Catholic church in Downtown Morelia
I visited Morelia, Mexico during the Fiestas de Muerto season. I found it to be a creepy city.
Category: photos
Book Quote: 2666
Construction site in East Los Angeles, 2011
From the book 2666 by Roberto Bolaño:
Healthy people flee contact with the diseased. This rule applies to almost everyone. Hans Reiter was an exception. He feared neither the healthy nor the diseased. He never got bored. He was always eager to help and he greatly valued the notion – so vague, so malleable, so warped – of friendship. The diseased, anyway, are more interesting than the healthy. The words of the diseased, even those who can mange only a murmur, carry more weight than those of the healthy. Then, too, all healthy people will in the future know disease. That sense of time, ah, the diseased man’s sense of time, what treasure hidden in a desert cave. Then, too, the diseased truly bite, whereas the healthy pretend to bite but really only snap at the air. Then, too, then, too, then, too.
Intimate
My grandparents circa early 1950s
Hang on tight Tony, Jessie will steal your heart.
“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive about the refusal of constraints – such people have a corpse in their mouth.” -Raoul Vaneigem
Buñuelos
Eaten in Queretaro, QTO. Mexico
My great-grandmother Guadalupe Nuñez Martinez from Pastor Ortiz, Michoacan and founder of Las Guadalupas de San Antonio de Padua Church in Boyle Heights was the queen of buñuelos at the church ferias. Around Christmas time, every countertop in her tiny cottage kitchen would hold stacks of them. They towered over me like skyscrapers made of sugar.
Happy Birthday!
My father contemplating the takeover of Los Angeles.
Happy Birthday to my father who taught me the love of music, the joy of life and how to drive stick shift!
Ruben and the Jets
My father can be heard singing on this song with the band he was part of Ruben and the Jets. I need to upload the songs that feature his vocals like Dedicated to the One I Love. And yes, my parents were friends with Frank Zappa and I went to Moon Unit’s birthday party but I was just a baby and I don’t remember anything.
Porch Life
Please click for larger view
My grandmother, sisters, brother, mother, neighbors and her soon-to-be-husband, my grandfather Atanasio. In front of their original home on North La Fayette Park Place. The house is no longer there, torn down to make way for a parking lot many decades ago.
By the way, they were the first Mexicans on the block. There were racial covenants at the time but I suppose they were allowed to move there because they could pass as ‘white’ and maybe because they were all young, attractive females.
Porches
My great-great grandmother Matilde Vizcarra Tellez, Los Angeles, circa early 1930s.
Such mystery behind her small smile.
Richfield Hi-Octane
In honor of my Grandfather Atanasio aka Grandpa Tony who was a topic of conversation today. He hardly looks grandfather-y in this photo!
Hollywood Jail
Teens and novelty photos, does anyone remember the good times? The concept of a Hollywood jail is a peculiar one, I don’t quite understand the appeal. A novelty photo on a stuffed donkey, now that I understand. Despite the kitsch, their faces say so much, too much.
In this photo: my mother, some of her cousins from Mexico and a very young future Silver Lake optometrist.
Plaza Baratillo
Plaza Baratillo, Guanajuato, GTO
The place of chard tamales and vegan gorditas. Where the fountain is protected from splashing children by an iron gate. Cold in the shadows but bright in the sun.
Los callejones are filled with secrets.