prime Spring Issue 2017

ART

An exploration of LA wall art through social media PAGE 6

CULTURE

Personal reflections on ethnic identity and family background

BY THE DAILY BRUIN

SPRING 2017

PAGE 10

LIFESTYLE

City Guide | Malibu PAGE 42

WAR STORIES UCLA student veterans, including Colt Gordon, share their experiences through poetry and prose.

PAGE 16

9

table of contents. chinese. filipino. american. me.

culture

10

moving out moving on

art

13

hike LA | devil’s punchbowl

16

war stories

46

lifestyle

the daily grind

ad

mural, mural on the wall

6

26

42

36

taco the town

34

DIY | flower pressing

40

30

behind the bouquets

LIFESTYLE

2

recipe | empanadas city guide | malibu

COVER PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY

HANNAH BURNETT

letter from the editors Dear reader,

Welcome to the last prime of the year! We’re nearing the end of spring, and graduation nostalgia is in the air. prime went out to see some of the best of Los Angeles, as well as hear stories from students we normally wouldn’t hear from.

This quarter’s City Guide takes you to the coast of Malibu, while Hike LA takes you inland to the San Gabriel Mountains. The infamous Paul Smith pink wall and other murals on the walls of Los Angeles are looked at in a different light. We tasted and decided on the best taco in the city – try it if you don’t believe us. Or you could always use our recipe for an excellent empanada. Exploring the beautiful Los Angeles Flower District piqued our interest in flowerpressing. There are also personal stories about conflicting cultures, cultural expectations and what makes up a home.

We were given the opportunity to sit in a creative writing class comprised of student veterans. Their unforgiving wit and humor comes forth in their writing, offering us insight into their lives.

With our last issue of the year, we’d like to thank you, our readers. It’s been a pleasure serving you as the 2016-2017 prime editorial staff.

Peace, love, prime,

Hayley McAvoy

Maryrose Kulick

Hayley McAvoy [ prime director ] Maryrose Kulick [ prime content editor ] Youngjun Park [ prime art director ] [ writers ] Adrija Chakrabarty, TuAnh Dam, Owen Emerson, Kuhelika Ghosh, Maryrose Kulick, Youngjun Park, William Thorne, Andrew Warner, Lindsay Weinberg, Kelly Yeo [ photographers ] Hannah Burnett, MacKenzie Coffman, Owen Emerson, Jintak Han, Maryrose Kulick, Axel Lopez, Keila Mayberry, Erin Rice, Lindsay Weinberg

Youngjun Park

[ daily bruin ] Tanner Walters [ editor in chief ] Anjishnu Das [ managing editor ] Emaan Baqai [ digital managing editor ] Jeremy Wildman [ business manager ] [ assistant managers ] Caroline Dillon, Peyton Sherwood [ advertising sales ] Ali Cazel, Elia Doussineau, Jessica Behmanesh, Danielle Renteria, Pau Bremer

[ illustrators ] Insun Park

[ advertising production ] Nina Roman, Tara Afshar, Dylan Skolnik

[ designers ] Bilal Ismail Ahmed, Umbreen Ali, Megan Le, Edward Qiao, Isabelle Roy

Abigail Goldman [ editorial adviser ]

Derek Yen [ copy chief ] Hannah Brezack [ assistant copy chief ] [ slot editors ] Anna Floersch, Kristen Hardy, Nikki Harris, Katie Kong, Sang Ho Lee, Alexis Lim, Simran Vatsa LIFESTYLE

4

Howard Huang [ online editor ] Paulina Lei [ assistant online editor ] Chang Liu [ stack editor ]

The Daily Bruin (ISSN 1080-5060) is published and copyrighted by the ASUCLA Communications Board. All rights are reserved. Reprinting of any material in this publication without the written permission of the Communications Board is strictly prohibited. The ASUCLA Communications Board fully supports the University of California’s policy on non-discrimination. The student media reserve the right to reject or modify advertising whose content discriminates on the basis of ancestry, color, national origin, race, religion, disability, age, sex or sexual orientation. The ASUCLA Communications Board has a media grievance procedure for resolving complaints against any of its publications. For a copy of the complete procedure, contact the publications office at 118 Kerckhoff Hall. All inserts that are printed in the Daily Bruin are independently paid publications and do not reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the staff.

To request a reprint of any photo appearing in the Daily Bruin, contact the photo desk at 310-8252828 or email photo@dailybruin.com.

5

WINTER 2017 @dailybruinprime | SPRING

mural, mural on the wall WRITTEN & PHOTOGRAPHED BY

LINDSAY WEINBERG

L

os Angeles, I’m just trying to figure you out. When I moved to Los Angeles for college, people told me this city has a different culture, even compared to other places on the West Coast. I’ve found that LA does have its own way of living life, full of quinoa, Lululemon and street murals.

Now, the brunch thing I can get behind. But in a culture of wall art selfies, I’m still grappling with the idea that our appreciation for artwork in Los Angeles has become reduced to how Instagrammable it is.

You already know the most famous Los Angeles wall, the Paul Smith pink wall on Melrose Avenue. Paul Smith Los Angeles, a designer clothing store, opened in 2005 with its outer walls painted pink in order to attract people driving by.

