members of the Central Avenue Business Association worked on beautification and cleanliness, business growth and development, and safety and parking concerns. When we first discussed the Business Improvement District, it seemed like a strange idea. We were already paying taxes for these services, so why should we send more money to the city? When we researched other BIDs we realized it was a way to maintain high standards and reach our goals. In May 2014, we formed a steering committee, hired consultants, and started the 18-month formation process. The BID of property owners was officially established on December 6, 2015 with a 78.65 percent yes vote. We’ve already hired our Clean Streets Team to power wash the streets, remove graffiti, empty trash cans, remove bulky items, and weed the tree wells. By August, we will have our Safety Ambassador Team on board. Businesses on neighboring corridors have already begun to ask how they can develop their own BID!

I’m thrilled with the BID. It’s added to what I call the improvement moment on the Avenue and in South Los Angeles in general. A variety of projects are currently underway. Meta Housing, which developed the lot next door, has another project in progress on Washington Boulevard. A Place Called Home, a terrific nonprofit focused on children and the arts, is expanding. The city has an interesting pilot program to help some of the small businesses here digitize their operations, so that it will be easier for them to grow.

And I’m very excited about the new, very nice sit-down restaurant that should open early next year in the Hotel Dunbar. (Cross your fingers).

Some things are becoming harder. Homelessness has become a much bigger problem in our area, as the development downtown pushes more people south. And there’s the concern that all the growth and development will displace both people and businesses. How do we welcome the new without pushing out the old?

The good news is that on South Central, we are in a much stronger position to deal with these hard questions.

The post The Little Dry Cleaning Shop Around the Corner appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Zeke had migrated to the U.S. from Mexico with my father-in-law and the rest of the family and settled in Watts. Not all of my in-laws’ memories are idyllic. They remember family members being racially profiled and accosted by white police officers, and a community deeply affected by poverty, economic marginalization, structural racism, isolation, and disinvestment—the frictions that would soon erupt in the Watts Riots of 1965.

But Zeke and another uncle, Carlos, have always insisted that their childhood experience wasn’t defined only by these hostilities. They say they loved growing up in Watts and the sense of community that permeated their childhoods. From that sense, and that place, their family would rise.

Their home was seven miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, but it was different from much of the rest of L.A. Watts was a place where minorities were intentionally segregated, but, where despite the weight of external hostilities bearing down, it was possible to own a home, to build a family across generations, to work toward a better life, and to be black or Latino and to find community. “We would play baseball with the African-American kids,” Zeke told me. “One kid even went to the majors, George Hendrick!” As Carlos put it: “Living in Watts, those were the best times of my life.”

Much attention has been given to South L.A.’s transition in recent decades from majority black to predominantly Latino, a transition Zeke and Carlos experienced firsthand. But the Latino presence in the area—Watts in particular—stretches back much further. The town was originally part of a Mexican land grant, El Rancho La Tajuata. After the Rancho was sold in the 1880s, some of the earliest residents were traqueros, the Mexican-origin workers who built the Southern Pacific Railroad, the tracks of which border Watts along Alameda Street. As Watts’ Mexican-origin community grew, it was sustained by San Miguel church, which opened its doors in 1928 in the center of the Mexican district.

My father-in-law, Manuel, and his six siblings were young children in the 1960s when they migrated from tiny Jalostotitlán in northeast Jalisco with their mom, Cele. Their father, Juan, had already been living in Watts’ Mexican district for nearly a decade, having ventured north to work alongside compadres who were already living in the town, his daughter, Rosa, told me.

They helped Juan find a job as a carpenter and upholsterer at a furniture store on Alameda Street, next to the railroad tracks built with the labor of their Mexican forebears. Eventually, his employer agreed to sponsor his legal residency. Such a simple act, but it was everything.

In an immediate sense, it meant Juan’s family could reunite—legal residency enabled him to secure visas for his family to migrate north. In the long term, what we now know—from a growing body of research, including my own on the Mexican-American middle and upper-classes—is that parental legal status is the one thing above all others that can pull families up out of poverty, helping elevate social status, income, education, you name it.

