Neighborhoods

Dawn Cordy always knew her neighborhood was an easy place to hide -- a semirural San Francisco suburb where housing is cheap, sheriff's cruisers rarely appear, residents don't snoop and registered sex offenders have found a refuge. It's a small, scruffy, unincorporated island largely surrounded by the hard-knock city of Antioch, a region synonymous with the foreclosure crisis in the Bay Area but now linked to yet another outrage. This is where Phillip Garrido, who was charged last week with rape and kidnapping, allegedly held Jaycee Lee Dugard for 18 years and fathered her two children in a warren of tents and soundproofed outbuildings behind his gray cinder-block house on Walnut Avenue.

In the neighborhood where four Oakland police officers were killed last weekend, a large makeshift memorial still adorns a sidewalk with flowers, notes and photographs of the slain police. Across the street lies another, smaller sidewalk memorial -- this one for the parolee who killed the officers. A cluster of African American women in front of the police memorial argued last week about a candlelight vigil planned for the felon, whom police had just linked by DNA to the rape of a 12-year-old.

There are nearly 30,000 city blocks in Los Angeles, and over the last several weeks, my colleague Maloy Moore and I have examined them all. We've considered each one's size and population density, its racial and ethnic makeup, its proximity to landmarks, its topography and history. Then we listened to what readers told us about the deeply rooted perceptions that make them see a block as belonging in one community instead of another.

As Danny Hoch ambles through Echo Park, a familiar sight catches his eye. Although he's far from his home in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, Hoch instantly recognizes the telltale signs of approaching urban Armageddon: pasty-faced guys in porkpie hats, prowling for overpriced espressos; pierced and tattooed young women pushing strollers; a vintage clothing store rubbing elbows with a Salvadoran pupuseria.

Nevermind where we're going. Question is: Where are we now? "We're in Woodland Hills," said Anthony Tholberg as he stood outside his home late last week and mulled over that question. Tholberg, 23, grew up in the mid-century modern house in the 19800 block of Friar Street. No wonder he was puzzled when he was handed a copy of a new map that labeled his 54-home enclave as being in the community of Winnetka. The Los Angeles Times is unveiling the new map of neighborhoods today on its website at http://projects.

Until the evacuation orders were lifted at 10 a.m. Sunday, Paul Reide held out hope that his home on tidy, tree-lined Montrose Place in the foothills north of downtown Santa Barbara had survived last week's devastating Jesusita fire. Less than 30 minutes later, the tall, silver-haired retired salesman stood forlornly on a block of concrete that was once the foyer of the 3,000-square-foot tri-level home he liked to call "a quiet little paradise."

Compelled by their hankering for a breakfast of pozole, Ricardo and Rosa Solis casually strolled across the railroad tracks on First Street to a Mexican restaurant. They didn't know that around the corner, MTA and law enforcement officials had just concluded a news conference Monday exhorting people not to do exactly that. Later this summer, light rail trains will return to Boyle Heights and East L.A. for the first time in half a century.

In Old Towne Orange -- a mile-square district established during the citrus boom of the late 19th century -- reverence for the past is part of daily business. At the center is Plaza Square, where cars whip around the Victorian-era fountain and garden in a traffic circle once trod by horses and buggies. Around the plaza, old-fashioned soda fountains, barber shops and historic buildings mix with trendy fashion retailers and wine-tasting salons.

Los Angeles may start cracking down on the impromptu, do-it-yourself used car lots that have sprung up along some streets, raising the ire of nearby residents who find them a more common sight in these tough economic times. A City Council committee created a task force Wednesday to consider ways to restrict vehicle owners from selling their cars the cheap and easy way, by slapping "For Sale" signs in the windows and parking them on major thoroughfares and neighborhood streets.

The company's brochure features an aerial shot of the Balboa Peninsula and describes its 90-day drug and alcohol recovery program as "located in the warm, healing climate of Southern California." It's that kind of promise -- in this case from Sober Living by the Sea -- that has made Newport Beach an unlikely capital for drug- and alcohol-free homes.