Classic American West Coast Boxing

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PACHUCO BOOGIE
The Birth of Chicano R&B

By Lawrence R. Kay

When Los Angeles bandleader Don Tosti cut loose on the microphone in the historic 1948 session that would make him a star, popular music everywhere was going through radical changes. As the Second World War ended, so did the recording ban that had funneled vinyl into the war effort. Suddenly, all the pent-up creative growth of the early '40s exploded onto the postwar landscape. The hard-core jazz of the beboppers burned its legacy onto wax, along with newly electrified urban blues, the rustic rhythms of honky-tonk country, and the rowdy new R&B combos that took over where the big bands left off. But while hillbilly bands and African-American groups broke into the mainstream, the innovative efforts of Mexican Americans during the postwar era stayed well off the cultural radar. A new CD collection released on El Cerrito's Arhoolie label, Pachuco Boogie: The Original Historic Recordings, aims to correct all that, gathering together prime examples of the unique style that Latin hipsters like Tosti created -- the pachuco boogie.


A Mexican-American swing player originally from Texas, Tosti added his own distinctive touch to pop music's postwar crazy quilt with a dynamic R&B tune that melded raw, rocking jazz with the Chicano youth culture that had surfaced earlier in the decade. "Pachuco Boogie" was a novelty jive tune -- a bluesy number like those of Slim Gaillard or Louis Jordan -- which featured plenty of slang and a driving melodic beat. But unlike his African-American counterparts, Tosti sang in a rapid-fire, nearly impenetrable Spanish dialect known as calo, a streetwise slanguage he learned as a child in the barrios of El Paso, where he grew up.


"That was the first rap song sung in Spanish," says the 79-year-old Tosti, speaking from his home in Palm Springs. As he recalls the session from five decades back, the jazzman can still sing out all the lyrics. "It's about a guy from the country coming to LA to hang out and be cool: 'Vengo del paciente vez/Un lugar que le dicen El Paso ... I'm coming from El Paso/where pachucos like me come from/I came to LA, man, to show off my new clothes/because it's very cool.' "


Tosti, who counts himself as one of only a handful of Mexican Americans to succeed in the big band jazz scene, had tapped into the powerful new culture of the pachucos, or so-called "zoot-suiters." They were the first wave of young Latinos to assert themselves in American popular culture, adopting the hepcat style and flashy clothing of swing musicians such as Cab Calloway. They cruised into nightclubs and dance halls throughout the Southwest to take part in America's new youth culture. Many pachucos were also in tough, violent gangs, some of which moved into the Chicano neighborhoods of 1940s LA. The zoot-suiters gained notoriety in a series of wartime brawls fought against enlisted soldiers and sailors on leave in the big port city. Although the pachuco subculture met with harsh repression from the city's Anglo establishment, it persisted throughout WWII. By the time Tosti recorded his tune in '48, the scene was still going strong, waiting for something positive to rally around.


With "Pachuco Boogie," Don Tosti delivered the goods. The song is a wild mix of styles, with Tosti thumping the bass while singing in the sly, lusty style of the blues shouters. A second vocalist, Raul Diaz, takes a scat solo, joined by the honking saxophone of Bob Hernandez. Finally, pianist Eddie Cano -- later a pivotal figure in LA's Latin jazz scene -- provides an inventive melodic line based on interlocking chord patterns of Cuban son. Although the small combo hailed from Southern California, they were attuned to the changes in jazz that were brewing back East, like Dizzy Gillespie's collaborations with Afro-Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, and the explosive popularity of the mambo beat championed by Perez Prado and Tito Rodriguez. The ensemble playfully worked hints of Latin jazz into their choppy blues style, creating a new sound that was uniquely American and utterly hip.


The song was a surprise hit, selling nearly a million copies and spawning numerous imitations as well as follow-up records by Tosti and a host of like-minded Latino hipsters. Now, over fifty years later, Tosti's handful of pachuco singles have been collected together into Pachuco Boogie as part of an ongoing series exploring the Mexican-American musical heritage. Although Arhoolie founder Chris Strachwitz was reportedly resistant to including a set of the rowdy, chaotic pachuco swing into a series dominated by acoustic mariachi and ranchera songs, he was eventually won over by the album's compiler Chuy Varela, an East Bay radio DJ and cultural historian, and occasional Express contributor. After years of nagging the label head, the insistent jazz aficionado persuaded Strachwitz that the pachuco style was a vital part of the Mexican-American music legacy.


Varela has been a fan of Don Tosti's work since he first heard the song in the 1980s, when he worked on "La Onda Bajita," KPFA's long-lived low-rider show, which concentrates on the doo-wop, soul, and rock oldies favored by California's Latino cruisers. Speaking by telephone from his office at San Mateo jazz station KCSM, where he now works as the music director, Varela recalls the thrill he felt when he first laid eyes on the Tosti singles. A friend had taken him to prowl through the dusty bins of Jack's Record Cellar, a tiny San Francisco music shop famous for its huge collection of rare 78 rpm singles.


"We were just digging, and all of a sudden I find this thing that says 'Pachuco Boogie,' and also one called 'El Tirili' and 'Guisa Gacha.' I thought, 'Wow!' because this was the language I had grown up hearing when I was a kid. We went over to my friend's house where he had a 78 set up, and we went crazy."


Soon after that, Varela heard Strachwitz, another KPFA DJ, playing other pachuco hits by Lalo Guerrero, an East Coast hipster whose novelty drug song "Marijuana Boogie" is perhaps the most infamous of the pachuco swing tunes (due in no small part to a revival on hippie-era underground radio). For Varela, hearing this music was an epiphany, revealing a bridge between the jazz age and the rock and doo-wop classics that he and his friends were playing on the radio. "All of a sudden I found this connection, this missing link, between Richie Valens and the groups in the '30s that were putting the acoustic corridos into a modern context," he says. "I began tracing how Mexican Americans in particular got enamored with African-American popular music, and how the oldies fed into low-rider culture."


Varela says that the pachuco music was the first instance of Mexican-American culture bursting into the mainstream, and being heard on its own terms. Throughout the 1930s and '40s, deep shifts took place within Mexican-American immigrant culture, as the traditional accordion-led bandas began absorbing the influences around them. In Texas and the Southwest, Mexican music cross-pollinated with country and blues, as well as the Cuban rhythms that sparked dance crazes throughout the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. Varela says this was all a natural outgrowth of America's cross-cultural blossoming, although the innovative pachuco bands were frequently dismissed because the musicians were Chicanos. "A lot of people used to put it down and say it was kind of a wannabe thing, but as it went along, they refined the music and made it into something unique."


Still, Varela knew from the strong response to his radio shows that there was an audience eager to rediscover these recordings. So he approached Strachwitz about adding an album of pachuco swing to the already-eclectic Arhoolie catalogue. The collaboration brought together some of the rarest 78s from the 1948-52 heyday of the nearly-forgotten Chicano R&B scene, including several Lalo Guerrero singles and the irresistibly bizarre "Frijole Boogie," recorded by Bay Area jazz guitarist Jorge Cordoba.


While Varela gathered the swing tunes, Strachwitz dug into his huge archive of Tex-Mex 78s to add several rare recordings of lesser-known Texas conjuntos that blended blues riffs into their border music. Equally striking are topical ranchero songs, such as Lydia Mendoza's "Los Pachucos," which deplored the zoot-suiters as a bunch of lazy potheads tarnishing the good name of hard-working Latinos everywhere. Like the Chicano student activists of the '60s, the unapologetic, euphoric outlandishness of the pachucos generated bitter tension inside the Mexican-American community. A split developed between assimilationists who struggled to keep a low profile, and younger Latinos who wanted to assert themselves in the face of the mainstream culture.


This rift was familiar to Don Tosti, who attracted constant criticism as a famous musician who embodied the new youth culture. He ruefully recalls how actor Leo Carrillo, who played the thickly accented, stereotypical Mexican sidekick Pancho in the Cisco Kid adventures, once approached him at a gala event in Los Angeles. "I was at the Olympic Auditorium in 1948, and Leo Carrillo came up and cussed me out because I was 'downgrading' the Mexican people," he says. "I just looked at him and smiled -- I smiled because I wasn't going to tell him to go fornicate off -- he was older than I was and I wanted to respect him. But I was just a kid playing original music that represented my perceptions of youth, and, hey, I was part of America, too."