Over time the household expanded—four more children were born in the U.S.—and with 11 young mouths to feed, money was tight. Cele would make their clothes from furniture upholstery remnants from Juan’s job and flour sacks. “If the design on the sack was nice then it became a shirt,” Manuel remembered, laughing. “If it wasn’t, that was good for our calzones [underwear].”

In 1965, Juan sold the family home in Mexico and began looking for something suitable in Los Angeles. In August of that year, racial and economic tensions reached a breaking point and the Watt Riots erupted. Over six days, 34 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. There were thousands of arrests and tens of millions of dollars in damage. Despite the riots, the family had found community in Watts, especially in the San Miguel parish.

Besides, they knew that there were few neighborhoods where minorities could buy homes. Lynwood, the city directly across the railroad tracks, was majority white at the time. It also had a legacy of racially restrictive covenants designed to reinforce segregation by barring minorities from owning property. Manuel, my father-in-law, recalled that in Lynwood, “they would say, ‘We don’t sell to blacks or Mexicans.’ We couldn’t even cross the tracks to go to the park.”

Watts was one of the few areas where minorities could buy real estate. And so that year Juan purchased a house on Weigand Avenue in Watts, a block from the railroad tracks dividing it from Lynwood. Also in that year, San Miguel Catholic School opened its doors and Juan and Cele enrolled their youngest children. In exchange for tuition, Cele, who was widely known as a community leader, made hearty breakfasts of menudo for the parishioners to enjoy after Sunday mass.

Despite the discrimination, and despite their lack of material wealth, Juan and his family were the beneficiaries of a community that helped them build a foundation for future generations to build on. He owned a home, had a stable job, enjoyed a sense of community with his neighbors that centered on the church, and his family had attained legal residency.

In the 1980s, Juan and Cele bought a house across the tracks, in Lynwood. In just a few decades, Lynwood underwent a major demographic transition from working-class white, to majority African American, to Latino. As Zeke explained, “When my parents moved from Watts it wasn’t because Watts was a bad place. My dad wanted a bigger house and for them it was moving up in class status.” For Carlos, it felt like, “You are progressing. We were moving up.”

Around that time Zeke and Manuel opened a Latino grocery store—the first in what would become a modest chain—also in Lynwood but on the border of South Central. The brothers had stable working-class jobs at the time, but they knew that, if successful, business ownership would increase their incomes, wealth, and class status. It also helped root them to the community.

During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, many retail businesses in the area burned to the ground, but Zeke and Manuel’s store remained untouched—a fact that they chalk up to the relationships they built with their multiethnic clientele and their community roots. “We served customers from around the neighborhood, Latinos and blacks. We had a little book and if you didn’t have money to buy milk or meat we would record your purchase and you could pay when you had money.”

Today, many of Juan’s grandchildren—the adult children of the 11 siblings, the second and third generations—have surpassed the class status of the generation before them and are middle class. They are entering and graduating college. Several have earned advanced degrees. They work as teachers, school principals, and in corporate management. Those who have not attained college degrees still have some level of higher education and have secured high-paying white-collar jobs.

The family remains rooted to the community. The house on Weigand is still in the family. And though she had moved out of Watts, Rosa would drive her children everyday to San Miguel Catholic School. Just a few weeks ago, Cele, the matriarch, passed away at 88 years old. At her funeral service, nine priests from South Los Angeles, including a few from San Miguel Parish in Watts, cleared their calendars to attend her mass.

That’s not nostalgia. It’s the result of a strong community foundation. Born alongside baseball and community institutions in Watts.

The post How Watts Provided the Foundation for a Family’s Rise in America appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But the woman at the local massage parlor insisted that I remove my pants and underwear before she would put her hands on me. And so I took it all off–in order to better understand today’s California.

Judging by our streetscapes, this is a state of massage. It has become nearly impossible to drive a thoroughfare anywhere in California without encountering multiple massage parlors. Since the 2007 arrival of the Great Recession, no retail business sector has grown faster, with hotbeds in San Francisco, San Mateo, Fresno, and Sacramento and Orange counties.

