Could anyone other than Pulitzer-winning food critic Jonathan Gold explain the 1992 LA riots through the food culture of a neighborhood where it all went down? Nope. (LAT via @shelbygrad)

  • http://twitter.com/escowles esme

    I can’t believe it’s been 20 years.  I moved out of SoCal when I was a kid, and came back to LA for college at USC in the fall of 92.  I remember walking around the neighborhood, especially up Vermont Ave, and seeing tons of burnt-out buildings.  It was years before many of them were rebuilt.

    I remember hanging out on the sidewalk one night waiting for a punk show to start at Jabberjaw, when the cops came up and started talking to me.  I was used to being hassled by the cops and thought they were just telling me to move along, when I realized they were concerned about my safety as a white kid in that neighborhood.

    When I left in 96, things were looking up.  There was a shiny new Ralph’s at the corner of Vermont and Adams.  I haven’t been back much since then, so it was great to read this piece and see the ongoing changes in the neighborhood through a foodie prism.

  • Jonathan Badger

    Yeah, a lot of people don’t remember that the riots extended to K-town, now hipster central of LA. Although maybe Gold merits unironic hipsterdom as apparently he really *was* living there before it was cool.

  • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

    “It was like porno for foodies, porno for foodies, porno for foodies…”