Now, it lures thirsty millennials who wait in line in a parking lot to use it as a photoshoot backdrop for a trendy Instagram post. #Pinkwall has more than 48,000 tags on Instagram, and though not all of those are the Paul Smith wall, a good portion of them are.

This quarter, I drove to Melrose Avenue to check out the pink wall for the first time in my three years at UCLA. A security attendant had a booth in the Paul Smith parking lot and said no professional cameras were allowed.

On a sunny afternoon, tourists squinted in line, waiting for other people to finish their mini photoshoots because of the limited space against the wall. To get a little more creative, one woman reclined on the hood of her Jeep while a man snapped photos of her with the wall in the background.

Tourists and locals come, wait in line, immediately turn their backs on the art, put on an extra wide smile and then check their phone to evaluate the photos. It’s a desperate assembly line; everyone wants the photos of the art, but no one really looks at it. It’s analogous to looking and not seeing – photographing and not experiencing.

We’ve heard this all before, but Los Angeles seems more seeped in this culture. The “do it for the ’gram” slogan encourages me to make once-in-a-lifetime memories like skydiving or trying escargots, but also makes me feel like I’m ignoring my surroundings to capture an artificial moment for the sake of participating in a social media trend.

During fall quarter, Carly Pierson was driving down Melrose Avenue to get her computer fixed when she and her dad passed by the pink wall.

“That’s the famous wall!” she said to her dad.

They dropped off her computer and decided to go take pictures.

“He’s, like, super LA,” Pierson told me. “He knew about it, too.”

Pierson was wearing pajamas at first but she had some laundry in the car, so the third-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student changed outfits.

Using an iPhone, Pierson’s dad took photos of her and they took selfies together. As a photographer, her dad was excited for the backdrop and helped Pierson prep her hair.

Pierson put her leg on the wall for some imaginative shots, but she said the parking lot guards yelled at her to stop. She ended up posting a semi-candid photo on her Instagram.

Pierson said the wall is a popular tourist destination for her out-of-state and international friends, and murals are also popular for their impact on social media.

“When I’m scrolling through Instagram, I’ll notice those pink walls,” she said. “Those are the ones that will catch my attention.”

Growing up in Thousand Oaks, California, she said mural art wasn’t as trendy as it is now that she attends UCLA. She has made friends from Wisconsin, Texas and Connecticut, and they like traveling to Abbot Kinney Boulevard for the murals. They take a new picture and post it on Instagram, but they also make a day out of the trip to Venice, she said.

“It’s a weird thing to think about that in earlier times, before social media, the only people who would do that would be photographers,” Pierson said.

Jayne Skinner posted a photo of the pink wall on Facebook as her profile picture. The fourth-year psychobiology student traveled to the mural earlier this year with the cast of “Waitress in Concert,” a show put on by Positivity Productions on campus in March.

“It was originally taken for the show, but I thought it was a good picture and it’s fun to have the pink wall as your profile picture, so I just kept it up after,” she said.

7

ART

6

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

“It’s not just because the wall is pink – it’s because it’s ‘The Pink Wall.’ ”

The performers elected to go early one morning to avoid crowds and have enough wall space to themselves for the photoshoot.

Skinner said they chose the backdrop because it is an iconic LA location. The UCLA students wanted to use it for posters and social media advertisement for their musical about a waitress in a southern town who becomes pregnant unexpectedly.

“It’s very bright and vibrant, so it’s obviously an ideal place to take pictures,” she said. “But I also think that it’s become a landmark in its own right. It’s not just because the wall is pink – it’s because it’s ‘The Pink Wall.’”

After snapping selfies in front of the Melrose pink wall, my friend and I crossed the street to Carrera Cafe, which also has a wall mural on the side of its building. The painting has changed from lip prints, to the “La La Land” purple backdrop, to Lady Gaga’s Coachella logo. I went during Coachella season and was greeted by a black and white portrait of Lady Gaga surrounded by blue sky and purple palm trees with “Coachella” blazoned across her face.

My friend and I snapped some photos there, which I later posted on my own Instagram account. The outdoor cafe tables were pushed out of the way to create an optimal photo op.

One woman leaned against the Coachella mural wearing a lace shirt, beige pants, sandals, sunglasses and red lipstick. She flipped her hair back in the bright sun.

We went inside the glass cafe and people-watched for an hour. Customers came in wearing trench coats, denim dresses, backpack purses, big sunglasses, pink shirts, studded boots, beige blazers and Converse sneakers.

“It’s such a type of people that come,” my friend whispered to me.

Half of the people in the cafe could have been Abercrombie models with their Levi’s jackets, gold chokers and blue-and-white striped blouses.

People came in and out of the coffee shop, which had black-and-white tiled floors and little succulents on white tables. The words “Ciao Bella” were lit up in white on the cafe wall.

We had a view across the street of people posing like “Charlie’s Angels” against the pink wall.

People continued to wait in line to take pictures with the walls, but no one stood to really look at the art. It’s all just for digital display. The paintings aren’t meant to be seen with eyes, but through a screen.

Inside Carrera Cafe, a teenage girl stood above a table with her rose gold iPhone and snapped overhead photos of four lattes with foam artwork that included a flamingo and the word “hello.”