Then there’s California’s massage capital, the San Gabriel Valley, where I live. The city of San Gabriel has gone from one to 53 massage parlors in a decade, while little old ladies in Pasadena can now choose from more than 100 massage parlors (that’s one for every 1,300 residents), up from nine a decade ago, according to the Pasadena Star-News. My own neighbors in South Pasadena also seem to have a lot of stress in need of relief. On a recent walk, I counted 10 parlors within six blocks of our house, with names like Massage Place, Shiatsu of Zen, King Spa, Massage Villa, Gifted Hands Therapeutic Massage, Massage Envy, and Happy Feet Foot Massage.

In this context, some self-exposure was in order, because of how much the massage explosion reveals about the reality of economic life and governance in California. For more than a decade, our state’s policy-makers and their media cheerleaders have claimed that they are working to restore local control to California communities, even as the laws they make often do the opposite. They tout policies that supposedly restore local control over school funding or criminal justice, even though these laws come with strings attached, mostly related to money, that deepen Sacramento’s power over us.

Massage regulation is one small, but telling, part of the story. The surge of massage parlors came after 2008, when the state legislature enacted a “reform” bill to clean up the massage industry in local communities. But the law actually prohibited cities from treating massage businesses any differently from other licensed professional services, like law and medical practices. Instead, power over massage parlors was centralized in a new California Massage Therapy Council, an industry-friendly entity that handles licensing. The result: Massage parlors became one of the easiest businesses to open in the state, precisely because cities couldn’t do much to stop them.

Most massage parlors are honest businesses. But there have been just enough cases of prostitution and human trafficking involving massage parlors to make local police and communities wary of this rapid growth. The result has been conflict between municipalities frustrated that they can’t govern these local businesses and massage parlor owners, many of whom are struggling to eke out a living.

This September, under pressure from cities, the legislature gave municipalities back some power to shut down massage parlors that don’t obey local rules. But the legislation also kept the Therapy Council in place. So massage parlors should remain a prominent part of our landscape for quite some time.

In recognition of this reality, I decided to find out firsthand what goes on in the massage parlors in my neighborhood. Having never had a professional massage before, I was a bit wary. But on a recent weeknight, I walked one short block to a parlor less than two blocks from my house.

It had a sign touting “Asian Therapy” and a neon sign that reads “Open Massa” (the last two letters, “g” and the “e,” having burned out). Blue lights ringed a storefront featuring a small wooden chair and cotton clouds arranged in front of a poster of a beach.

Inside, I gave my name, explained that I intended to write about massage, and asked to try a half-hour massage. A woman told me that would cost me $35 and led me into the dimly lit rear of the store, where there appeared to be five small rooms along a long hallway. I was left alone and instructed to disrobe. When the woman returned and saw I had kept my pants and underwear on, I was told that nudity was essential to the massage experience.

Once I was properly naked, the woman turned on new-agey instrumental music and instructed me to lie facedown on a table, with my nose and mouth placed over a hole so I could breathe. A sign on the wall informed me that police could conduct surveillance of the room at any time. She placed a towel over my rear end and then began to rub my entire backside, from my neck to my feet, along the way applying an oil with an odor I could not place. Then she asked me to turn over and massaged my front, from shoulders to ankles. I tried asking her questions, which she mostly deflected.

What kind of massage is this? I asked

Swedish and Chinese, she explained.

I love a good fusion, but this was bland. The rubdown wasn’t particularly healing or relaxing or, for that matter, erotic. On the massage table, it was hard to understand what all the fuss was about; there was nothing as provocative or scary as massage critics might imagine, but nothing so special that it deserved special exemption from local control.

It was nearly 10 p.m., and I had nearly fallen asleep when she declared that my half hour was up. I stood up to get dressed and go home—but then the upsell began.
You really need an hour to do this properly, she said. And you need to experience the full menu of services.

Go ahead, I said with a sigh.

She wanted me to try hot stone therapy, but I balked when the first stone she put on my back burned. Then she offered to “walk my back” to bring additional pressure to bear on my sore muscles and spine. To this I agreed.

Everything seemed fine as she walked up my lower spine. But when she first stepped on the top of my back, the force of her foot knocked all the air out of my mouth and all the snot in my nose – I had a little cold – came squirting out, down through the hole in the massage table and landing on the floor below.