Tosti's career move into R&B came after years of being one of the most successful Mexican-American jazz artists. A child prodigy, Edmundo Martinez Tostado grew up in El Paso's tough El Segundo barrio, the birthplace of the American pachuco gangs, and his single-parent mother pushed him to pursue music as a way out of the ghetto life. Classically trained, he played the violin with the El Paso Symphony when he was only ten years old, but when the Tostado family moved to Southern California in the late '30s, the teenager discovered a new passion -- jazz music -- and organized his first dance band while attending LA's Roosevelt High School. Somewhere along the way he adopted the stage name of Don Tosti ("I wanted it to sound more Italian," he laughs, "because no one thought Mexicans could play jazz") and gained a reputation as a solid player on the local scene.


By chance, the legendary trad-jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden heard Tosti perform during the early days of World War II, and offered him a gig playing bass in his touring band. Although Tosti had planned to finish college, the $250 a week Teagarden offered him -- a princely sum back then -- was too good to pass up. He went on the road, stayed with Teagarden for a few years, and then worked with several of the leading big band orchestras. After the war, Tosti became part of Les Brown's Band of Renown and in 1948 found himself playing a gig at UC Berkeley's Pauley Ballroom, where he decided to try and find his estranged father, a traveling soldier who had abandoned Tosti's mother decades before. The young musician cracked open the local phone book and easily spotted his father, Don Ramon, who lived in Oakland along with Tosti's two previously unknown younger siblings, both from a later marriage. Although they had never met, Tosti thought for sure that his dad would be impressed to find his son playing in one of the hottest dance bands in the country. Instead, Don Ramon chided him for not leading a band of his own. "My father talked me into writing Latin music," recalls Tosti. "He said, 'Hey, it's great you're in this guy's band, but you should be making your own stuff instead.' "


But Don Ramon turned out to be right. When "Pachuco Boogie" became a hit, Tosti became a top draw on the booming Latin circuit, headlining at the fabled Hollywood Palladium, as well as huge venues in the Bay Area such as San Francisco's Latin-American Union Hall, El Centro Social Obrero, and Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland. At the time, Cuban dance music was a nationwide craze, and Latin jazz was being pioneered by fiery bebop combos of Machito and Dizzy Gillespie. Don Tosti and his pachuco contemporaries offered something different from these island-based styles -- a vibrant homegrown style that reflected the culture of the Mexican-American immigrant community. When Tosti played the Palladium, fans would drive in from as far away as the Imperial Valley just to see their hero play and to cut loose at a pachuco hop.


Tosti rode the wave for as long as he could, but as the pachuco boogie scene petered out and the mambo and rock crazes of the '50s gathered steam, he returned to his first love: jazz. Tosti recorded a few more records under his own name, and worked steadily as an arranger for various bands and TV shows throughout the decade. Perhaps the highpoint of his post-pachuco career came when he worked as a bassist on two of Perez Prado's best-selling albums, Voodoo Suite and Havana 3am. That's Tosti you see silhouetted with a stand-up bass on one of the album covers, and he helped arrange much of the music as well. Later, Tosti retired and moved from LA to Palm Springs, where he now lives, not far from his own plaque on the desert city's glitzy Walk of Stars.


Now, decades after the youthful, freewheeling recording sessions of the Pachuco era, Tosti says he's delighted to see his old songs back in print, and to have them appreciated by a new generation of music fans. He looks to the success of old-timers like Ruben Gonzales in Cuba after the release of the various Buena Vista Social Club albums and wonders if a similar revival of LA's Latin blues scene might also be around the corner. "It's very flattering," he laughs, "especially after being dormant for so many years. You know, Lalo Guerrero is still appearing in the zoot suits and singing the songs, and he's 85 years old. I can't do that -- I did it when I was young, and I did it well. But that was how I heard music, how I wrote it, and how I recorded it. So I'm glad that people are becoming aware that the Mexicans had that kind of influence and had high-class swing. Just listen to it: it may be a 52 year-old song, but it swings its ass, baby! It's sure better than a lot of the shit they're doing now!"

[kikibalt]

East L.A. getting a long-overdue face-lift

Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

The arch is an iconic structure on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, which is an important thoroughfare in the development of the Latino community. There is an effort under way to redevelop blighted areas of the historic boulevard.

Millions are being spent in the area along Whittier Boulevard that in its heyday was a center of Latino pride and activism.
By Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The padlock swinging from the gate suggested that there was once something special in this place, something to keep, something to guard. But whatever magic there might have been was long gone by the time Frankie Firme arrived this week, stepping through a hole in the fence into weeds so dense they muffled the bustle of his beloved East L.A.

In the back of the lot, arsonists had gotten to one abandoned shack and gang bangers to another, peeling back its corrugated walls to paint their hieroglyphics inside.

"Sad," Firme said. He's 52 now, an influential disc jockey and Chicano music historian. He sees urban blight here like anyone else, but at least his view comes with a soundtrack. Even now, with his shoes crunching on broken bottles, he can't help but hear it: "Let's take a trip down Whittier Boulevard!"

That introduction, shouted by an East L.A. band called Thee Midniters, was the opening of the instrumental song "Whittier Boulevard." In 1965, cruisers, low-riders and brown-is-beautiful pioneers made the song an Eastside anthem -- and cemented Whittier Boulevard itself as a defining pathway in the development of Latino Los Angeles.

Today, at long last, the boulevard is getting a face-lift.

It would be a stretch to call it a revitalization project because much of the street -- a 16-mile thoroughfare stretching from downtown Los Angeles through Montebello, Pico Rivera and Whittier and into the northern tip of Orange County -- was never much to look at.

Still, tens of millions of public and private dollars have begun filtering in along the boulevard, targeting unkempt medians, crumbling curbs, abandoned lots. There are dozens of condos, apartments and houses going up, and officials have hatched plans for nearly a dozen mixed-use projects in coming years, with European-style, street-level shops and restaurants below homes.

If it all falls into place, it will be the largest civic commitment to the boulevard since the first asphalt was poured. Perhaps the boulevard -- long maligned and neglected but arguably as important to El Movimiento as any school walkout or farmworker rally -- is finally getting its due.

Rebuilding the boulevard will be a daunting task. Evidence of that is everywhere.

It's in the bathroom of a McDonald's near Atlantic Boulevard, in East L.A., where competing gangs have put graffiti on the door, floor, walls, sink, soap dispenser, toilet seat and toilet paper dispenser.

It's down the street at the Golden Gate Theater, glorious when it opened in 1927 and now empty, stripped of its ornate facade and browned by age and smog.

It's in the city of Whittier, near Whittier Boulevard and Colima Road, where development is so uneven that there is a sex-toy shop next to a children's furniture store.

It's in the abandoned lot that Firme walked through this week. In the early 1960s, he said, the lot was one of a handful of hot spots where a new culture was developing around the twin pillars of Chicano music and cars.

It might not look like much now, he said, but back then one of the little buildings on the lot -- the one since torched by arsonists -- was home to a thriving bootleg business that churned out tapes and eight-track recordings of Chicano bands. They included Thee Midniters -- two E's in "Thee" to avoid litigation with The Midnighters -- Cannibal & The Headhunters and The Premiers.

The other building was a makeshift garage. Cruisers brought in cars to get them souped up, sometimes with "cherry bombs" -- a reverse muffler of sorts that gave cars a loud and illegal brap-brap-brap sound -- or by lowering the bodies of cars nearly to the ground.

Those who could not afford to lower their cars in a garage did it the old-fashioned way: by driving with chunks of concrete in their trunks.

Every weekend, cruisers would gather -- many of them at a staging area around Calvary Cemetery in East L.A. -- and then "take a trip down Whittier Boulevard."

Similar cultures existed elsewhere, of course. Here, though, cruising meant far more than a mere distraction. Firme noted that when he was young, his father -- a butcher -- could not secure financing to buy a new car because of his ethnicity. So fixing up older cars became an exercise in pride. A nice car represented freedom, and promise.

