Downtown Los Angeles

How well do you know the city where you live? Each of us, no matter where we may be, gets caught up in our little world. When I was in college, we called it the Santa Clara "bubble"-- life inside the bubble was not the real world. It was a world created for us by our parents, who sent us to SCU, and by the University itself. It was full of frat parties and palm trees and never-ending meal plans; it was an entire universe that catered to our physical, emotional, and intellectual needs.

During my freshman year, I was so homesick that I told my parents that I couldn't stay at SCU. They responded that I could return home to Hawaii only if I spent a quarter involved with SCCAP (the Santa Clara Community Action Program) or enrolled in a similar social justice- oriented class. Desperate to leave the mainland, I did as they asked-- I left the bubble. And a funny thing happened-- once away from the campus's idyllic Spanish architecture, rose gardens and student body that seemingly stumbled out of an Abercrombie catalogue, I realized what an incredible opportunity I had to explore the Bay Area. On the streets of San Francisco, I saw the effects of untreated mental illness for the first time. I met normal families who were, for one reason or another, living without a home. The children would go to school during the day and sleep in donated blankets at a shelter that night. I saw terminally ill AIDS patients who hadn't left their apartments in months. In the alleyways outside those apartments, I witnessed drug use and sex acts performed in broad daylight.

It was difficult to transition between those two worlds-- from extreme comfort to utter desperation and back again. Those experiences have stayed with me and, as you might have guessed, kept me from returning to Hawaii. Still, I often get caught up in my little world. I go to work, go to the gym. I read, I watch "Lost" online (all 4 seasons in hi-def!) But then, there's a part of me that realizes that this isn't all there is to the world. Anywhere you look, there are people with stories to tell.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but as I'm discovering, a thousand words is far from enough. So for starters, here is a teeny tiny glimpse into the story of downtown LA.













A citrus wholesaler with his fruit:





A sewing shop in the garment district:



From the flower market: