East Los Angeles

His friends believed that Raul O. Martinez had lost his mind. Martinez had a plan to sell soft-shell tacos out of a renovated ice cream truck on the streets of East Los Angeles. "How will you sell those kinds of tacos?" he was asked. Despite the skepticism, Martinez, his wife and father at his side, parked the truck next to an East Los Angeles bar on a summer night in 1974. Martinez sold $70 worth of tacos that first night and soon afterward was selling $150 an evening.

"Caine's Arcade" -- a short film about a 9-year-old boy who built an elaborate cardboard arcade in his dad's used auto parts store in East L.A. -- is one of the sweetest videos we've seen all year. And now it's going viral: The 11-minute video has picked up 1 million views on Vimeo in just two days, and another 438,000 views on YouTube. "Caine is a killer," filmmaker Nirvan Mullick, who directed the video, wrote in a recent tweet. "He has been making thousands of grown men weep at work.

There are about 40 openings for adults and youths in a 10-week job-training program of the Maravilla Foundation, which also runs a youth employment program and free social services. Employers pay for the training and receive half of it back when a trainee completes the program and is hired for permanent work, said Mary Loya, assistant director of the foundation and manager of the jobs programs. Clients receive assistance with bus passes and money for clothing to help them start their jobs.

Nobody walks in L.A.? Ridiculous! A gentle, flat walk in an urban setting, this is an East L.A. oasis in the midst of historic Boyle Heights, filled with old city history and fine downtown views. It's a popular weekend destination for local families for Saturday strolling or Sunday picnicking. THE STATS Distance: 2.5 miles Duration: 1 hour Difficulty: 2 (out of 5) Transit details: Metro Gold Line, Mariachi Plaza stop. Metro bus No. 620, Local No. 30. Free street parking.

On a clear day in City Terrace, residents say they can see Santa Catalina Island. But most of the time, what they see up close is a lot more unsightly--gangs, drugs, graffiti, prostitution and even speeding taxis careening down narrow streets of their East Los Angeles neighborhood, close to the San Bernardino Freeway.

Well, it seems that something funny happened on the way to the "Decade of the Hispanic." A prison gets dumped on East Los Angeles with the help (if not outright plotting) of our Hispanic "leaders for the future." I'm speaking of the Richard Alatorre-Richard Polanco clique that has swooped over the Eastside in a true carpetbag tradition that threatens to divide my community as no right-winger could ever hope to. The sad part is that this exercise of power is "punishment" for another Hispanic leader, and a woman, Assemblywoman Gloria Molina.

The class of 1940 at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles will hold a 50-year reunion Oct. 14 at 5 p.m. at the Whittier Hilton. The cost is $40. Graduates may phone (818) 993-1809 or (714) 968-4871).

Jeff Cummins scored 22 points as Cypress defeated East Los Angeles, 81-49, in the first round of the Riverside College Holiday men's basketball tournament Tuesday. Cypress (8-2) took a 41-21 lead at the half. Gil Gonzales scored 14 points and Matt Kenney 12 for the Chargers.

The East Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce is holding its general membership meeting Wednesday at Tamayo Restaurant, 5300 E. Olympic Blvd. Keynote speaker Sylvia Ruiz will address the issue of affirmative action. A reception will begin at 11:30 a.m. with lunch at noon. Information and reservations: (213) 266-6774 or 569-6149.

The Weingart-East Los Angeles YMCA will open a preschool for 100 children of employees of the East Los Angeles Community Union, an economic development corporation. The preschool is scheduled to open in about eight months and will be at the corporation's industrial park, 5400 E. Olympic Blvd., City of Commerce, said YMCA Chairman John Echeveste. The company will provide the space, and the YMCA will train the staff and run the programs.

