not the bodega in question, but a famous one at Las Palmas and Fountain.
And why the future belongs to her.
I was at the bodega across the street from where I work part-time in East Hollywood. I go there on my work days to buy a soda, usually (OK, I can’t be Mr. Healthy all the time! at least it’s always diet soda) before repairing over to the LACC quad to eat my bag lunch and watch the college boys.
On Saturdays there’s a different, younger girl working behind the counter. A younger relative of the reticent, older woman who works there during the week? Who knows.
The future belongs to this Saturday girl because:
- she is bilingual if not more, with no trace of an accent when she’s speaking English
- she is multi-cultural, clearly comfortable relating to the neighborhood kids in Spanish and joking around with a middle-aged white guy in English
- she grew up with agency in both a traditionally American world (probably through the public school system) and an old world immigrant one
- Her beautiful brown face of the future of Los Angeles, and the future leadership of Los Angeles
I imagine she’s only here on Saturdays because she’s in school the rest of the week. She won’t be working here at the bodega forever; her job will be downtown or in one of the other centers of creative work.
For all of the naysayers who decry the myth of the American Dream (and with good reason), this the real deal, the real American Dream, or some small part of it, made manifest and human and standing right in front of me.
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