Another young woman handed her phone to her friend; her camera roll was open so the friend could look through photos to pick the most Instagram-worthy one.

Meanwhile, a middle-aged woman silently read the newspaper with her cup of coffee in the corner. Everyone else had some cucumber Chobani whatever drink, vinaigrette salad or iced coffee, their cameras snapping away.

“The coffee’s not that good,” I said.

“That’s not why people come,” my friend laughed.

Most perplexing were two teenage girls with a pink polaroid and a blue clutch wallet; they rotated tables inside the cafe looking for the best lighting and poses. A woman – likely their mother – came with them as if chaperoning an exciting school field trip.

“The lighting is so good!” “Oh I love that!” “That’s so cute!” “Thank you so much,” they giggled to each other.

The ice was melting in their cinnamon-topped lattes. But that’s not why people come.

Sure it’s fun to be “bougie” and take pink wall photos and drink coffee next to succulents, but I always feel like I’m faking it. I’m running through the motions of participating in this LA culture, but I never feel like I’m the originator – always the emulator.

Is there a real originator of LA culture? Does anyone do

it solely for the pleasure or is everyone doing it to mimic other photos they’ve seen?

It’s a trend or a fad in the most reductive sense. It’s an item to check off a list. We drive to go see a pink wall in order to get the photos to prove we did it.

A mural on the UCLA Extension building is trying to send a bigger message than a shallow Instagram post.

On Le Conte Avenue in Westwood, Los Angeles artist Colette Miller added a pair of purple wings to the building facade in November. UCLA Extension officials asked Miller to paint the wings to inspire students to have a passion for lifelong learning.

Miller studied film at UCLA Extension in 2000 and began the Global Angel Wings Project in Los Angeles in 2012 to remind people that humans are angels on Earth.

She estimates she has painted more than 100 angel wings around the world in places such as France, Cuba, Kenya, New York City and Washington, D.C. “I thought if you were in some dark alley or some crossroads in your decision and your consciousness, wouldn’t you like to be reminded of the goodness in humanity?” Miller said. “And that’s where the wings technically birthed.”

When she painted her first pair of wings in downtown LA, she didn’t even have an Instagram. She didn’t always sign the murals. The intention was to give the world a reminder of mankind’s angelic qualities. Now, Miller said sharing the photos on social media enhances the message, since it spreads the meaning across the internet.

“It came from a really sincere place, really pure and childlike, ... of putting this image out there that I feel is really a divinity,” she said. “But I wasn’t trying to be hashtags.”

Miller avoids putting hashtags on her paintings because they clutter the image, turning it into an advertisement and detracting from the pure message of the artwork.

Sometimes plaques next to the wings will describe the Global Angel Wings Project, sponsorships and hashtags, she said. #Colettemiller has about 12,000 tags on Instagram.

Sometimes Miller travels to the locations and sometimes she ships the

artwork to its destination, like her with upcoming Tokyo piece. She added a pair of wings to the Chicago airport, and since the wall was after the security checkpoint, she had to be escorted by security guards with her tools and knives to the location.

Each pair has slightly different textures, colors and shapes, similar to how no two people are identical, she said.

Miller gets lost in the work.

For Miller, the wings represent a positive message of peace and divinity, but I noticed that they also demonstrate the principle of using fine art to post photos online.

Social media users make digital copies of Los Angeles murals and post them on the internet for mass consumption. Perhaps this is the new way art is appreciated, more so than in museums. But I wonder if this is fully consuming and digesting a piece of art – unwrapping it and letting it sit on your tongue before swallowing.

Our culture is viral – akin to a disease.

“Is it even adding to your life?” my friend asked me about the pink wall. “You put it on social media, and then what?”

It’s entertaining to visit the famous walls of Los Angeles, but putting it on my social media should not be fulfilling.

It’s hollow unless I truly appreciate the artist’s meaning, like the angel wings symbolizing divinity.

Our lifestyle is about constructing false memories that never existed because we were too busy trying to capture them. LA culture only exists online, but I want to live in the real world.

ART

8

chinese. filipino. american. me.

A

LIFESTYLE

10

s I posed for a photo outside the Shibuya 109 store during my trip to Japan, a group of Japanese men participating in the local Shinto festival, complete with ceremonial garb, approached me and my friend and asked me a question in Japanese. I shook my head, saying, “Iie, iie,” in reponse – the most direct translation of no.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Japanese,” I tried to explain.

“You are Chinese, then?” said one of the men.

“Yes and no. I suppose, but I’m American.”

“But you’re Chinese, yes?”

“Yes, but my parents are from the Philippines.” After a pause, they went back to preparing to carry the elaborate decorated floats, most likely confused by my response.

They wouldn’t be the first in that regard, but they were the first in Asia. As with so many other times in my life, people attempting to assign me an ethnicity – and by extension, a cultural identity – failed to grasp the reality of what it means to be an ethnically Chinese, American citizen by way of Southeast Asia, born and raised in the Los Angeles area. Say that five times fast.