"The whole thing was about mobility," said Carlos Montes, 60, who cruised back then and went on to become a prominent Latino leader and activist. "You might live in the barrio -- but you had a car."

Pride in cars inspired pride in ethnicity and heritage, and the boulevard took on a seminal role in the development of the Eastside.

It was the site of numerous protests and rallies, including an infamous day in August 1970 when a protest against the Vietnam War turned violent. By the end of the day, three people were dead, including Los Angeles Times columnist Ruben Salazar, who also was news director at Spanish-language television station KMEX-TV.

The 1980s brought the installation of a landmark steel entry arch over the boulevard in East L.A., still a powerful symbol of pride.

You can map the effort of Latino families to chase down prosperity and stability along Whittier Boulevard; many of them started in downtown Los Angeles around World War II, then moved to East L.A., then to Montebello, then to Whittier, then, perhaps, to the hills of La Habra or deeper into Orange County.

"This was the spot," Firme said. "This was the migration route."

Today, Whittier Boulevard is like an old man's spine: still prideful -- exhibited in tiny shops whose signs say Lolita's Tamales, Vasquez Shoe Repair, Armando's Bakery -- but bowed from the weight it has carried over the years.

Past efforts at rehabilitation along the boulevard have failed, but there is enough of a critical mass of face-lift projects and development proposals this time to offer hope.

In East L.A., county officials are preparing a $4.5-million project. Workers will repair curbs and sidewalks, add palm trees and new bus benches.

Separately, code-enforcement officials are conducting a scrub of stores along the boulevard near the 605 Freeway; dozens of shopkeepers have been asked to correct signage, parking and other problems.

Montebello has hatched an ambitious overhaul. Toward the eastern city limit, boxer Oscar De La Hoya is backing the development of 80 Mediterranean-style condominiums.

The city recently spent nearly $12 million on a beautification project, and construction was completed recently on a project at Whittier and Montebello boulevards that includes 55 senior-housing rental units and 23,000 square feet of commercial space.

In Whittier, between Virginia and 1st avenues, officials held a groundbreaking two weeks ago for a $40-million, 96-unit town house development. The city also is preparing to bury power lines and make other improvements along a stretch of the boulevard between Santa Gertrudes Avenue and the La Habra city line.

"People are rediscovering these communities," said Jeff Collier, Whittier's head of community development. "A lot of people are realizing that this can be a wonderful place to be.

[email protected]

[kikibalt]

Courtesy of Bruce Smith




Jimmy Lester was actually a middleweight who fought out of S.F. from 1963-1973, ending with a record of 41 wins with 31 KOs 20 losses 2 by KO and 2 draws. I read a quote once that said, "Nobody comes out of a Lester fight unmarked."
Jimmy, known as the Bayview Blaster was the son of Jimmy "Top Row" Allen who also fought under the name Vernon Lester during the years 1943-1952, he lost a split decision to Jake LaMotta and ended his career with a KO loss to Sugar Ray Robinson. The nickname "Top Row" has two stories behind it, one is that he hit so hard that you could hear it from the "Top Row" and the other was that is was a certain position he held in a local jail. Since "Top Row" only had eight KOs in fifty fights you can come to your own conclusion.
Jimmy Lester Vs. Denny Moyer was the first professional fight I ever attended and at the age of nine I was hooked on boxing for life. I later met Jimmy while training at Newman and Herman's Gym in S.F. he was one of those people with a naturally muscular build and always looked good training and was good to us younger guys, a real gym favorite.
Jimmy fought many contenders and a couple of champions, I believe he was once ranked as high as number 4 or 5 middleweight by The Ring. Amongst his opponents were Curtis Cokes, Luis Rodriguez, Bennie Briscoe, Nate Collins (cross town rival), Charlie Shipes who he drew with, Lonnie Harris, Stan Harrington, Rafael Gutierrez, Art Hernandez, Charlie Austin and of course Andy Heilman twice.
The first bout with Heilman was the fight of the year in the Bay Area, promoter Don Chargin said it was one of the best fights ever in the Bay Area and poet Tom Smario wrote this about the fight;
"Heilman threw punches like a claustrophobic madman with a baseball bat and Lester was; like a man swinging an axe in wide arcs and roundhouse that tear meat from the bone."
Jimmy's biggest win was over Florentino Fernandez who had koed future light-heavyweight champ Jose Torres, Lester Koed Fernandez in the second round and the buzz in the crowd was "fix" but in the morning paper they read that Fernandez had a broken jaw and Lester had a broken hand.
I last ran into Jimmy in a seedy part of San Francisco he was standing at a residential hotel where he lived and I stopped to say hi to him, he would never have recognized me even if he hadn't suffer several strokes but when I told him that I had seen him fight many times he pulled me into the lobby and told everyone sitting around that I recognized him, he was very happy that someone had stopped to say hi, and I told everyone there what a great fighter he had been, I slipped him twenty bucks and told him thanks for some great memories.
Jimmy died of a heart attack in 2006

Bobbin & Weavin

[kikibalt]

Alex will be in the hospital for at least a week. He is being moved
out of intensive care tonight, but he has developed an infection which
has to be treated. He also needs to be able to get up and move
around. If people want to send him a card, send it to:

Alex Ramos (Patient)
Simi Valley Adventist Hospital
2975 North Sycamore Drive
Simi Valley, CA 93065

[dagosd2000]

Alex will be in the hospital for at least a week. He is being moved
out of intensive care tonight, but he has developed an infection which
has to be treated. He also needs to be able to get up and move
around. If people want to send him a card, send it to:

Alex Ramos (Patient)
Simi Valley Adventist Hospital
2975 North Sycamore Drive
Simi Valley, CA 93065

Thanks Buddy.

[Randyman]

Alex will be in the hospital for at least a week. He is being moved
out of intensive care tonight, but he has developed an infection which
has to be treated. He also needs to be able to get up and move
around. If people want to send him a card, send it to:

Alex Ramos (Patient)
Simi Valley Adventist Hospital
2975 North Sycamore Drive
Simi Valley, CA 93065

Thanks for the update Frank. That's good news.

[dagosd2000]

Went to the pool this afternoon.It was hot and humid. Some nice little numbers running around ,but for the life of me,they're too fast for these old legs. Their minds are all over the place. Smoking. Talking on the cell phones. Very nice to look at,but way too anxious for me. Don't have time to dance to their music. Besides I don't like their songs.

There's this one couple though that I see every so often. The guy works at Juvenile Hall. I used to work there,so we share some stories. His wife is very nice,and for reaching middle age has kept up appearances. i'd say she's a lot younger than her husband.

Well they're moving to Cabo San Lucas.They're building a home in this tract project in the center of town. She's talked to me about the upcoming move. Her daughter and grand daughter live there,and she and her husband want to be near them. Besides they say they can't afford to buy or build a house in California.

They're nervous about moving to Mexico. They're both Anglos .They are apprehensive about the cultural and language transition. They feel they need to do American things to survive. Find other Americans. Shop ay Costco. Play golf. Cabo caters practically to exclusively to Americans. Yet this American/Cabo world they feel isn't sufficient.

I told them that if they try to protect themselves in a bubble,they'll be back in the States. I told them to open up their thinking to the Mexican way of life. You will be in Mexico. The way of life is very simple. Family,religion,food,friends,and taking things in casually. Being non judgemental. Realizing certain things can't be controlle.They need to just give it a chance. I told them that Mexicans don't hate them. In fact ,often Mexicans will go out of their way to show that they are hospitable,polite,and people of integrity. I often think that Mexicans who come here feel unwarranted social pressure,thus seeking other people of from Mexico,and even other people from the same state and even the same town.

The language? Don't speak Spanish? I'll start you out. "Gracias" and "Por Favor."(Thank you and please) go a long way in Mexico. Try the local dishes. Listen to the Mariachis.Don't be afraid to go to where the local people live. You'll loosen up and relax. You'll be more and more at touch with what is basic and important. Family. Religion. Children. I'm not saying it isn't practiced elsewhere,but maybe in a country that is mostly poor,the poor realize what's important.

