Macarthur Park

Tony Flamenco has taken his share of risks when he ends a day at the office with a game of chess at MacArthur Park. Over six years, he's been shaken down and forced to pay $10 "rent" to gang members, witnessed a stabbing and an assault, and seen the everyday transactions of gamblers and drug dealers who linger near South Park View and West 7th streets. But the 50-year-old accountant from San Dimas has continued to ignore his wife's warnings to stay away from the park.

Somewhere up in poet heaven, Roque Dalton is a happy man. Just across the street from MacArthur Park, the town square of Central American immigrants in Los Angeles, a tiny storefront has an entire shelf dedicated to the works of the Salvadoran writer, who died in 1975. Dalton's poems celebrate the tenacity of Salvadorans and their diaspora across the Americas. If his books had eyes, they could look through the store's glass window and see his countrymen hawking snow cones and tacos outside.