For most conversational purposes, the easy answer to the somewhat pointed question of “What are you?” or more directly, “What is your ethnicity?” is that I am Chinese. However, I know little about Chinese culture beyond what textbooks and the internet have taught me. I also barely speak Chinese, aside from a few words courtesy of my parents’ ill-fated attempt to have me learn from a Mandarin tutor over two consecutive middle school summers.

Usually the interrogation ends there, a question mark left dangling for many, but not compelling enough to delve in further.

One might call me a stereotypical case of whitewashing – I am, after all, a person of color whose primary language is English and whose grasp of my family’s culture is tenuous at best. It’s a derogatory term, yes, but in many ways, it’s true – I was raised during a historical moment of supposed post-racial colorblindness without

PHOTO BY JINTAK HAN

a firm grasp on a particular culture beyond the vast American one. In my definition, whitewashing is when a person of color is stripped of all background and culture, left empty and ready to be filled with the greater, whitecentric U.S. culture, cast into the long-hailed American melting pot, to emerge an American through and through.

However, the reality is much more complicated than the typical case of American assimilation. The truth is that I am Chinese Filipino, a little-known minority in the Philippines. Yes, there are Chinese people in the Philippines – as there have been since the 16th century, when Manila became home to the world’s first Chinatown.

My mother is part-Filipino: Her great-grandmother was a Filipino woman, a maid in China who carried on an illicit affair with her employer.

In the Philippines at least, Chinese people are a distinctive minority with a particular subculture, although a large portion of them marry other Filipinos. Both sets of my grandparents came to settle in the Philippines before World War II, and although family lore doesn’t delve into economic push-pull factors, the Communist Party’s tightening grip on the rural Fujian province likely had something to do with it.

If the asker of the question has a few minutes or seems somewhat interested, I might launch into a convoluted historical explanation of the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora and how populations of ethnically Chinese people have blended into various Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia. Members of this diaspora tend to come from the coastal Chinese province of Fujian and speak a dialect of Chinese similar to Taiwanese Hokkien.

My cultural identity is something of an enigma, neither here nor there in terms of Chinese and Filipino. My parents, despite both having been born and brought up in the Philippines before moving to the United States, retain a strong sense of Chinese identity even though they have never visited the country, and we don’t have any relatives

11

WRITTEN BY KELLY YEO

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

“ CULTURE

12

SOMETIMES I FEEL ANGRY, FRUSTRATED AT THE LACK OF FIRM CULTURE I CAN PROUDLY CALL MY OWN.

of the undergraduate student population. But in my time here, I’ve little been able to relate to Samahang Pilipino or the Association of Chinese Americans – speaking neither Tagalog nor Mandarin, my experience is squarely somewhere else. I could count on one hand the number of other students I’ve met who are mixed Filipino and Chinese.

Among ethnically Chinese and Taiwanese friends and acquaintances I met during my first year, I found myself repeating over and over that my family didn’t celebrate Lunar New Year. My ethnicity, at introductory conversations at club meetings and parties, always came with an explanation. Over the past four years I’ve realized more than ever that I do not fit neatly carved out identities exemplified by cultural organizations such as Samahang Pilipino and the Association of Chinese Americans.

I’ve come to learn that my ethnic identity defies traditional confines, as much as it travels within them.

My academic knowledge of Chinese culture substitutes nicely in conversations with Chinese- and TaiwaneseAmerican friends. Among Southeast Asians, both domestic and international, I recognize my father’s “lah” when he speaks on the phone to his family members. I talk to Singaporean and Malaysian students and surprise them with my love of SkyFlakes and Milo. Visiting the Philippines again the summer after my first year at UCLA, I stuck out like a sore thumb, even among my mother’s family. That being said, I definitely am reminded, at times painfully, I still play the role of perpetual foreigner, like many Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, from the way people ask twice over, “Where are you from?” to the times I was called racial slurs in high school.

More than anything, I’ve realized I will always somewhat play the role of chameleon and that perhaps, for someone like me, there is no real niche to fit into. I am a product of the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, further displaced onto American soil. The pieces of my culture have been lost, transformed or merely molded into something entirely new. This is the quilt flag I stitch together, to wave in the air at people, whether abroad or here, to declare yes, this is my identity, a patchwork of information and experiences answering those usual questions: Where are you from? What are you? What do you identify as?

Sometimes I feel angry, frustrated at the lack of firm culture I can proudly call my own, wondering if in a few generations’ time my family’s culture, either Filipino or Chinese, will be long forgotten. If I have children, I hope to remind them that this complex origin story can be empowering, even if it’s rather convoluted. I relish my mouthful of words and explanations that do not fit neatly like other hyphenated Americans. I know as long as I hold on to the cultures I fall in between and remember these stories and moments, both historical and personal, I will not be dissolved into the greater homogeneity of the American melting pot and that I will not be, simply put, whitewashed.

moving

OUT moving ON WRITTEN BY TUANH DAM PHOTO BY KEILA MAYBERRY

13

we know of residing there. On the other hand, I frankly don’t feel Chinese, from not understanding Fujian, my parents’ common language, to not celebrating Lunar New Year. What one might recognize as Chinese food wasn’t something you could find in my family’s kitchen, and I only became acquainted with it, like most Angelenos, through the various notable restaurants of the San Gabriel Valley.