[Rick Farris]

There is a legend about Nelson at the Willard Dempsey fight.
It seems before the fight started and unknown to the masses attending that fight, The Battler, who was not the most hygenic guy in the world, took a dip in a huge vat of leomanade that was to be sold as refreshment that day.
Gotta love it.

The story is true. Nelson was down on his luck, and promoter Tex Rickard gave him a job helping with the construction of bleachers for the fight. It took the workers right thru the day of the fight to finish their project, and after a long day's work, Nelson saw the large vat of lemonade delivered to the site. Dirty, hot & sweaty, Nelson jumped into the large vat of ice cold lemonade. Nelson cooled off, cleaned off a bit in a sticky sense, and then went on his way. The concessionaires saw the former champ climbing out of the barrel, shook their heads, and proceeded to serve it to the public.

-Rick

[Rick Farris]

Dear Rick:

I very much appreciated the recounting of your boxing experiences during your days in the sun and particularly when you fought at the Olympic. It brought back so many memories to myself, not as a prize fighter, but as a devoted fan and budding historian, watching televised fights with Dad, many of which took place at the Olympic Auditorium. Invariably, he would say, upon hearing that the fight was taking place at the Olympic in Los Angeles, he would tell my brother and myself, "I remember fighting at the Olympic." We have a taped conversation of him describing some wars that took place during his fights at the Olympic, the impression it made upon him, and a description of sparing with heavyweight Dynamite Jackson.

I've taken the liberty to follow-up on your recollections to provide you with the following newspaper account of a fight which took place in January of 1929 between Young Firpo and Marvin Rife. To set the stage somewhat, Young Firpo began his career in 1924 up to the Los Angeles venture he had fought the vast majority of his fights in the Coeur d'Alene Mining District, the Spokane area, Montana, Seattle and Tacoma. He knew the importance of fighting in the Olympic and the need to make an impression upon the Californian crowd. Going into the Rife fight, Firpo had engage in 44 fights and recorded 24 knockouts. And did he ever! Rife became KO victory No. 25. Here's the fight coverage:

Young Firpo Makes a Hit With California Ring Fans

Young Firpo, the Wild Bull of Burke and idol of the Coeur d'Alene district's ring fans has won favor in southern California as a result of his two round knockout of Marvin Rife, Los Angeles light-heavyweight in a bout last Tuesday at the Olympic auditorium, Los Angeles. California sport writers who saw the fracas have nothing but praise for the squat Italian boy from the Burke canyon.

There facts are show in four newspaper clippings received from Los Angeles today by Wallace friends of Young Firpo.

Stub Nelson, writing in the Los Angeles Record, compares the Firpo-Rife bout to the historic Luis Angel Firpo-Jack Dempsey bout of several years ago, and praises the Burke battler as follows in a story headed "Firpo Scores Hit a la Dempsey:

"The thrill is the thing --- especially in boxing. The story of why Dempsey has always had such a hold on the public was pictured --- in a smaller way --- at the Olympic auditorium last night.

"It happened in the special. Young firpo, a squat-built powerful Italian, with barrel chest and bowed legs, started out fast in his bout with Marvin Rife.

"Just when he looked a sure winner, he ran into a right hand and was flattened out in the slag. He barely got up at nine.

"The young Italian --- with his pawing gorilla-like arms, got off the canvas and floored Rife --- knocked him staff as the bell rang.

"Firpo staggered toward the wrong corner and Rife was carried to his.

"There you had a replica of the Dempsey-Firpo fight.

"The crowd didn't care about classy boxers then. Men stood on their seats and yelled --- throwing programs and hats in the air. That action is a fight always grips a human being.

"The world remembers how Dempsey bounced Willard down seven times in one round at Toledo. And they also know that Jack climbed back into a New York ring and felled the huge ox, Firpo.

"Such stuff made Dempsey a million dollar attraction.

"There was more yelling after one round of the Firpo-Rife preliminary bout than there has been in dozen of classy main events.

Young Firpo means something here now. He can come back as soon as he chooses."

In another section of the Record, Stub Nelson also wrote on the Firpo-Rife bout as follows:

"Young Firpo and Marvin rife, light heavies, put on the big thrill of the night. They met in the six-round special. Firpo was out cold near the end of the first session but got up and floored rife. The bell saved the latter.

"He didn't recover and Firpo floored him three times in the second round."

Another Los Angeles sport writer saw the Firpo-Rife bout as follows, and headed his write up with the heading above: Rip-Snorting Bout ---

"Young Firpo and Marvin Rife put on a rip-snorter. Both were down in the first round. Firpo was flat on his back and looked dead as a pickled mackerel. At nine he was up and planted Rife just as the bell rang. In the second round he had Rife on the floor twice for nine counts and the referee halted the battle."

Still another writer saw the bout this way:

"The main event was all but over shadowed by the special event involving a couple of sluggers known to the annals of the racket as Young Firpo and Marvin Rife. Firpo was forcing the issue and pummeling Rife all over the ring when suddenly a right hand shot to the chin and down went Firpo, stretched flat on his back. Up at nine, Firpo went after his man in the second and finally got him, knocking him through the ropes for count of eight, and finally slapping Rife silly --- so silly that the engagement was stopped. The customers stood on the hind legs and howled. You'd have thought it was a football game."

And finally, yet another writer captured the excitement in this manner:

"In a knockdown drag-out affair, Young Firpo managed to score a technical kayo over Marvin Rife after a short period of the second round had witnessed plenty of action. In the first canto, Rife landed a hard right to the chin that sent Firpo to the floor for a nine count.

"The fallen fighter arose, shook his head and tossed his fists into the face of Rife, who got in the way of a heavy right hand --- Marvin fell like a log and only the round bell saved him.

"Coming out for the second canto, Firpo piled in again and soon had his opponent down on the floor, where the fight was stopped. Marvin was in no shape to continue.

For the record, Firpo did return for other engagements in California. Shortly after the slugfest with Rife, Young Firpo decisioned Jimmy Barry at the Hollywood American Legion, and then beat Joe Woods at the Olympic Auditorium. The fights were broadcast over KFWB, Los Angeles. The announcer in the Barry fight, as heard in the greater Spokane and Wallace, Idaho, area yelled to an excited group of listeners within the Coeur d'Alene Mining District: "Whoever named Young Firpo the Wild Bull of Burke was way off. The way that boy punched could not be called wild in any sense of the word!"

Firpo then went on to fight at the Olympic Auditorium again garnering a decision over Tom Patrick. Despite countless invitations to move to the Los Angeles area to pursue his career, Firpo was a product of the rugged mountains of Burke, Idaho and his temperament would not allow him to move away from the environment that gave him strength and solitude and he would be on the road back to his northern Idaho haunts immediately following any out of the area encounter ... be it Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Portland, or Seattle.

Sincerely yours,


John A. Bardelli
Attorney at Law
606 North Pines Road, Suite 201
Spokane, WA 99206
(509)926-9566
(509)926-1564 fax
[email protected]

John, thanks for sharing that with us. Some of you on this thread may or may not know that Mel Epstein was one of Young Firpo's trainer. More importantly, Mel was also his friend. As you know Mel Also trained Rick Farris, he was also my trainer. Mel could and would talk for hours about Young Firpo. I wish I would have written it all down back then because time has erased most of it. What I do remember is that when Mel spoke of Firpo his eyes would light up, the laughter would flow and I knew that he was remembering the best days of his life, those days shared with Firpo. He was filled with admiration for him. Sometimes when he was done talking I could also sense a little sadness, knowing and remembering that it so long ago, ...and gone. With respect to every fighter that has trained under Mel Epstein, Young Firpo was the most meaningful, his favorite, the one that had his heart. It was no secret to any of us. We knew that none of us could never fill Young Firpo's shoes. Not in substance and not in Mel's heart. John, because of Mel I will always feel a connection to your father.

Randy

Randy, you are so right in describing Mel's admiration & respect of his greatest fighter, Young Firpo. Mel tried to use Firp as an example of qualities that would further me in my career, and today, I realize just how correct he was. You & I were exposed to a true gift to boxing, a bona fide "old school" teacher, a personality from a lost era, a greater era than will ever exist again. If you and I didn't reach it to the top of boxing, it was not the fault of Mel Epstein. Much of what we write today is a result of the "gift" we were exposed to. Getting to know John Bardell is another gift. John's knowledge, personal education and research has provided me with the opportunity to not only read about past greats, such as Jersey Joe Walcott (to name one of many), but to also hear words right from their mouths. You see, what John shares is reproduced from recorded personal interviews he has done live, or over the phone.

