Blogging Social Differences in LA- Week 4

 This week I decided to explore the Fashion District in Downtown Los Angeles. I headed down Maple street and just sort of walked around.

As it was expected there was a lot of stores that sell clothes in this place. I went on a random day during the week so the streets were not as congested as they typically are. That is to say a lot since the streets were still pretty busy.

I actually entered some of the stores and was surprised at how cheap the prices are. I could not take any pictures of the inside because the store owners prohibit it, since they are scared that the competition might steal their designs.

The store above was actually pretty nice. It was well organized and the service was good. However, this was not the case with all the stores in the fashion district.

Some of the smaller shops were extremely tiny and really difficult to walk around in. I did notice that though the majority of the population around was Latino the store owners for the most part were Korean. Most of the places had several Latina women working as sale ladies in the store, I cannot emphasize enough how dominant female labor is in this particular market.

It seemed that Latinos did dominate the food market in this location. There was Mexican food restaurants and stands everywhere along with Chinese fast food restaurants as a close second, followed by a minor but still present presence of other Latin American and Asian cuisine.

Downtown is know for its factories etc.. These were not separate from the fashion district but also not in your face either. The factories were located on top of the restaurants or stores. However, unless you really paid attention you could not really tell what those buildings were. Most would just assume they were abandoned, they looked terribly old and I wondered whether they were even safe to occupy.

It  made me think of how the structure of the city is built in order to hide "the ugly" per say. Thinking back to the history of downtown LA as a nest of sweat shops it made me realize how easy it was to hide it from the public so no one would ever have to really know the horrors that the workers were in. One is so busy looking out for the best deals and shopping that it becomes easy to simply avoid looking or questioning were or how these clothes are made. Downtown LA facilitates this process of consuming without caring where all this comes from because its so easy to ignore, while it still makes the most space out of those few blocks that are the Fashion District.

Street vendors are also a huge market in this district. They sell everything from food, to clothes, to accessories and toys. Being here actually sort of reminded me of New York were everything is so integrated and crowded. There was a lot of trash due to the high density of people concentrated in this area, I assume.

Additionally, though the majority of the population seemed to be Latino there were also a good white, black, and Asian population walking around as well. Social class also varied I saw everything from business suits to homeless people.

Overall it was definitely a different side of LA, definitely not one people think of when thinking of LA which usually involves glamour and beaches.