As a toddler, I’d mix up my B’s and V’s, and later landed in English as a second language classes after an administrative mix-up coupled with a slight but clearly discernible Filipino accent in kindergarten. I’d use words in English syntax like basura and calavera, loanwords from Spanish in my mother’s Filipino dialect of Visaya.

Every summer as a child, I’d fly to visit my mother’s family in Cebu City, where we’d feast on lechon and balut. My distant Filipino relative, who acted as my nanny and grandmother figure, raised me as a Godfearing Catholic. My parents have Spanish names and in naming my sister and me, followed the Spanish-derived convention of keeping my mother’s maiden name as our middle names. But I could hardly call myself Filipino – and still can’t – either from an experiential perspective or a phenotypic one.

Nevertheless, I hoped halfheartedly that I’d find my cultural roots at UCLA, where my physical appearance lets me blend into the crowd. After all, Asian and Pacific Islander domestic students make up approximately a third

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

T

here were few things I hated more than family parties at my house.

I tripped over the dozens of shoes littered in the doorway on my way to the dining room, where the sounds of chatter and chopsticks clicking together echoed through the crowded kitchen.

The kitchen island brimmed with food – steaming fried rice, spring rolls, rice cakes, egg rolls – all ready to be eaten. As I stood there with my best friend, a bowl of food in my hands, an aunt and uncle turned around and told us that we looked like the number 10.

Her the tall ‘one,’ me the fat ‘zero’.

I put my bowl down and walked away. I was angry.

I’d yell at them to leave me alone and they would look at me smugly, satisfied that they had successfully goaded and baited me into lashing out. Everything I did was always scrutinized and every word I said was always twisted.

My mother would always scold me afterwards, even if she sympathized with me.

“You’re not supposed to treat the adults that way,” she said. “That’s hỗn. They’re family.”

But real families don’t orchestrate elaborate schemes that result in some of their members having nowhere to live and no money to support themselves.

When I was 3, I moved into that twostory house with my parents, sister, grandma and aunt.

My aunt’s husband and three kids joined us over the years.

It seemed like a mansion when I first walked up the brick steps. The blank walls and pristine carpets were a canvas to fill PHOTOS COURTESY OF TUANH DAM

with memories and stories.

And I did, for 15 years – a mix of good and bad ones. The house was where we held weddings, where we celebrated Christmases and Lunar New Years and birthdays and where I eventually lost my entire family.

The fights and arguments between my parents and the rest of my family had been going on for decades – most of them centered around my sister and me.

“They should go to UCI like their cousin.

UCI is the best of the best!”

“Why do they need tutoring, are they dumb?”

“Why are you wasting their time in Girl Scouts? It’s unnecessary.”

We ignored their criticisms of the way we were raised and did everything our parents wanted us to do. We respected them, went to temple and got accepted into UCLA. I didn’t understand why all of that wasn’t good enough for our extended family, until my mom told me – we were too good and achieved more than our family had wanted us to achieve.

Blood may be thicker than water, but jealousy is stronger still – and it spread easily through our family. Everyone ridiculed my parents for their lack of education and their perceived inability to raise my sister and I. My parents had put their own college dreams and goals on hold because of my family. Rather than focus on themselves, my mom and dad helped my mom’s aunts, uncles and younger brothers and sisters come to America after the Vietnam War – where they would be able to go to college and have families of their own.

But the family was critical instead of appreciative. Even with all their doubts and disdain, my parents would “win” nearly every competition. My sister and I were the secondand fifth-oldest, respectively, in our generation.

Throughout our lives, we would consistently outpace our cousins closest to our ages. And nothing pissed people off more.

They believed my parents were beneath them, and my sister and I should stay there as well. The children of parents with no college education shouldn’t outperform kids raised by educated pharmacists, engineers or doctors.

It just wasn’t done.

But it did happen and the arguments mounted until my grandma, aunt, uncle and cousins moved away in 2013, without saying goodbye. I couldn’t walk into their old bedrooms without being overwhelmed with sadness. The closets where we played hide-andseek were now empty, the furniture gone with only the silence remaining.

I hadn’t seen the house that empty since I moved in.

“We’re moving,” my mom said. I had been sitting in my dorm room that November night, looking out the window, when my phone rang.

“When?”

“Now. We have a couple days to finish packing before they’re kicking us out.”

My family had just undersold the house without telling my parents, completely out of spite.

They posted the notice from their lawyer on the front door while my parents were at work to let them know they had to move out immediately. No money of the sale would be given to them – nothing to help me with college, my sister with medical school or my parents find a new home.

My parents were strong, though. They put their heads down and packed up 18 years worth of history in a week, found a temporary house with enough space for the four of us and went about their lives. They were stressed, but they didn’t show it. They had to be my rocks, and they were.

I got the call on a Monday and helped them move into their new home that weekend. When I saw that moving truck the next morning, I felt my stomach drop. I had thought I was ready to leave, but I wasn’t.

Our rented townhouse was modern and nice, but it didn’t feel right. There wasn’t that stain on the carpet where I spilled paint during a school project. It didn’t have our video games and DVDs cluttering the family room or the dishes from afternoons spent baking piling up in the sink.