Randy, on November 15th, you will have the opportunity to sit with John at our table, the night "Young Firpo" is inducted into the WBHOF. When you talk with John, he will tell you about his last interview (of several) with our mentor, Mel Epstein. I know he'll also ask, "Randy, would you like to hear Mel's voice again?" If your answer is "yes", as I know it will be, John will share his recordings of Mel's interview. I'll never forget that face, or that voice, or that gruff personality, and I know it's the same with you. We spent a lot of time with Epstein, or "Eppy" as Dempsey used to call him. He was an unforgetable personality. In honor of our friend and trainer, Mel Epstein, his greatest boxer will be inducted into the WBHOF.

In due course, Mel will likely be inducted himself, as will our own, Frank Baltazar. I learned one thing many years ago, I CAN acomplish ANYTHING I put my mind to. And when it comes to HOF induction for those who truly deserve it, today I'm in the right place at the right time! Too many "so-called" boxing legends are being inducted into places where they really don't deserve to be. Regardless of what people think, I hold an edge in this arena, and my belief is "Merit over Politics". I cannot be bought, the cards I hold are not for sale. There are only six of us on the WBHOF selection commitee, and we decide who gets on the ballot. Besides myself, Armando Muniz is also on the commitee. Next year, Frank Baltazar & Mel Epstein's name will be on the ballot, wait & see.

-Rick

[Rick Farris]

The top 25 of the last 25
The city has been a main character in many films. Our film crew picks the best. It's a tough list to crash.
1. L.A. Confidential (1997)

She is as fitting a metaphor for the city as anything ever hatched by Hollywood: Kim Basinger's high-class call girl Lynn Bracken in the neo-noir potboiler "L.A. Confidential." Tragic yet glamorous, she's a cipher for intense desire and empty idol worship (dolled-up to resemble '40s ingenue Veronica Lake), a classic femme fatale director Curtis Hanson calls "the emotional center of the film."

"The character represents how I feel about Los Angeles and what I want people to feel about L.A.," Hanson said. "She's a natural beauty with a phony image, a disguise that's all about selling it to the suckers. But when you go beyond the image, as when you go beyond L.A. as the city of manufactured illusion, the character is not only beautiful but totally self-aware. Underneath, she knows the truth about who she is. Everybody else is struggling to figure it out."

The cinematic adaptation of James Ellroy's 1990 novel -- which stars Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Kevin Spacey as late '40s Angeleno detectives out to solve a series of related murders -- masterfully interweaves police corruption, tabloid scandal-mongering, racial tension and racketeering, all set at the gates of Tinseltown's dream factory. And it couldn't take place (let alone have been shot) anywhere but here.

After "exhaustive" location scouting, filming took place in such beloved Hollywood watering holes as the Frolic Room and the Formosa Cafe, around Elysian Park where pockets of period-perfect architecture still stand, and Hancock Park, where exteriors for Basinger's character's house were shot near the Wilshire Country Club. As well, architect Richard Neutra's iconic Lovell Health House in Los Feliz doubles as the home of Pierce Patchett (the film's princely pimp played by David Strathairn), the only movie filmed there.

"The movie truly started with L.A.," said Hanson, who grew up in Tarzana. "I wanted to capture the city of my childhood memories. And I wanted to take a hard look at the dark side -- the booming economy, the exploding population, the corruption and racism -- as well as certain problems that are still with us. I wanted to capture the spirit of this place. The optimism and energy was real. It still is."



On the Q.T.: Production on "L.A. Confidential" prevented the destruction of the famed Formosa Cafe. "Warner Hollywood Studios owned the [sound] stages where we were shooting the 'Badge of Honor' scenes and they owned the property across the street -- the Formosa Cafe," Hanson said. "The studio wanted to tear it down and build a parking lot. I'm one of the advisors on the L.A. Conservancy. So I told them about the plans, they got on the case and prevented Warners from doing it."

I worked on this film and also had an opportunity to meet and talk with James Ellroy, who is an amazing personality in his own right. Ellroy's mother was raped and murdered in the San Gabriel Valley when he was a young boy. His father was an avid boxing fan and would take his son to the Olympic to watch boxing during "our" era. When Ellroy and I connected on boxing, the conversation took over his interest on the set. Ellroy KNOWS boxing, and would be such a great contributor to this thread, because he knows it like we do. Of course, I really didn't get to know him beyond a few "on set" coversations, but he's a guy like us. What a past this guy has! He struggled a great deal in his early life, but he's landed on his feet and now runs with the top dogs in Hollywood. Could't happen to a better guy and what a writer!

-Rick

[Rick Farris]

I'm going to take Rick down memory lane.


the El Monte Legion Stadium

You got me with this shot Frank. I'll never forget the place. The walls were literally 4 feet thick, and in the early 70's, when it finally met with the wrecking ball, that ball bounced off those thick walls like a flyweight's punch against Dempsey's chin.

I fought there in 1968-thru-69, as a junior glover and later an amateur. I fought Andy "The Hawk" Price there in a Jr. Am exhibition, and later won a Southern Pacific AAU Championship inside it's walls. One night in early 1969, Frank Baltazar and I were in the house the night the Quarry family started a riot when they went to war with the family of some hillbilly that Mike outscored in a match. I was in the ring for a team photo when the riot broke out, and Frank Baltazar had to jump into the ring to avoid the battle. My manager Johnny Flores tried to break up the fight, but when he saw Ma Quarry get involved, he knew he was in over his head and called in the police riot squad. Fighting the Quarry boys was a challenge, but squaring off with the women was a big mistake.

By the way, Frank, do you remember the American flag that hung from the wall? Before the first bout, a scratched phonograph record of the National Anthem was played and small electric fan blew air into flag, making it ripple as the music played. A bit tacky, but patriotic all the same. My cousin had been killed in Viet Nam two days before my first fight there, and that silly little flag and the crude recording of the National Anthem motivated me to fight a little stronger.

-Ricardo

[Rick Farris]

Tony Baltazar, Alex Ramos and Jerry Cheatham

Guys with smiles like this should stick around for a while. Hang in there Alex.

Amen to that!!

Alex is a guy who truly helps fighters who can no longer help themselves. I'm praying for his complete recovery. God Bless Alex Ramos!

[Rick Farris]

A city grows in East L.A.?
Residents of the area, long known for its activism and culture, think incorporation could end neglect and solve some local problems.
By Jim Newton, Times Staff Writer

'This has engaged the community. The demographics are there. The history is there. The reason is there.'
— State Sen. Gloria Romero drawing upon a rich history of activism and a nagging sense of neglect, residents and leaders of East Los Angeles have launched a campaign for incorporation, a move that would create a new city in a historic center of Mexican American culture.

The drive for East L.A. cityhood has grown from nascent to palpable in recent months, and advocates believe their goal, which many have nurtured for a generation, at last could be within reach.

Over the last few months, cityhood has been the subject of spirited community meetings — more than 300 people turned out for one session late last year — and increasingly active political talks. Just last week, leaders of the effort met with county officials to analyze the tax consequences of incorporation. Petitions could begin to circulate this spring, and it's possible that voters could consider the question later this year.

If they are successful, East L.A. would become a city of roughly 140,000 people, one of the 10 largest in Los Angeles County and one of the most overwhelmingly Mexican American cities in the United States. More important for many of those who believe in cityhood, its success would validate East L.A.'s long-standing place in the neighborhood culture of Los Angeles rather than continue its existence as a scrap of unincorporated land left behind as cities around it took shape.

State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), a leading proponent of the idea, says she has been struck by the intensity of the emotional response to it.

"This has engaged the community," Romero said last week. "The demographics are there. The history is there. The reason is there."

For many in East L.A., the promise of cityhood is long overdue. Indeed, for such a small slice of Greater Los Angeles — the community covers less than 10 square miles bordered by Boyle Heights and Monterey Park, Commerce and Montebello — East L.A. has made a sizable name for itself.

