StreetVerse

Roses Really Smell Like Poo Poo

Posted By: indosage
Filed Under: Opinion on February 11, 2010

Since I am not too happy these days about driving in my car, especially due to the constant barrage of shitty music on the radio (to which I’m subject,) I was glad to take a little trip down Memory Lane via the barrio without even walking out the door. In his OC Weekly blog, Ask A Mexican’s Gustavo Arellano hoisted me up onto his burro and we trotted toward an old familiar neighborhood called Floral Park in Santa Ana, or Santana if you happen to be a gardener for one of the ritzy households there. And Memory Lane, by the way, is a real street in these here parts.  Arellano not only saves me from Driving While Brown, he also reminds me why I would never, in real life, be caught dead in Floral Park.

Now, if you don’t know anything about this neighborhood, it’s pretty much as if all the images in a Home & Garden magazine came to life. You know those pictures… it’ll be like of an expensive looking, gigantic ass wooden driveway gate that looks like they cut down a section of the Amazon’s forests for?  Yeah, they have those in Floral Park, except they’ve been banged up with rusty chain cables by some inmate somewhere in BFE to make it look “distressed” and therefore, expensive. So FP is filled with wide, tree-lined streets, blooming flowers in colorful gardens, bay windows that display your whole annual salary’s worth of trinkets (oh, and the necessary USC Trojans flag by the front door to go with the DB USC Alumni license plate frame on the Lexus)… the whole shebang. I came to know this high-class dwelling place when someone I knew I think got lost and instead of taking his huaraches back to his casa, ended up calling this place “home.” Luckily, it was only for a minute because I think the neighbors were not too happy that his being there brought down the value of their English Tudors. I could tell when we started getting side-eye action whenever we parked on the street with our Juan Pollo dinner.

So, in keeping with their Home & Garden Magazine aspirations, FP is holding an annual home and garden tour this April for $30 a pop. The tour said to hopefully open visitors’ eyes to the well preserved “sense of community and tradition” among its residents. My only problem is this — what Arellano talks about in his blog happens only too often in places like FP, which is ironically an enclave community amid a city that is composed of 79.6% Hispanic and Latin American.  The exclusivity that events like the H&G tour perpetuates is insidious and truly shameful. I mean, who do you think is going to this event? Who can afford to? I sure don’t wanna cough up $30 just to see a proverbial wooden gate slam in my face. On top of that, cops are only too eager to track you down if you are anywhere near the shade of brown, even if you live in FP, like in the case of Arellano’s friend. All this only serves to remind me that things aren’t all that pretty in Floral Park.

About the Author

I have equal love for reading, eating, sewing, crafting, watching movies and saying the phrase "eff outta here with that shit!"