Blogging Social Differences in LA- Week 9

This week I decided to write my blog about Sawtelle, which is fairly close to UCLA. I took the Culver City bus line 6 to Sawtelle. I took this bus around 4:00pm so there was definitely a lot of people on board. However,  since the turnaround stop is the first stop for this bus I was able to find a seat.

As more people started to come in the more congested it got and since this bus is smaller than say the 720, it ran out of seats quite fast. But everyone was pretty chill, though there was a lot of UCLA students in the beginning, it definitely got more diverse as the trip continued. It got noisier and noisier as many people began talking on their cell phones and groups of people began having a conversion among themselves.

An interesting thing happened when a young man gave up his seat for an older lady (about mid-40s) who was carrying a couple of bags. The interesting thing being was the shock on her face as well as the conversation that followed, which was long and extensive to the point in which I seriously thought the young man regretted having given up his seat. Though the lady seemed engrossed the young man seemed annoyed, though the lad didn't seem to get this impression. Maybe it was just me?

I finally got off in my stop in Olympic and walked about 2 blocks down to the location where I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about this area mainly because I wanted to compare it to an earlier blog that I had done on Little Tokyo.

The first thing I notice was that though Japanese stores and restaurants make up the majority of Sawtelle, there is definitely more East Asian variety here than in Little Tokyo: Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants were also present.

Here we see a Japanese restaurant, and Chinese restaurant and a Korean restaurant (Not visible in the picture)

In the Picture above we see a little plaza, many of the businesses found here can also be found in Little Tokyo.

There is also a Japanese supermarket, though perhaps with less variety than the one found in Little Tokyo.

Interestingly enough, though the street of Sawtelle, which is where all these businesses are located, is extremely busy. The surrounding streets also include Santa Monica and Olympic which are always in use and the 405 freeway is about 2 blocks down in Santa Monica Blv. However, the houses and apartments surrounding Sawtelle are really quiet and peaceful looking. There are no signs of social disturbance.

They were not as fancy looking as the ones found in the suburbs of South Pasadena, but they were certainly not surrounded by chaos, like the ones found in say Inglewood. Some had gates others did not, and some had lawn while other did not care much for the aesthetics. There was a lot more diversity and less uniformity in the living quarters here than in the suburbs of South Pasadena, where all the houses look similar. Population was definitely more diverse.

I was interested in this particular place because it had been presented to me as a second Little Tokyo, and since I had done a blog on Little Tokyo before I wanted to compare. However, unlike Little Tokyo, this place seems to be a lot more corporate, in the sense that it is mostly business related and shows little to nothing about their history or culture. At first I thought it was because this area was more recent and thus was led in such as way while Little Tokyo was more historic. My reasoning for this was the the sort of people I saw in each location. Little Tokyo seemed to be more diverse in age groups while Sawtelle tends to be a lot more youth oriented. 

After doing some research of the area though, they both appear to have been shaped during similar times. I could not find much on why the places turned out so much different despite their connection with each other (as stated earlier, many businesses are found in both places). The only thing that could possibly explain this is the idea of centralization. Perhaps, due to Little Tokyo being located in the Downtown area of Los Angeles, it was easier to create historical institutions such as the Japanese Museum than in Sawtelle. However, Sawtelle does show other history Veteran's history, though to be fair the original place in mind for this history was Boyle Heights. Nonetheless the reason for the lack of Japanese history (at least when compared to the history and culture located in Little Tokyo) is still a mystery to me, thus we are back to square one.

Overall, however, it was a nice experience.