It is a thriving source of cultural life, a community as identifiable and coherent as the many others that make up modern Los Angeles: Hollywood or Bel-Air, say, or Van Nuys, Watts, Boyle Heights, Leimert Park or Mount Washington.

Given its demographics, East L.A. is politically significant as a laboratory for the growing electoral clout of Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans.

As such, its halls and public spaces are mandatory stops for aspiring politicians eager to demonstrate their support among Latinos. Last fall, Democrat Phil Angelides, whose gubernatorial campaign by then already was sputtering, attended an East L.A. Chamber of Commerce luncheon and tried vainly to elicit enthusiasm for his cause from a plainly skeptical audience.

Culturally, it has a different cachet. It has produced muralists and musicians, writers and chroniclers of Mexican American life for generations. One enduring contributor has been the band Los Lobos, whose members come from East L.A. and whose original name was "Los Lobos del Este Los Angeles."

Louie Perez, a founding member of Los Lobos, vividly recalls growing up on the edge of East L.A. — the smell of his mother's coffee blending with the scents from the tortilleria next door in the morning, the sounds of radio personality Elenita Salinas rousing him from bed. At night, he and his sister and friends would hear the backyard parties with mariachi bands as they made their way to the parking lot of the Johnson Market, where Thee Midnighters would be mobbed by young fans.

In those days, he said, "East L.A. was our entire universe…. Leaving it was like leaving the edge of the Earth."

As he grew older, Perez was immersed in the ferment that overtook his neighborhood. One afternoon in August 1970 he was riding his blue Stingray bicycle near Whittier Boulevard when he spotted smoke. A peaceful demonstration had escalated into a clash with L.A. County sheriff's deputies, and riots tore through East L.A. that day.

A few blocks away, a man shooed Perez from the Silver Dollar cantina, warning him that a man was dead inside. That man, journalist Ruben Salazar, had been killed by a deputy; 27 years later, Salazar remains a political martyr in East L.A.

Los Lobos formed in 1973, and the band's absorption of Mexican music into its American idiom immediately placed it in the cultural and political turbulence of the community. As the band developed, its members captured and amplified East L.A. culture, supplying a soundtrack to Chicano activism not unlike what Jimi Hendrix gave the Black Panthers. Through the years, Los Lobos has helped to extend that East L.A. culture around the world.

"I'll be looking for my old neighborhood my whole life," Perez said last week. "It was an incredible place to grow up."






Among the hallmark moments of East L.A. activism were the student walkouts of 1968, and many who live in the area today participated. Indeed, one young protester was none other than Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who cites that episode as a formative one in his young life.

Sal Castro led the walkout movement that year and remains a beloved figure in East LA. Last week, he was among the hundreds of people who turned out for the dedication of a new East L.A. "City Hall," the work of County Supervisor Gloria Molina, another veteran of the area.

Now 73, Castro can recall the days before freeways carved up East L.A., an era when the community felt more tight-knit. And he remembers the previous attempts at cityhood, including the promise that East L.A. would become part of Commerce, an idea bandied about but withdrawn when, Castro believes, the leaders of Commerce shrank from the idea of taking on such a large population of Mexican Americans.

Today, Castro believes that the community is ready to become its own city, not merely a part of one of its neighbors.

"Hell, yes," he said one day last week, surveying the crowd at the new City Hall. "Let's go for it."

Albert Palacios teaches government at Garfield High School, East L.A.'s high school, where he tutors his students on the history and potential of East L.A.'s incorporation efforts. Palacios took to the idea of cityhood some time ago and has become one of its most ardent advocates.

Palacios has been in East L.A. for decades. He witnessed the emergence of the Brown Berets in the mid-1960s, when that organization formed to agitate for the rights of Mexican Americans. He was there for the student walkouts and the protests over abuse at the hands of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department — and for the evolving atmosphere of demonstration that turned on the war in Vietnam.

Today, Palacios looks back on those years as a "very contentious time" but also one of solidifying community sentiment.

Molina agrees. East L.A., she notes with fondness, is an area forged in activism and protest, the same currents that have shaped her own life. As a young woman, she attended East Los Angeles College — which, curiously, is just outside East L.A. Molina is hardly blind to East L.A.'s difficulties: It has long suffered more than its share of gang violence and other crimes. As a young woman, she tutored gang youths nearby and witnessed the community's sense of neglect as well as its stubborn pride.

As a supervisor, Molina has taken special interest in the county's unincorporated areas, including East L.A. She presided over a long and concerted effort to bring a civic complex to the area, one for which ground was broken just last week. Among advocates of cityhood, many hasten to emphasize that they are happy with her representation of their area, though some worry about her ability to stay close to community issues when she represents roughly 2 million constituents across a wide swath of Los Angeles County.

Molina is uncommitted regarding cityhood for East L.A. She applauds the community spirit behind the idea but wonders whether the largely residential neighborhoods can supply enough tax revenue to support a city government, whether the retail areas clustered along Atlantic Boulevard can be beefed up enough to float a city where none has existed for so long.

"I'm not opposed to the community wanting to have its own mayor and city council members," Molina said last week. "I'm just concerned about the ability to pay for itself."

Where Molina has questions, however, Romero expresses confidence.

"I have no doubt that this is a self-sustaining community," she said. "This is prime property."

Whatever one thinks about East L.A.'s tax base, there is no denying the sense among its residents that a moment is at hand, that politics and population trends and culture have all coalesced in a surge of neighborhood pride.

When Molina opened the new government center last week, hundreds of residents turned out, many dressed up for the occasion. They cheered loudly as speakers hailed the coming of age of East L.A. and beamed with pride as speaker after speaker touted the facility as evidence of the community's growth and worth.

Standing off to the side, Palacios surveyed the crowd that cloudy morning and reflected on the decades of protest that had brought the community to where it is.

"People have mellowed," he said of East L.A. and its quest for cityhood. "People have matured. We're ready."



[email protected]

This Gringo says . . . "VIVA ELA!"

[bennie]

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy


"Laurel & Hardy"

By Diego

"Ollie, don't look now, but there's a man's hand hanging on to the foot of the bed." (Ollie's foot is sticking out at the end of the blankets, that's all.)

Says Ollie, after looking himself, his eyes widening: "Get that gun - and shoot to kill."

[bennie]

Great news about Alex. The man is still all fighter.

[Rick Farris]

Frank, Dagos & Randy . . .

This coming saturday, I'll attend a WBHOF board meeting and will receive the tickets for my two tables. Please contact me thru E-Mail ([email protected]) and provide your mailing address. As soon as I have the tickets and your addresses, I'll put them in the mail.

I'm looking forward to a great evening with a great group! My cousin, still photographer Dawn Paradis, will be flying in from Florida to shoot pics for my production company, and also for this thread. Cinematographer Greg Patterson will also be at our table, as he is a partner with Dan Hanley and I in our boxing film production company. Greg will be shooting interviews that Dan & I conduct thruout the day, as well as cover our boxrec group via his hi-def camera.