The little touches made it better – the smells of my mom’s food filling the kitchen, my dad placing pictures of my sister and I on the shelves, the piano at which I spent countless hours practicing being wheeled in.

But I still felt empty.

I had just started college at UCLA and while visits back to Santa Ana would have been easy, I used any excuse I could to avoid going back to an empty house.

My mom knew and she didn’t push me to come home, visiting me in Westwood with my dad instead. But she did push me to go to my grandma’s new house to pay my respects.

Never mind that my grandma was complicit in my parents’ suffering – she stood by while my aunts and uncles belittled them, condoning their actions. My mom told me how my uncle had called her a greedy prostitute for wanting money from the house sale to care for me and my sister.

He did that while my grandmother was there, watching in silent approval.

When I’d see her, she’d act as if nothing had happened, she’d hug me and greet me as if she cared for me. And I would hug her and greet her as if I were happy to see her. She showed me her new room, gesturing toward the shelves that were filled with photographs of family events and her grandkids. My sister’s face and my face were nowhere to be seen.

It didn’t matter how much we cared for them or what we did for them. Like my parents, we were just as disposable and easily forgotten.

I didn’t trust them or like them, but you don’t cut off phone calls, text messages or visits with almost 40 people without consequence.

Instead of just being angry, loneliness entered the cycle.

It alternated between crying myself to sleep while looking at family photos and sitting in the darkness at Janss Steps, frustrated because I felt like things were spiraling out of control.

The hopelessness took a toll on my body – bulimia, anorexia, anxiety, depression. I tried to hide them all. I didn’t want to seem weak. I didn’t want my problems to become anyone else’s. I didn’t want my parents to worry.

I wanted to be the daughter they raised – tough and resilient. Moving on, though, meant letting go. I couldn’t continue being angry at my family without letting it consume me. It also meant trusting people enough for them to fill the void.

I had always been introverted and cautious, but after my family’s betrayal, letting people in became even harder. I had my parents and my sister, but few others could breach my walls.

But they did. Slowly.

Heart-to-heart talks over wine and pizza rolls with my roommates, chatting with my bosses in between work and confiding in my friends on the toughest days pulled me out of my own dark thoughts. They became that family I craved, the people I could rely on.

The moving van was back months later, ready to load up that unpacked boxes and bring them to a new house.

A permanent one.

There was no feeling of dread, no despair and no anger this time. Just relief. A fresh start was a 20-minute drive away.

Walking up the driveway to this new house felt different.

It was empty and a bit dusty, the kitchen in need of repair and the living room screaming for new paint.

My mom walked around animatedly pointing at all the different things she wanted to change once she saved up enough money – the tiles she would replace, where she would put the new oven, how she would knock out the divider and put in a kitchen island instead. I hadn’t seen her or my dad so relaxed in years.

And looking out the sunlit window, I couldn’t help but relax alongside them.

It was a home, and it was ours.

Whenever I start missing my old life, I stop by my childhood house – a quick drive by to see what it’s like now.

It doesn’t look the same anymore. I don’t feel the same longing or nostalgia. The things that happened there are faint echoes, no longer prominent stories.

I have nothing tying me down there, and I don’t have to stop. I just keep going.

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017 NOW, I GO HOME.

WAR STORIES WRITTEN BY WILLIAM THORNE PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY HANNAH BURNETT

S

tudent veterans usually react with a shoulder shrug, a brief, “Oh you know, for the money,” or an awkward “You’re welcome.”

Instead of owning their military service, some choose not to identify as veterans or to downplay this significant aspect of their identities.

But in a bright room on the second floor of the Humanities Building, student veterans freely discuss the soaring highs and devastating lows of serving in the military and the stigma they face outside the class-

room. Nine men and one woman, seven ex-Marines and three ex-Army make up English Composition M138: “Writing Military Experience,” a creative writing course taught by professor Reed Wilson, exclusively open to student veterans.

Among the group are students who have known extreme poverty, drug abuse, alcoholism, eating disorders, mental illnesses and post-traumatic stress disorder. The banter in the room is acerbic, with cutting jokes and put-downs flying back and forth.

“Have you ever killed someone?”

“Why did you join?”

“Thank you for your service.”

“There’s one guy that’s not here that I openly beat on in each of my papers,” one student said jokingly, causing a ripple of knowing laughter from the others.

But beneath the fooling around is a bedrock of respect, honesty and shared experiences. Almost all the veterans present have been deployed to fight in various conflicts, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many of them have struggled to adapt to civilian life after they “got out.”

UCLA has more than 100 student veterans, and the community keeps a low profile. If they identify themselves as veterans, people’s perception of them is immediately warped.

After leaving the military, many wanted to steer clear of other veterans and the memories associated with their time on deployment. But this class offers a different opportunity for each of them: a chance to be open and express past experiences they have left unexplored or buried deep in their subconsciousness.

Each week, the veterans take turns reading out their story, poem or other piece of creative writing.

Some weeks the stories come easily, some weeks they don’t. Some weeks the memories flow through the keys and onto the screen, some weeks they don’t.

