32nd Street Market

While his friends went to the beach and relaxed, Enrique Gonzalez Jr.'s high school summer vacations were filled with work at his father's meat market in Van Nuys. "I felt bad I couldn't enjoy life as a teenager, but my attitude was to get ahead," said Gonzalez, who worked up to 80 hours a week as a butcher, cashier, janitor and stock boy. "My plan was to help my father as much as I could."

AmeriCola Beverage Co. is the official soft drink of the United States Football League, but its 25-foot-long stadium banner has been relegated to the company's Carson warehouse--barred from the Los Angeles Coliseum because of Coca-Cola's exclusive licensing deal. "We have an obligation to protect our sponsors," said Glenn Mon, assistant Coliseum manager, adding that Coke paid $3 million in 1982 for its 15-year licensing pact with the stadium.

The neighborhood around Foshay Elementary School in Los Angeles, west of the Coliseum and south of the 10 Freeway, is an increasingly immigrant one, with families struggling to get a foothold in America moving in alongside the area's long-time African American residents. More than half of neighborhood households had incomes under $20,000, according to 1990 census figures.

The City Council election is still days away, but 2nd District incumbent Wallace Edgerton has already won one campaign contest--the money match. Edgerton, a stockbroker and 17-year council veteran, has collected $89,000 since January, 1991,, about $26,000 more than any other candidate in the April 14 primary races.

Grocery wars can bury innocent victims. Pull off the freeway into a Camino de Estrella shopping center where a closed Alpha Beta forced Popeye's for Hair to trim the price of a cut by 25%. A few steps away is an empty space that once housed the Golden Comb, a salon that catered to older women. The Jim's Pharmacy has also closed. And a Bank of America branch is soon to follow. With the anchor grocery store site empty, foot traffic past the small shops in the center plummeted. Sales followed.

At the end of the runway, at the very edge of the asphalt, an athlete peers into the distance, confidently contemplating his long jump. "Which way?" he suddenly thinks to ask. In the infield, a team of four athletes erupts with the regular timing of geysers, leaping into the air with a spontaneous enthusiasm--high fives all around--and collapsing to the ground, shaking.

Back in the 1960s, when a redevelopment plan was used to reshape the neighborhoods near USC and allow for expansion of its campus, some opponents called the plan a land grab that was aimed at "Negro removal--not urban renewal." The remark still makes some associated with the university wince because it evokes a time when USC was seen as an elite enclave for rich kids in South-Central Los Angeles.

National Guard troops and police wrestled to gain control of riot-ravaged neighborhoods across Los Angeles on Friday amid indications that authorities were gaining the upper hand for the first time in three days of the worst urban unrest in Los Angeles history.

After a decade of dashed expectations, Los Angeles is on the verge of benefiting from a major federal program that will provide millions of dollars for community development and tax incentives for businesses in poor areas. But what will be a boon for some neighborhoods will be a missed opportunity for others.