Friday, December 27, 2024

Back when I was the editor and publisher of Momentum Press, I lived in Ocean Park, the southern most section of Santa Monica. It was “south of Pico,” to use a phrase that eventually became the title of a book about art galleries run by and for people who didn’t fit into the “white” world north of Pico Blvd. Ocean Park did not have the aura o “hipness” that Venice possessed, but since the two areas were contiguous, it was not that surprising that they turned out to be culturally and politically aligned in the three decades following World War II. One particular enterprise shared a recognizable boundary line between Venice and Ocean Park when I lived there: the Pioneer Bakery, on Rose Avenue. It was known as the place to go for the best and most affordable day-old sourdough bread.

While teaching at CSU Long Beach for the past 18 years, I have lived in the South Rose Park area of Long Beach, which in certain ways reminds me of Ocean Park. It, too, features a bakery, called GUSTO. Linda and I have the good fortune to live only three blocks away from it and have enjoyed its breads and specialties since it first opened. Its distinctiveness has not gone unnoticed. The New York Times recently did a national survey of noteworthy bakeries and Gusto made its list of the top 22.

Adjacent to GUSTO is a bookstore that is heir to the tradition of political print culture outlets in Los Angeles County. In the last century, stores such as Papa Bach and Midnight Special contributed to the legacy that PAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE is now the latest member of. PATM is a combination of a carefully curated used book store and the most current and relevant books to the ongoing global crisis of displaced refugees and the ecological suicide of the planet’s supposedly most intelligent inhabitants.

A few blocks west of Gusto and PATM is the Art Theater, which is the only stand-alone movie theater left in Long Beach. If Venice and Ocean Park has the Fox Venice theater, then South Rose Park can counter with the Art Theater, which is currently showing “A Complete Unknown,” to be followed by “The Apprentice.” This is not a neighborhood where MAGA has much traction.

One of the big differences between Ocean Park and South Rose Park is that Jim Conn, the minister and congregation of the United Methodist Church at the former back in the 1970s and 1980s, was prominently active in left-wing political causes to a degree unmatched by many contemporary ministers. While each branch of the current United Methodist churches in Ocean Park and South Rose Park would feel at complete ease in their shared theological and progressive sociological tenets, the Church in Ocean Park also distinguished itself as a cultural center for the neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s.

Ocean Park no longer has any meaningful rent control at work, and the neighborhood has largely been gentrified. Real estate prices have made home ownership impossible in this neighborhood for anyone who currently lives here and doesn’t own a house. It’s doubtful that this neighborhood will sustain its current ambiance for more than another 16 years, but since I’m unlikely to live much longer than a fraction of that time, it looks as if I’ll be lucky enough to have lived in two of the most accommodating neighborhoods that Southern California could have offered in my lifetime. It’s been a hard life, but not without its blessings.

(The sign perched over Lincoln Blvd. is all that’s left of the Fox Movie Theater.)

For those who might wonder if this nostalgia about Ocean Park is merely one individual’s subjective recollection, I have received permission from Harley Lond, an old friend and artistic collaborator who also lived in Ocean Park over fifty years ago, to reprint his description of the neighborhood.

“I lived in Ocean park for a couple of years (1967-1969), first at Pine
west of Lincoln, then around the corner from you at 4th and Hill
(actually off an alley). Rents were cheap; people were great. And the
dive bars and restaurants along Pacific and Main were great (even the
college hot spot The Oar House) – and nearby restaurants – there was the
Rose Cafe on Rose just west of Lincoln; and a great home-cookin’ joint at
Ocean Park and Pacific run by a black woman who made the greatest
breakfasts in the world. Artists, writers, bohemians, hippies.” — Harley Lond, 1//1/2025

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Happy New Year! May 2025 be unexpectedly prosperous in the imaginative sense of that word.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/best-bakeries-america.html
22 of the Best Bakeries Across the U.S. Right Now
In this golden age of American bakeries, virtuosic pastries and delightful breads are close at hand, from coastal Maine to downtown Los Angeles.
Dec. 24, 2024

Gusto Bread
Long Beach, Calif.
Cody James for The New York Times
If it’s hard to imagine an improvement on the kouign-amann — that perfectly caramelized helix of salted butter and dough from Brittany — then it’s time to try the Nixtamal Queen, completely transformed by an addition of sourdough and nixtamalized corn. It’s just one taste of what Gusto can do. Informed by Mexican and Indigenous traditions, Arturo Enciso and Ana Belén Salatino, above, run a neighborhood panadería with an expressive, unconventional and highly delicious approach that extends to conchas, multigrain breads and all kinds of seasonal pastries that make the bakery a destination. TEJAL RAO
2710 East 4th Street, Long Beach, Calif.; 562-343-1881; gustobread.com