Welcome to The Black Urbanist Weekly #7. I’m trying something different this week by putting the introduction up at the top so that it won’t get lost in the meat of the newsletter. 

I reintroduced this newsletter as a place where I focus on one big idea a week, then several smaller ideas/articles and then link to things like the jobs/opportunities board and other ways you can reach out and work with me.

My goal is to have this to you sometime on Friday, ideally around 11 a.m. eastern, but sometimes closer to 3 p.m. eastern. Also, I’ve been made aware that the links don’t work on some phones, namely iPhones. I’m hoping this is just an issue with those folks who are reading on mobile using the Mailchimp version, but let me know if it’s happening with this one too. Also, I’m hoping to find a better website theme. This one was only meant to be a placeholder while I got some other things together. However, I now realize having a good website, a good personal and truthful website, will only open up opportunities, not keep them away and so look out for changes on that front in the coming weeks.

If you aren’t already doing so, become a Patreon subscriber. These funds will allow me to do more research and writing on these newsletters, as well as funding a more user-friendly jobs and opportunities board and a better website theme. Plus, the newsletter always gets published there first, sometimes a day in advance, sometimes just hours and occasionally includes bonus materials. Again, you can subscribe here and please share this and that opportunity with your friends and colleagues.

Now, on to the ideas.

Is California Still Worth Dreaming About?

I’ve had the privilege to visit California six times, all in a span of the last 4 years. 

My first visit was as a wedding guest with an ex, where we took Amtrak’s Southwest Chief train from Kansas City overnight through Albuquerque and then we laid over in Los Angeles around Union Station and Olivera Street. 

I wish I’d had more time and I’d been able to explore that area more, as my remaining three trips to Los Angeles have centered around work and training activities at the University of Southern California, staying overnight at the Ace Hotel on Broadway Street downtown and on campus at the USC Hotel my last couple of visits. 

I’ve made ventures out to the Santa Monica Pier via the LA Metro and Koreatown, but outside of those touristy moments with friends and my girlfriend, I’ve been driven on the 105 and the 110 to and from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and only flown out of the Southwest, Alaska and United terminals. 

My Bay Area experiences have been train (the Coast Starlight!) to Emeryville where we stayed at a nearby AirBnb and socialized with friends in Berkley and then attended the wedding in the University of California, Berkley’s Redwood Grove at their gorgeous botanical garden, then the next day I took the BART and its extension to Oakland International Airport, which ferried me back to Kansas City. Then that same ex won Super Bowl tickets and we were housed at this nautical-themed Fisherman’s Wharf hotel and then we explored the streetcars and took Caltrain to Levi Field for the actual Super Bowl. OAK was my going and coming airport for that trip too.

You could say that Super Bowl was the beginning of me seeing that California can be a dream-killer. My Panthers lost, a man insisted on tapping on my fro for no good reason and plus, it was the NFL and for something that should be a fun pastime, it’s rife with so many labor and outreach issues.

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My dad and I always talked about traveling to California. I mentioned in my first book that he had considered becoming a truck driver, so that he could do cross-country drives there and possibly even retire there.

I think it had something to do with in being a Baby Boomer who was raised as television emerged into households of all kinds and like the early films before, highlighted California and areas created from California that made viewers use their imaginations to create all kinds of worlds from them. 

While the very first film was made in Palo Alto, California, the film industry was first established on the east coast in proximity to Menlo Park and Thomas Edison’s tutelage and ownership of both film production patents and control of film creation and early film studios.

Then land speculation shifted the control and influence of the industry back to California.

H.J. Whitley was born in Toronto and prior to founding 100 other towns throughout the Western United States, he’d been a Chicago merchant. He got the idea for calling one of his Los Angeles County land purchases Hollywood by seeing a Chinese man hauling wood in one of those towns, who pronounced the activity “holly-wood”. Yeah, I know. He tried to clean it up by saying holly was for England and wood was for Scotland. 

Then, in true development fashion, Whitley wanted an industry to come populate his series of California towns that he was building around that general area. Whitley found a camera maker that was not underneath Edison’s conglomerate and convinced several other established entertainment companies to come to his towns and build major studios, using the other camera. The first of those, Nestor Studio, opened in 1911.

In 1934, the first unionized thirty-mile zone was established. This basically fixed it so that workers would be responsible for food, lodging and other expenses and not the studios themselves, as well as what rates could be charged for services performed on studios inside this area. For years, this area and its designated additions were the only areas you could be guaranteed the best rates and visibility for working in the film industry. 

Other areas still existed, but they were either sanctioned as “on location” by the major studios or they were independent and at the mercy of the major studios. Later on, you could start your own companies elsewhere, but the major distribution channels were still controlled by the major California studios and required you to work with them to get any major movement.

