The padlock swinging from the gate suggested that there was once something special in this place, something to keep, something to guard. But whatever magic there might have been was long gone by the time Frankie Firme arrived this week, stepping through a hole in the fence into weeds so dense they muffled the bustle of his beloved East L.A.
In the back of the lot, arsonists had gotten to one abandoned shack and gang bangers to another, peeling back its corrugated walls to paint their hieroglyphics inside.
"Sad," Firme said. He's 52 now, an influential disc jockey and Chicano music historian. He sees urban blight here like anyone else, but at least his view comes with a soundtrack. Even now, with his shoes crunching on broken bottles, he can't help but hear it: "Let's take a trip down Whittier Boulevard!"
That introduction, shouted by an East L.A. band called Thee Midniters, was the opening of the instrumental song "Whittier Boulevard." In 1965, cruisers, low-riders and brown-is-beautiful pioneers made the song an Eastside anthem -- and cemented Whittier Boulevard itself as a defining pathway in the development of Latino Los Angeles.
Today, at long last, the boulevard is getting a face-lift.
It would be a stretch to call it a revitalization project because much of the street -- a 16-mile thoroughfare stretching from downtown Los Angeles through Montebello, Pico Rivera and Whittier and into the northern tip of Orange County -- was never much to look at.
Still, tens of millions of public and private dollars have begun filtering in along the boulevard, targeting unkempt medians, crumbling curbs, abandoned lots. There are dozens of condos, apartments and houses going up, and officials have hatched plans for nearly a dozen mixed-use projects in coming years, with European-style, street-level shops and restaurants below homes.
If it all falls into place, it will be the largest civic commitment to the boulevard since the first asphalt was poured. Perhaps the boulevard -- long maligned and neglected but arguably as important to El Movimiento as any school walkout or farmworker rally -- is finally getting its due.
Rebuilding the boulevard will be a daunting task. Evidence of that is everywhere.
It's in the bathroom of a McDonald's near Atlantic Boulevard, in East L.A., where competing gangs have put graffiti on the door, floor, walls, sink, soap dispenser, toilet seat and toilet paper dispenser.