For those of you interested in a sample of Greg's non-boxing film industry work, check out the following link for a short clip of his talents behind a movie camera (and guys, you might enjoy seeing a couple of the ladies featured in the clip). Click on the link below, and when you reach the sight, click on "trailer" (Large). You'll discover his work is far beyond that of the typical documentary cameraman. (Just for the record, the lighting for Greg's feature film & commercial clips you'll see, are the work of yours truly.)

http://pattersondp.com/

-Rick

[bennie]

Boxing's golden boy Oscar De La Hoya makes what he claims to be a farewell ring appearance in Las Vegas in December against boxing's Bruce Lee, Manny Pacquiao, over 12 non-title rounds.
De La Hoya, 35 and a pro since 1992, is more preoccupied with promoting than fighting these days (he even promotes here, in conjunction with the ever-lovely Bob Arum) but gets the urge to dust off the gloves occasionally and you wonder if this is really the last one. He fought once in 2006, once in 2007 and once earlier this year, when he easily outscored Portland's immensely durable Steve Forbes over 12 rounds in May. That could and perhaps should have spelt a-d-i-o-s for Oscar, who outclassed Forbes from start to finish, but Forbes was no marquee opponent, no marquee payday (multi-millionaire Oscar clearly adores the dollar).
Enter Pacquiao.
The 29-year-old Filipino comes off a brilliant nine-round destruction of Chicago's brave and capable David Diaz in Las Vegas in June - an amazing debut at lightweight for Pacquiao who (like Oscar) has won major world titles with an almost staggering disregard for poundage, starting out as WBC flyweight champion back in 1998 and proceeding to titles at super-bantamweight, super-featherweight and now lightweight, courtesy of that win over Diaz (also for the WBC belt). For this one Manny jumps up two weight classes to welterweight; De La Hoya, a light-middleweight, drops down a single division. Six months ago, Pacquiao was fighting at super-featherweight. De La Hoya last fought at super-featherweight 14 years ago. David vs Goliath? No, but it is getting there.
Little Pacquiao actually turned pro at light-flyweight.
Frankly, this is a bad match and De La Hoya (and that man Arum) creates for himself a monster of a lose-lose situation in his final fling. If he takes Manny out, people will label him a bully, a big bully; if he struggles, people will say he struggled with a wee man; if he loses, and there are never any guarantees in a sport like boxing (and with a talent such as Pacquiao), people...
"My legacy is already cemented," says De La Hoya, dismissively. "You can't take back what I've accomplished in the ring."
In victory, as long as nobody gets hurt, Oscar can indeed look back with real satisfaction. The good-looking boy from a notorious Los Angeles barrio fought his way out by capturing Olympic gold as a teenager and a world title as a pro in just his 12th outing (at super-featherweight). He went on to capture genuine world titles at light, light-welter, welter, light-middle and even middleweight and still looks unmarked, testimony to his ability.
Rangy and skilful, with quick hands and a decent dig, Oscar lets the punches flow in dazzling combinations and is tough behind the glitter, the smile, the beautiful Puerto Rican wife, too. Only Philadelphia legend Hopkins has ever stopped him, and with a body shot, when De La Hoya went in with a man later to lift the Ring magazine light-heavyweight belt. His victims include Jorge Paez, Julio Cesar Chavez, Arturo Gatti, Ike Quartey, Pernell Whitaker, Fernando Vargas, Felix Sturm and Ricardo Mayorga.
Pacquiao?
Most people assume that the quicker, younger Asian will have his moments against the Californian - and he probably will, for a little while - but it is hard to empathise with those who visualise another Leonard-Hagler as Pacquiao's speed and skill, his terrific workrate, stretch an aging De La Hoya that bit too far. Even in defeat, Oscar was competitive with Hopkins and with the likes of Floyd Mayweather, Felix Trinidad, with Shane Mosley (twice). These are the kind of men you don't even relate to Pacquiao, given their size. Yes, I suppose one could argue southpaw "Pac Man" knows how to handle lanky punch-pickers in the De La Hoya mould (ish), having twice stopped Mexico's Erik Morales. He also holds two fabulous wins over Marco Antonio Barrera, one of them a stoppage. Earlier this year, though, Pacquiao struggled to a split decision over Juan Manuel Marquez, a smooth boxer like De La Hoya. He also struggled with tall Nedal Huseein back in 2000 in the Philippines, an Aussie who goes by the blood-curdling nickname of "Skinny". He lost a first fight to Morales.
Realistically, De la Hoya looks way too big and strong and heavy handed for Pacquiao, with 30 knockouts in 39 wins. The American is four inches taller, has a six-inch reach advantage, and one can only imagine how much heavier he will be on the night. De La Hoya has not been down to welter since 2001, when he stopped the swashbuckling Gatti in five rounds; Pacquaio, to risk repeating oneself, has never fought above lightweight - and only once at lightweight.
To adopt a boxing cliche: a good big 'un always beats a good little 'un. De La Hoya wears Pacquiao down and stops him.

[bennie]

Irish Bob Murphy


"Murphy"

By Diego

Ginger, fair-skinned and quick-tempered. Classic Irish.

[kikibalt]

Boxing's golden boy Oscar De La Hoya makes what he claims to be a farewell ring appearance in Las Vegas in December against boxing's Bruce Lee, Manny Pacquiao, over 12 non-title rounds.
De La Hoya, 35 and a pro since 1992, is more preoccupied with promoting than fighting these days (he even promotes here, in conjunction with the ever-lovely Bob Arum) but gets the urge to dust off the gloves occasionally and you wonder if this is really the last one. He fought once in 2006, once in 2007 and once earlier this year, when he easily outscored Portland's immensely durable Steve Forbes over 12 rounds in May. That could and perhaps should have spelt a-d-i-o-s for Oscar, who outclassed Forbes from start to finish, but Forbes was no marquee opponent, no marquee payday (multi-millionaire Oscar clearly adores the dollar).
Enter Pacquiao.
The 29-year-old Filipino comes off a brilliant nine-round destruction of Chicago's brave and capable David Diaz in Las Vegas in June - an amazing debut at lightweight for Pacquiao who (like Oscar) has won major world titles with an almost staggering disregard for poundage, starting out as WBC flyweight champion back in 1998 and proceeding to titles at super-bantamweight, super-featherweight and now lightweight, courtesy of that win over Diaz (also for the WBC belt). For this one Manny jumps up two weight classes to welterweight; De La Hoya, a light-middleweight, drops down a single division. Six months ago, Pacquiao was fighting at super-featherweight. De La Hoya last fought at super-featherweight 14 years ago. David vs Goliath? No, but it is getting there.
Little Pacquiao actually turned pro at light-flyweight.
Frankly, this is a bad match and De La Hoya (and that man Arum) creates for himself a monster of a lose-lose situation in his final fling. If he takes Manny out, people will label him a bully, a big bully; if he struggles, people will say he struggled with a wee man; if he loses, and there are never any guarantees in a sport like boxing (and with a talent such as Pacquiao), people...
"My legacy is already cemented," says De La Hoya, dismissively. "You can't take back what I've accomplished in the ring."
In victory, as long as nobody gets hurt, Oscar can indeed look back with real satisfaction. The good-looking boy from a notorious Los Angeles barrio fought his way out by capturing Olympic gold as a teenager and a world title as a pro in just his 12th outing (at super-featherweight). He went on to capture genuine world titles at light, light-welter, welter, light-middle and even middleweight and still looks unmarked, testimony to his ability.
Rangy and skilful, with quick hands and a decent dig, Oscar lets the punches flow in dazzling combinations and is tough behind the glitter, the smile, the beautiful Puerto Rican wife, too. Only Philadelphia legend Hopkins has ever stopped him, and with a body shot, when De La Hoya went in with a man later to lift the Ring magazine light-heavyweight belt. His victims include Jorge Paez, Julio Cesar Chavez, Arturo Gatti, Ike Quartey, Pernell Whitaker, Fernando Vargas, Felix Sturm and Ricardo Mayorga.
Pacquiao?
Most people assume that the quicker, younger Asian will have his moments against the Californian - and he probably will, for a little while - but it is hard to empathise with those who visualise another Leonard-Hagler as Pacquiao's speed and skill, his terrific workrate, stretch an aging De La Hoya that bit too far. Even in defeat, Oscar was competitive with Hopkins and with the likes of Floyd Mayweather, Felix Trinidad, with Shane Mosley (twice). These are the kind of men you don't even relate to Pacquiao, given their size. Yes, I suppose one could argue southpaw "Pac Man" knows how to handle lanky punch-pickers in the De La Hoya mould (ish), having twice stopped Mexico's Erik Morales. He also holds two fabulous wins over Marco Antonio Barrera, one of them a stoppage. Earlier this year, though, Pacquiao struggled to a split decision over Juan Manuel Marquez, a smooth boxer like De La Hoya. He also struggled with tall Nedal Huseein back in 2000 in the Philippines, an Aussie who goes by the blood-curdling nickname of "Skinny". He lost a first fight to Morales.
Realistically, De la Hoya looks way too big and strong and heavy handed for Pacquiao (30 knockouts in 39 wins). The American is four inches taller, has a six-inch reach advantage, and one can only imagine how much heavier he will be on the night. De La Hoya has not been down to welter since 2001, when he stopped the swashbuckling Gatti in five rounds; Pacquaio, to risk repeating oneself, has never fought above lightweight - and only once at lightweight.
To adopt a boxing cliche: a good big 'un always beats a good little 'un. De La Hoya wears Pacquiao down and stops him.

