Central Avenue

It had soul, R&B, jazz, pop, surf music, and the emerging psychedelic sound.

They were all happening at the same time around Central Avenue and other parts of the city.

There was a strong Black music culture, while Hollywood and the Sunset Strip became associated with clubs, record companies, and the rapidly changing youth culture.

The record business was particularly important.

it's not even just the ones that still exist.

I'm thinking about Central Avenue, how it used to be one of the main hubs of jazz in America.

Yeah.

And that's for a variety of reasons that doesn't exist anymore.

But Central Avenue was a huge, important part of African-American cultures that lived in Los Angeles in the early parts of the history of the city.

And it doesn't exist in the same way anymore.

Have I seen it in fiction? Can't say that I have.

Black Los Angeles had always been there.

Its vibrant jazz clubs on Central Avenue.

The massive wave of migrants from Texas and Louisiana who came to work in the wartime aviation factories

And their very intimate hard-won knowledge of how the law actually works on the street level as opposed to how it's written in the books.

It had soul, R&B, jazz, pop, surf music, and the emerging psychedelic sound.

They were all happening at the same time around Central Avenue and other parts of the city.

There was a strong black music culture, while Hollywood and the Sunset Strip became associated with clubs, record companies and the rapidly changing youth culture.

The record business was particularly important.

And next Saturday...

On September 26th, from 10 a.m. until noon, he's going to be at 17453 Central Avenue in Carson.

17453 Central Avenue.

Tito Ortiz is going to be out there with him as well in Carson.

And he's, for the first hundred people, the first hour only, $3 gas.

Ass, gas, or grass.

Nobody rides for free.

So it's Saturday, 10 a.m. until noon, Central Avenue in Carson.

But that's another great L.A. movie along the lines of Chinatown, which you were speaking about at the beginning of our conversation.

What Devil in a Blue Dress does so beautifully is dramatize what the African-American core of Central Avenue in Los Angeles was like.

But I'll never forget our film week critics back in 95 just raving about Don Cheadle's smoldering performance as Mouse.

What an arrival.