This is an LA story mostly in today’s newsletter, but I see parallels in how Silicon Valley emerged and how it’s dispersed over the years when it comes to the high technology industry.

And then you have something like a Netflix that merges these two worlds.

But with the volatility of business and tech and commerce, as well as the dispersal of all these activities, is it really worth dreaming about California at the expense of other areas?

North Carolina created one of those new favored film zones a few years ago and has hosted several major film productions, as well as built up at least two well-regarded film and acting programs at its state universities. The advantage of California in film was its outdoor terrain, but you can find unique and reliable outdoor terrain anywhere.

And was California’s terrain really that reliable? We were deeply concerned during this last visit that the palm trees were looking a little burnt and shaky and that we’d be hanging out in the dark hoping for no wildfires. The Hollywood sign is in a fire-risk zone, along with several other areas surrounding studios. Many celebrities have reported losing their homes to wildfire over the years. And as of this morning, several fires are burning across the region.

On the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation’s website, a quick glance at the key industry clusters promoted shows that outside of the entertainment industry, the industry clusters mirror those found in other major centers. In fact, the effect of industry was so grossly mis-judged in the construction of the light rail Green Line, by the time the line was opened, it was lauded as a mis-step in racial and economic equity.

This recent Curbed article noted that many California pensioners, the ones that still have such things, are moving to other states in droves.

And as I mentioned before I’d read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower between my last two LA visits and was spooked just by my imagination of that LA. 

I could totally see now having paid even deeper attention to the terrain, how people could totally take to the freeways and walk on one side and drive on the other, abandoning their cars due to the extremely high gas prices.How the abundance of fire could become more tantalizing and deadly.

How public services could become commodities and then out of reach of all but the wealthy.

How the middle class neighborhoods could wall themselves off and still be vulnerable. 

How areas like Skid Row could become more common and be depressed for years.

And California could change and restrict its borders at the expense of those who are most needy.

Yet, this is the 2nd most densely populated metro area in the country. There are more people in Los Angeles County than there are in the entirely of the state of North Carolina. This is a local government having to provide a state’s worth of people the kinds of basic services that they do.

But I do see hope.

I’ve always admired James Rojas’s work highlighting Latino Urbanism and I’m excited about Destination Crenshaw, which seeks to not just honor black history and culture on Crenshaw Boulevard, but continue necessary conversations about the quality of black life in Los Angeles. Despite the recent deaths of Phil Freelon and Nipsey Hustle, this project continues on through the vision of many others from across the community.

Part of that Crenshaw Boulevard work is of the expansion of the LA Metro system. We found the Expo Line service to be quick, prompt, clean and very convienient to the beach. I’m really impressed with the wealth of communication and information going forth from the agency, not just about where to find a train, but also on the expansion of the service. And that there is active expansion going on with more planned.

If you’ve made it this far, know this. California, I’ve not given up on you yet.

I trust that you as a citizenry can come together and make the right decisions. Everyone else, I challenge to do the same on a local level. Tour each other. Share resources with each other. However, we can’t keep doing economic development in the way we used to, where we compete with each other and poach from each other and encroach on each other.

We have to kill the civic-inferiority complex. Let’s dream about all of our cities and towns and then create things that benefit us all.

What else is on my mind this week:

Happy to see Michael Jordan make a move like this, in creating a clinic for those who can’t afford or don’t have enough heath insurance and care in Charlotte.

Also happy to learn more about these black women architects from East African countries and that the National Association of Minority Architects had a good national conference this year.

The going, coming and cleaning of grocery stores and other supermarket types are one of the first signals that a community is undergoing economic transformations, not just gentrification, but also cultural displacement and disinvestment. This Kroger in Atlanta is one of the key examples of how this has happened.

Meanwhile, I like this concept out of Montgomery County, Maryland meeting the food pantry and the supermarket in the middle.

And we’ve celebrated a lot of new black male mayors throughout the country, check out this returned citizen who’s now mayor of Leavenworth, Kansas, a town where the justice system has an outsized presence.

Rest in Power, Elijah Cummings and yes, go Nats (Even though, like everything else, it’s a shame that we couldn’t have had a baseball park in the city without massive displacement).

Before you go…

—Check out the job board. I’m working on a job-board improvement survey. Look out for that soon.

—Buy a bag or t-shirt from The Black Urbanist  store or greeting cards from Les’s Lighthouse. By the time you read this newsletter, we’ll be past Halloween. Yeah, the holidays are here, folks. And these are great black queer woman-owned gifts you can give this season!

— Let me come and talk to you about killing your civic-inferiority complex Book me for a lecture, workshop or both.  Also Les, my wonderful life partner and sales director is great at hyping you up and helping you or your organization make radical changes in your life and health Book her too.

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