ahream

Sunday I went with my husband and some friends to the Watts Summer Festival. Hopes were high. The festival was started in 1966, the year after the Watts Riots lead to the deaths of 34 people. A little research will tell you the festival was intended to do more than perhaps any festival could hope to – rebuild, memorialize, revitalize. But it drew crowds. One hundred thousand one year, they claim.

They may have come for the rebuilding, but I bet they stayed for the music. At one time or another, the festival hosted James Brown, WAR, Isaac Hayes, Stevie Wonder, Barry White and on and on and on.

But Watts is different now. More Hispanic than black. Twelve murders last year in the blocks surrounding the festival park, one cop told us Sunday. Fourteen this year. A small elderly woman negotiating the grass in high heels told us how she’d seen great things in the neighborhood. Told us about Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis coming to town for one event or another. Thanked us for coming and encouraged us to come back.

A lot of people need to come back. Sunday was far from 100,000 revelers listening to James Brown. Sunday was a few dozen folks, a tiny mobile bandstand and one food vendor who did make some pretty decent peach cobbler. The Watts festival is dying. It was great once. Once far before I ever saw it, before I moved to L.A., before I was even born it was great. I couldn’t see it. I had to look it up. But it could be great again. She just needs a little help from her friends. And if Isaac Hayes isn’t too busy…

ahream Dispatches from the City of Angels I'm a mystery writer living in and writing about Los Angeles. You can catch my short story, "Running Venice," in the new anthology LAndmarked for Murder. Look for it in bookstores and on Amazon.com now. In the meantime, feel free to poke around. Over at my website you can find even more blog entries than I could fit here, as well as a few other ramblings. Enjoy and come back often.
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