If Friday night was the last time the East Los Angeles Classic is played on that side of town, then Los Angeles Garfield running back Lance Hernandez's performance will be a fitting finale. Hernandez rushed for 162 yards in 24 carries and scored a season-high four touchdowns, leading his team to a 29-15 win over Los Angeles Roosevelt in the 77th edition of the rivalry. The series began in 1925 and since 1951 has been played almost exclusively at East Los Angeles College. About 18,000 spectators filled the stands on a chilly, windy Friday night, but next year fans may have to travel to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to see these two Eastern League foes play.

There's an endearing sweetness in seeing camote and calabaza candies drying on metal racks inside a nondescript warehouse space in East Los Angeles. Maybe it's because with a half-dozen jamoncillo , or milk fudge, perfectionists hard at work for Día de los Muertos, La Zamorana Candy Co. feels more like an oversized family kitchen than a wholesale business. "We don't really do things like those sugar skulls you see everywhere," says 22-year-old Vicente (Vince)

She's gotta do it: write in the language of the people she knows, filling the pitcher to overflowing. It started with "Aquaboogie," linked stories set in her hometown of Riverside, peopled with her people, perched on the sides of dry river beds, always running, getting in and out of trouble, making up stories, talking in vernacular so fast and brazen it was hard to believe it came from out East on the 10 Freeway. Six books and many prizes later, Straight is still writing books that bring national attention to the Other Southern California, the off ramps and alleyways of the desert towns east of Los Angeles, places where swimming pools and movie deals seem an impossible dream away.

Dignitaries and former students of Jaime Escalante, the celebrated math teacher whose success teaching calculus brought distinction to Garfield High School, are expected to participate in a large public memorial next week. The farewell will begin with a wake starting at 2 p.m. April 16 in Escalante's former classroom at Garfield in East Los Angeles. "We are reconstituting his old classroom" so it will appear as it was during Escalante's tenure in the 1980s, actor Edward James Olmos, who portrayed the acclaimed teacher in the 1988 movie "Stand and Deliver" and is organizing the memorial with Escalante's family, said in an interview Thursday.

After World War II, Don Nakanishi's parents mostly kept silent about the past. During the war, the government locked up 110,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps. The Nakanishis were among 17,000 Southern Californians held in Posten, Ariz., for more than two years. But the U.S. was also the country where the Nakanishis' two boys were born and raised after the war. And they didn't want their sons to see their native land as intolerant. "My parents wanted to shelter us," said Nakanishi, now 60. "They wanted to give us a more hopeful perspective of what America stood for."

Why is this day unlike any other day? As Jews worldwide prepare to celebrate next week their liberation from slavery, a group of Los Angeles Jews went to Boyle Heights on Sunday to ask that variation of their traditional Passover Seder question. The answer, however, did not recount Jewish oppression in Egypt as is customary. Activists from major Jewish organizations instead focused on what they see as a modern injustice afflicting their fellow Angelenos, marking the day with a new push to bring quality grocery markets and healthful food to underserved neighborhoods such as East Los Angeles.

The California American Woman's Economic Development Corp. has scheduled the first in a series of entrepreneurial workshops designed to address the needs of women business owners. The workshop, "Breaking Through the Entrepreneurial Ceiling," will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the East Los Angeles Community Union, 5400 E. Olympic Blvd. Other workshops will be monthly. The workshop will evaluate business management styles and determine the efficiency of building a business.

Teen-agers, senior citizens and a few people in between are learning the language and the history of their ancestors at the Chicano Resource Center at the East Los Angeles Public Library. About 40 turn out the last Saturday of each month to hear Prof. Fermin Herrera of Cal State Northridge teach Nahuatl (pronounced nah-WHAAT), the language of the Mechicas who inhabited Tenochtitlan, now known as Mexico City, and discussions on the history of the Mechicas taught by poet Leo Guerra.

Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District voted Wednesday to name an inspector general to guard against waste and corruption in its $5.7-billion bond construction program. The vote came after the district's bond counsel, Lisalee Anne Wells, told the board that large sums of bond money had been spent on matters not directly related to campus construction, such as travel and public relations. The state Constitution does not allow such spending of voter-approved bond money, she told the board.