"I Changed My Family Cycle" eby Colt Gordon

“

I come from an interesting background. Ironically it was somewhat of a war zone. My dad was a full-time violent alcoholic and a part time construction worker. My mom suffered from chronic PTSD from her pedophile of a stepfather who molested her and her sisters repeatedly. Getting smacked around was good for me in some ways as I learned to mind, but for my mom it

going with women, but I didn’t have the inclination to hang out with the guys, shoot shit and talk about guns, but recently I’ve started embracing it and having more male friends.”

In his piece “I Changed My Family Cycle,” which deals with the complex decision of why he joined the Marines, Gordon reveals he came from a background of mental, physical and alcoholic abuse. While his father “died by the bottle at 49,” and his brother is currently serving 10 years in prison for grand arson, Gordon has forged himself a different path.

He joined the military to escape his situation, not serve his country out of some great sense of patriotism, he said.

Without the military, Gordon wouldn’t have overcome his depression or become dedicated to helping others with mental illness. Without the military, Gordon probably wouldn’t be alive.

“I’m almost 30, so some people could say that I’m late, I’m far behind, but there’s no way I would have gotten here without the military, there’s no way I would have turned my life around without the military,” Gordon said. “I have so many positive things to say about my time in the Marine Corps, even though it was hell.”

“

While the Marine Corps may have accelerated my pain it also increased my willingness to seek the inevitable help I needed. What took four years to bring me to my knees to get psychological help might have never happened out in the civilian world. When I got treatment I realized I was not weak. In fact, I was strong for what I had endured over my life. I simply needed tools to get better and to get my life back.”

was hell. She was thrown through a glass shower door by my dad once; and I can still hear her blood curdling screams.”

LIFESTYLE

18

PHOTO COURTESY OF COLT GORDON

olt Gordon promised his grandma he would never get any tattoos. Given that his father was a tattoo artist and he was surrounded with body art during his time in the military, it was a serious promise to make.

For a six-year period of his life, Gordon fought an eating disorder and suicidal ideations. One day while on deployment in Iraq, Gordon thought he was going to die by his own hands. That same day he promised a friend he would seek help.

“I had a gun all the time, so I was always thinking how it would be easier if I was gone,” Gordon said. “But I had a friend who was always there for me, and he was the guy that said, ‘You never really opened up to me, but I care about you and I want you to promise me you’ll get help.’

I’m kinda juvenile in the sense that I always keep my promises.”

He said he wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t kept that promise. Gordon is a third-year psychology student who was recently elected as the next president of the UCLA Student Veterans of America.

Writing about his experiences and reading his own writing aloud usually provides a dose of calm and catharsis for Gordon.

But when it came to composing for English Composition M138, he found himself hesitating and worrying about what everyone else would think.

“I’m naturally more of a guy that would have a cup of tea with the ladies, to be honest. It’s a weird thing about me,” Gordon said. “I can be very expressive and outward-

19

C

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

“

“Strip Club Veteran” eby Camilo Rocha Chugging cans of redbull as his personal cocaine, “Let’s go to Red Parrot!” he would exuberantly proclaim,

“

Strip club veteran, he would put any man to shame.”

amilo Rocha doesn’t like to be underestimated.

When a UCLA recruiter came to Pasadena City College where he was at school, Rocha approached her and asked about transferring to Westwood. She asked for his GPA; he replied it was 3.28. The recruiter smirked and told him he needn’t bother applying. I’ll show her, he thought.

Rocha hunkered down, achieved straight A’s the next two semesters and transferred to UCLA as a psychology

student.

“When people say I can’t do something, it drives me, when people underestimate me, it drives me. That’s a big motivator in life, trying to prove people wrong,” Rocha said.

Rocha’s parents both dropped out of middle school, and he describes the rest of his family as “drunks working in the fields.” In high school he was a self-confessed “alcoholic, pothead, hot-boxing teenager with a wild Afro and no prospects.”

He worked at In-N-Out Burger for two years, waiting to get his high school diploma. While at work one day, Rocha observed an overweight, burger-flipping colleague with sweat dripping down his forehead. Rocha came to a terrifying realization: That could be him in 30 years.

He had to do something drastic to escape the cycle of poverty his family was stuck in.

“Joining the military was a means to an end,” Rocha said. “The alternative was being a pot dealer who smoked his own stash. ...

Within a month of stepping into the recruitment office I was gone.”

Seven years in the military brought many highs, lows and everything in between for Rocha, during which he met people from all walks and in all phases of life.

One of professor Wilson’s prompts was to recount an interaction with another member of the armed forces, and Rocha wrote about a “strip club veteran” who parties every night and asks his friends to spot him a “couple 20s,” before slinking home to his wife at night.

“I wanted the people to think this character’s a mas-

used to be before he quit drinking and gave him perspective on how far he had come from his alcohol- and drug-fueled days.

“To be the first to be here at UCLA, for myself and my son, it’s going to change the rest of our family lineage,” Rocha said. “You know, you can come from the shittiest background possible, be in the worst situation, but if you put in the effort, fight the odds, you can be a success too.”

With a face full of glitter and reeking of booze, He sneaks back home while his wife takes a snooze, “Hun is that you? It’s late where you been?”

“Just taking care of ARMY stuff” he says with a grin.

