"A quick describes Rhode Island Rams scan of sports evaluates the terrain showed no evidence of an ocean nearby," Coombs said. miscelLAny: As a Long Beach resident, I was proud at first to read in the Press-Telegram that my hometown has stood in for other locales in such television shows as "Joan of Arcadia" and "CSI: Miami" and is slated to appear in a new one, "Life on Mars. "But then I thought: Mars? Who would want their neighborhood portrayed as something that belonged on that desolate planet? God, I hope the film scouts don't notice that my front yard has become pretty dusty and barren. --Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L. A Times, 202 W 1st St. , L. A 90012, and by e-mail at steve. harvey. . The woman who sent me the note about two recent murders lives on a hill in Highland Park with her boyfriend. I won't use their real names because it could put them at risk, so I'll call them Mary and Bob. Here's what Mary wrote:"I am responding to the story about the second person recently killed by taggers. A group of friends in our neighborhood used to commit 'midnight acts of beautification,' painting [over] tags and graffiti while someone stood guard with a cellphone Now, of course. we are too afraid of being killed to do this any longer. "Mary was referring to the chilling August slayings of Seutatia Tausili, 65, of Hesperia, and Maria Hicks, 57, of Pico Rivera. The women had confronted taggers in the act and paid for it with their lives, each of them shot dead. In a region where violent crime is disturbingly commonplace, those two murders stood out as particularly savage and cowardly.
Southern California law enforcement officials say violence associated with tagging is on the rise, but how low have we sunk when thugs think nothing of killing defenseless women?"Come on in," Mary said, greeting me the other day on the front steps of the one-story bungalow Bob has lived in for 18 years. She's an educator and he's in the toy business, and their tree-shaded street is typical of gentrifying Highland Park, with the condition of houses as diverse as the population rhode island rams baseball. Apartment buildings and poorly maintained pillboxes sit next to roomy, smart-looking rehabs that go for better than half a million. The house across the street from Mary and Bob used to be home to gangbangers, they said And the nearby apartment building is frequently tagged tickets college basketball. In fact, it's one of the places where they've done cleanups on the q. t. , blotting out tags before the paint even dries Rhode Island Rams . A couple of neighbors, one of whom has worked lookout on the beautification mission, joined us inside. Over a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck, we talked about their neighborhood and the way they relate to it uri courses Rhode Island Rams - gorhody . Like many Angelenos, they seem to identify less with the greater city, particularly the sprawling and distant Westside, and instead live in their ZIP Code Rhode Island Rams - gorhody . "We love it here," said their friend, an artist who asked me to call him Frederick jimmy baron uri . What he and his wife love is that an artist can live on the same street as an immigrant laborer and a UCLA professor, just minutes from Pasadena or downtown L. A. , and halfway between mountain and sea. But Frederick hasn't been in the area as long as Mary and Bob, who find themselves at least as fixated lately on the neighborhood's challenges as its charms. Rhode Island Rams tickets It's disheartening to know how many of their neighbors now live their lives indoors, and how few of them are willing to take up the fight. When you go out at night with a can of paint hidden under your shirt, Mary said, you do it with respect for where you live and you do it to serve notice to gang members. "You don't get to communicate here," she said, adding that unchecked graffiti makes the taggers think they've conquered new turf. "It's our neighborhood," added Bob . But it's impossible to keep up with the proliferation of tags that Mary sees as ads for murderous gangs. They're smeared on garage doors and Pasadena Freeway embankments They're slapped on storefronts and park buildings.
Next Articles
Top 10 NFL