I might have ended the session then, but I no longer had enough oxygen to speak. A few minutes later, it was over. As I walked out, I encountered the only other customer I saw–a middle-aged Asian man wearing a lonely look. The extra half hour had added $20 to my bill, making the total $55, and my masseuse pressed me for a tip. I gave her $10.

She also handed me a pink membership card. After five more services, I’ll get one free. I still have it in my wallet, but I don’t plan to go back. At least until my local city council has the power to protect me from anyone walking on my back.

The post California’s Massage Industry Explosion appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

During our final weeks, long-time customers were coming in distraught, some of them even in tears. Many seemed to be searching for some exotic answer for why we were closing, but the reasons for Rocket’s demise were what you’d expect: new technologies, Netflix, a bad economy, and fewer customers. The owners of Rocket Video felt they were investing a lot and getting very little return.

I first came to Rocket Video in the late 1990s. I’d completed my Master’s Degree in “film and video” at American University in Washington, D.C. and moved to Los Angeles, leaving behind my family, my girlfriend, and a full-time library job. I moved into a place with two friends from AU.

It was a tough time. I couldn’t find work, and the only friends I had were my school chums. They were getting tired of me. My funds were low and my credit cards maxed out. Then a friend suggested I try getting a job at Rocket Video.

The application process wasn’t all that easy. Everyone had to go through interviews and a written test. One part of the test was a multiple-choice section that focused on everyday filing skills, but the other was a list of 30 directors. The test taker had to cite as many films as possible made by each director. (Documentarian D.A. Pennebaker was probably the hardest.) In any case, I was enough of a film buff to pass, and the owners of Rocket gave me some part-time hours. It was a start.

All of us employees bonded quickly. In fact, my new friends were so cool that my formerly exasperated AU friends now warmed to me again and sought out the company of my new colleagues. I also managed to find a full-time job dubbing commercials at Video Monitoring Services. This was followed by a few years at Passport Productions, where I wrote documentaries on film history.

Even when I had full-time jobs, though, I never stopped working part-time at Rocket. It was a cool place to be, and there was always something going on. People told me they were impressed with my knowledge of film, and some customers would come in just to ask me questions.

About a decade ago, during an entertainment industry slump, I got laid off at Passport Productions. At the same time, Rocket’s manager left, and I got an offer to take his place. I took the job, thinking I’d stay for another year or two. I wound up staying 10. I guess I liked it.

Over the years, I learned a lot of lessons. One was that you can’t please everyone. For every person who loved our selection, someone else didn’t. I came to rely simply on my own judgment when ordering titles or making deals.

I also learned that people can be difficult-very difficult. They complain. They shoplift. They say abusive things. I had an unexpected phone altercation with a patriot who’d made a pro-war documentary about ongoing military campaigns. My refusal to order a copy of the DVD sent him into a diatribe about DVD distribution. When I told him I was in no mood for a lecture, he threatened to come to the store and kill me. In the end, he made do with posting on Yelp that Rocket Video did not love America.

Another lesson: people go pretty crazy over late fees. Sometimes, customers would sneak in an overdue movie and place it on the shelf, claiming it’d been there all along. People even threatened to beat up our video clerks over extra fees. It’s amazing what someone will do to avoid paying three more dollars.

I think many of our customers forgot we were running a business and had to make money somehow, that rentals couldn’t just be free. Still, even customers who complained incessantly would keep coming back, because we had a selection like no other. They’d cancel their accounts, then sheepishly re-open them.

If Rocket Video had some difficult customers, the many kind and wonderful customers made up for them. We employees got Christmas presents, cards, and gifts of booze. We got invited to birthday parties, plays, and special events. Some customers would bring us baked goods or fresh fruit. Many came in daily just to chat with us. Rocket was a community. It was a place for movie buffs to meet and shoot the shit about what they loved.

A lot of celebrities were among the regulars, and they were often the nicest customers we had. Some even became personal friends. They appreciated being left alone to browse the racks, but sometimes they, too, stuck around just to talk. That’s how I found myself talking with William H. Macy about the lighting in The Mad Ghoul, a horror film produced by Universal in 1943.