Dang!! Damn!! Another great writer!!......

[kikibalt]

A city grows in East L.A.?
Residents of the area, long known for its activism and culture, think incorporation could end neglect and solve some local problems.
By Jim Newton, Times Staff Writer

'This has engaged the community. The demographics are there. The history is there. The reason is there.'
— State Sen. Gloria Romero drawing upon a rich history of activism and a nagging sense of neglect, residents and leaders of East Los Angeles have launched a campaign for incorporation, a move that would create a new city in a historic center of Mexican American culture.

The drive for East L.A. cityhood has grown from nascent to palpable in recent months, and advocates believe their goal, which many have nurtured for a generation, at last could be within reach.

Over the last few months, cityhood has been the subject of spirited community meetings — more than 300 people turned out for one session late last year — and increasingly active political talks. Just last week, leaders of the effort met with county officials to analyze the tax consequences of incorporation. Petitions could begin to circulate this spring, and it's possible that voters could consider the question later this year.

If they are successful, East L.A. would become a city of roughly 140,000 people, one of the 10 largest in Los Angeles County and one of the most overwhelmingly Mexican American cities in the United States. More important for many of those who believe in cityhood, its success would validate East L.A.'s long-standing place in the neighborhood culture of Los Angeles rather than continue its existence as a scrap of unincorporated land left behind as cities around it took shape.

State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), a leading proponent of the idea, says she has been struck by the intensity of the emotional response to it.

"This has engaged the community," Romero said last week. "The demographics are there. The history is there. The reason is there."

For many in East L.A., the promise of cityhood is long overdue. Indeed, for such a small slice of Greater Los Angeles — the community covers less than 10 square miles bordered by Boyle Heights and Monterey Park, Commerce and Montebello — East L.A. has made a sizable name for itself.

It is a thriving source of cultural life, a community as identifiable and coherent as the many others that make up modern Los Angeles: Hollywood or Bel-Air, say, or Van Nuys, Watts, Boyle Heights, Leimert Park or Mount Washington.

Given its demographics, East L.A. is politically significant as a laboratory for the growing electoral clout of Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans.

As such, its halls and public spaces are mandatory stops for aspiring politicians eager to demonstrate their support among Latinos. Last fall, Democrat Phil Angelides, whose gubernatorial campaign by then already was sputtering, attended an East L.A. Chamber of Commerce luncheon and tried vainly to elicit enthusiasm for his cause from a plainly skeptical audience.

Culturally, it has a different cachet. It has produced muralists and musicians, writers and chroniclers of Mexican American life for generations. One enduring contributor has been the band Los Lobos, whose members come from East L.A. and whose original name was "Los Lobos del Este Los Angeles."

Louie Perez, a founding member of Los Lobos, vividly recalls growing up on the edge of East L.A. — the smell of his mother's coffee blending with the scents from the tortilleria next door in the morning, the sounds of radio personality Elenita Salinas rousing him from bed. At night, he and his sister and friends would hear the backyard parties with mariachi bands as they made their way to the parking lot of the Johnson Market, where Thee Midnighters would be mobbed by young fans.

In those days, he said, "East L.A. was our entire universe…. Leaving it was like leaving the edge of the Earth."

As he grew older, Perez was immersed in the ferment that overtook his neighborhood. One afternoon in August 1970 he was riding his blue Stingray bicycle near Whittier Boulevard when he spotted smoke. A peaceful demonstration had escalated into a clash with L.A. County sheriff's deputies, and riots tore through East L.A. that day.

A few blocks away, a man shooed Perez from the Silver Dollar cantina, warning him that a man was dead inside. That man, journalist Ruben Salazar, had been killed by a deputy; 27 years later, Salazar remains a political martyr in East L.A.

Los Lobos formed in 1973, and the band's absorption of Mexican music into its American idiom immediately placed it in the cultural and political turbulence of the community. As the band developed, its members captured and amplified East L.A. culture, supplying a soundtrack to Chicano activism not unlike what Jimi Hendrix gave the Black Panthers. Through the years, Los Lobos has helped to extend that East L.A. culture around the world.

"I'll be looking for my old neighborhood my whole life," Perez said last week. "It was an incredible place to grow up."






Among the hallmark moments of East L.A. activism were the student walkouts of 1968, and many who live in the area today participated. Indeed, one young protester was none other than Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who cites that episode as a formative one in his young life.

Sal Castro led the walkout movement that year and remains a beloved figure in East LA. Last week, he was among the hundreds of people who turned out for the dedication of a new East L.A. "City Hall," the work of County Supervisor Gloria Molina, another veteran of the area.

Now 73, Castro can recall the days before freeways carved up East L.A., an era when the community felt more tight-knit. And he remembers the previous attempts at cityhood, including the promise that East L.A. would become part of Commerce, an idea bandied about but withdrawn when, Castro believes, the leaders of Commerce shrank from the idea of taking on such a large population of Mexican Americans.

Today, Castro believes that the community is ready to become its own city, not merely a part of one of its neighbors.

"Hell, yes," he said one day last week, surveying the crowd at the new City Hall. "Let's go for it."

Albert Palacios teaches government at Garfield High School, East L.A.'s high school, where he tutors his students on the history and potential of East L.A.'s incorporation efforts. Palacios took to the idea of cityhood some time ago and has become one of its most ardent advocates.

Palacios has been in East L.A. for decades. He witnessed the emergence of the Brown Berets in the mid-1960s, when that organization formed to agitate for the rights of Mexican Americans. He was there for the student walkouts and the protests over abuse at the hands of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department — and for the evolving atmosphere of demonstration that turned on the war in Vietnam.

Today, Palacios looks back on those years as a "very contentious time" but also one of solidifying community sentiment.

Molina agrees. East L.A., she notes with fondness, is an area forged in activism and protest, the same currents that have shaped her own life. As a young woman, she attended East Los Angeles College — which, curiously, is just outside East L.A. Molina is hardly blind to East L.A.'s difficulties: It has long suffered more than its share of gang violence and other crimes. As a young woman, she tutored gang youths nearby and witnessed the community's sense of neglect as well as its stubborn pride.

As a supervisor, Molina has taken special interest in the county's unincorporated areas, including East L.A. She presided over a long and concerted effort to bring a civic complex to the area, one for which ground was broken just last week. Among advocates of cityhood, many hasten to emphasize that they are happy with her representation of their area, though some worry about her ability to stay close to community issues when she represents roughly 2 million constituents across a wide swath of Los Angeles County.

Molina is uncommitted regarding cityhood for East L.A. She applauds the community spirit behind the idea but wonders whether the largely residential neighborhoods can supply enough tax revenue to support a city government, whether the retail areas clustered along Atlantic Boulevard can be beefed up enough to float a city where none has existed for so long.

"I'm not opposed to the community wanting to have its own mayor and city council members," Molina said last week. "I'm just concerned about the ability to pay for itself."

Where Molina has questions, however, Romero expresses confidence.

"I have no doubt that this is a self-sustaining community," she said. "This is prime property."

Whatever one thinks about East L.A.'s tax base, there is no denying the sense among its residents that a moment is at hand, that politics and population trends and culture have all coalesced in a surge of neighborhood pride.

When Molina opened the new government center last week, hundreds of residents turned out, many dressed up for the occasion. They cheered loudly as speakers hailed the coming of age of East L.A. and beamed with pride as speaker after speaker touted the facility as evidence of the community's growth and worth.

Standing off to the side, Palacios surveyed the crowd that cloudy morning and reflected on the decades of protest that had brought the community to where it is.

"People have mellowed," he said of East L.A. and its quest for cityhood. "People have matured. We're ready."



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This Gringo says . . . "VIVA ELA!"

We Pocho's call you Gringo's "Gabacho's".....

But yes, Viva E.L.A......

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Lee Oma

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Barney Ross

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Teddy Yarosz & manager Ray Fouts

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Eddie Machen vs Nino Valdes

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