You never knew who was going to drop in. Charlize Theron, Vince Vaughn, Wim Wenders, Morissey, Will Ferrell, Angelina Jolie, Billy Bob Thornton, Marilyn Manson, Drew Barrymore, Leonard Cohen, Sylvester Stallone, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Buck Henry, Peter Bogdanovich, Madonna, Janet Jackson, and even the late Michael Jackson-all walked through the doors of Rocket Video.

My favorite was Faye Dunaway. Certainly, she could be a little demanding. The first time I encountered her, she bounded through the doors of the store and yelled, “Quick, I need Reservoir Dogs right now! I’m double parked on La Brea!” Another time, when we called to tell her a certain title had come in, she was livid. “What are you doing calling me?” she yelled into the receiver. “I am trying to write! Don’t you know I have to answer my own phone?”

But she was also generous and gracious. In 2010, when Rocket Video moved from a building near Pink’s to a building further south on La Brea, it was Faye Dunaway who cut the ribbon to celebrate. She praised me for my film knowledge and said if she ever won another award she’d thank Rocket Video and Jeff Miller in her acceptance speech. I still have her number in my cell phone, even if I’d never be foolish enough to call it.

Soon after taking over as manager of Rocket, I started putting together in-store events. These usually took place on Thursday evenings, and they’d spotlight actors, directors, writers, or other industry professionals. We wanted to make Rocket a real hangout, with chairs, books, and places to get comfortable. Our first guest was my buddy Steve Stoliar, who’d written a book called Raised Eyebrows about his time working as a secretary to Groucho Marx during the last few years Groucho’s life. The audience was mostly our friends, but it was large enough to call the night a success. Eventually, these became popular enough that people would call us to put them on.

You never knew what was going to happen at our events, and unexpected guests were common. When special effects master Ray Harryhausen was the star of the evening, so many fellow Hollywood legends showed up to pay him tribute that the guest of honor compared it to an episode of “This Is Your Life.”

My favorite night was a celebration of The Incredible Hulk, the TV series that ran from 1978 to 1982. The Hulk had an immense effect on my life. It was what inspired me to get interested first in comic books, then real books, and later in writing and film more broadly. Our main guest was Kenny Johnson, creator of the show. He brought along director and producer Chuck Bowman. I invited, as a surprise guest, the actress Mariette Hartley, who won an Emmy for her appearance on the Hulk. Then Lou Ferrigno, the Hulk himself, walked in, and the crowd went wild. After the main event concluded, I gave a tearful speech about how special the show was to me.

There were many other great moments. Shelly Winters made her final public appearance at Rocket. Peter Falk made one of his last appearances there, just a few months before a series of surgeries triggered a sudden onset of dementia. Falk was funny and charming and unforgettable, and he apparently liked the cookies in our makeshift “green room,” because he scooped them all up to take home with him. Our final guest before we shut up shop for good was actress Nancy Kwan, star of Flower Drum Song and The World of Suzie Wong. That was the last of dozens and dozens of special events.

And now, after 30 years of business, it’s all over.

During the first several decades of motion pictures, a movie would run, then disappear. Maybe there would be a reissue a decade later, maybe not. Other than that, old movies vanished. Television changed that. Video stores changed it even more. We could reconnect with our cultural history, and the impact was remarkable. Video stores like ours had films that nobody else-not Netflix, not Amazon, and certainly not Blockbuster-ever did. We were guardians of film history. But now those pieces of history have been sold off for parts. Suddenly, we seem to be going in reverse, back toward that age when movies appeared and then vanished.

Hollywood is a tough place. Landmarks get demolished. The Brown Derby is gone. The Tail o’ the Pup hot dog stand is in some warehouse in Torrance. In traffic, drivers swerve manically and cut you off, as if to signal they have to get there before you. In a culture so inward-looking and self-centered, focused only on the next big thing, we easily forget the paths and paving stones that led us to where we are. Film history is important to Los Angeles. A sense of community is scarce. Rocket Video offered both those things. I don’t know if Angelenos will miss a place like Rocket right away, but I think they will eventually. I know I already do.

Jeffrey Miller is a writer, film historian, and former video store manager who lives in Los Angeles.

*Photo courtesy of Mike Ambs.

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