Strip club veteran, he’s survived another tour, Bank account now empty and still immature.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAMILO ROCHA

“Survivalist” eby Timothy Perkins

“

When 6’6” Staff Sergeant Matrix Elias showed up at my door in dress blues, I knew I was signing with the Marine Corps and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. There were lots of reasons I was impressed with the Marine Corps, for one they came to me in dress blues and seemed to pay zero attention to the shit hole I lived in. It feels good to feel wanted, and that right there was probably enough to get me to sign. Also I felt like I had found a community.

My friends, as loyal as they were and continue to be, never came to my house.

SSGT Elias showed up in dress uniform and accepted me right where I was at.”

I

n winter quarter, Tim Perkins raised his hand to make a comment in a class. After a brief, perfectly mundane back-and-forth with the professor, Perkins found he was breaking out into a heavy cold sweat.

Perkins said he has grown largely accustomed to dealing with normal classroom situations since he left the military in 2008, but it took him several years to get used to participating in group interactions. The military conditioned him to be hyperaware of his surroundings, and he said he still finds himself subconsciously watching everyone’s hands and movements.

“It was a physiological reaction to feeling really uncomfort-

able in a public environment,” Perkins said. “I haven’t had a reaction like that in a while, but it still pops up from time to time.”

After leaving the Marine Corps, Perkins spent five years going to one-on-one therapy sessions to help figure out “what the hell was going on” in his brain. At the time, he wasn’t sleeping and was having regular panic attacks. His coping methods of choice were drinking heavily and smoking copious quantities of marijuana.

When he returned from his final tour, Perkins said he was shocked by how little people understood the emotional cost of sending people to war, and many people he spoke to ex-

21

C

Strip club veteran was this soldier’s name,

sive douchebag; he’s thrown away his cash on strippers instead of paying attention to his wife,” Rocha said.

When he read his poem aloud in class, his fellow veterans laughed at the “strip club veteran’s” exploits and were eager to know who he was based on. To their amazement, Rocha revealed the “strip club veteran” was based on a 20-year-old version of himself.

Writing the poem helped Rocha reflect on the person he

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

“Why I Joined the Marine Corps” eby Michael Williamson

“

It’s hard to pinpoint one reason why I joined the Marine Corps, but maybe

it was the travel, or maybe

the adventure, or maybe just

maybe it was actually for the money. I can’t truly know this answer unless I take a trip down memory lane, sounds lame, I know, but writing forces me to try to understand myself then and what was going through my mind at the time. I was 20 years old, going into my third year of community college, and was suckered into believing one day I would be a famous actor.”

M

ichael Williamson wanted to be a combat camera when he joined the Marine Corps.

He was anxious to leave behind his stagnant, “stoner” life for combat journalism school in Pensacola, Florida, where he would learn the film and journalistic techniques that would prepare him to enter combat holding a camera instead of a gun.

Everything was going to plan with military precision until, during an interview with the recruiter, he accidentally let slip he smoked pot on a regular basis.

“They gave me a drug waiver, and my boot camp day was changed,” Williamson said. “I had to change my job. I went down a spiral of disappointment.”

After his combat camera dreams were dashed, Williamson spent four years as a field artilleryman. He said his service made him a better person and allowed him to meet people from all types of backgrounds.

Some join the military coming from a wealthy, bourgeois background, desperate for an arena in which to prove themselves, while other recruits are “straight off the street,” Williamson said. For the latter, the military is often a drastic resort to make ends meet.

In the end Monika and I did end up dating

after I got back from my second deployment. I even stayed with her at her parents house where we did things that probably broke their waspy hearts. After I left they called me a survivalist which is pretty astute coming from a couple of elitists. I broke up with Monika before my third deployment, I had gotten what I wanted from her and didn’t need her anymore.”

Williamson, a fourth-year world arts and cultures student, said the faces of his fellow Marines are clear in his memory, but their words are often lost. Writing helps him reclaim the experiences that are shrouded in his mind.

“It’s a process of digging into memory, which is sometimes hard,” Williamson said. “I don’t know if this is attributed to PTSD or trauma, but there’s a lot of fog in my memory.

There are things I know that I experienced, but I can’t recall the narrative or the dialogue from those moments.”

With graduation coming up, Williamson has applied to be a probation officer working with incarcerated youth, but in the back of his mind he still feels a nagging desire to “go back in” and commit to a full career in the military as an officer.

The camaraderie and brotherhood he found in the Marine Corps is hard to resist.

“You hear a lot of people talk about independence and we strive so hard to claim it, but when you are removed from those supporting structures and you don’t have someone to lean on, your life crumbles down,” Williamson said. “When you have a role within a social structure, you’re able to not only contribute to yourself but also to others.”

23

“

pressed hard-line opinions doubting whether he should have been in Afghanistan in the first place.

“I remember I got back in 2008 at the height of the election, and I remember coming back and thinking, ‘Jesus, this country hates itself,’” Perkins said. “It was the most unwelcome welcome home you could possibly imagine.”

Five years of therapy with a fellow ex-Marine helped Perkins acclimatize, and things started to click in his life and his mind. He found a job through another veteran, started getting straight A’s at his community college and decided he wanted to give four-year college a shot.

While Perkins said not every veteran in the class has been through a similar course of therapy, he believes English Composition M138 provides a vehicle for each of them to express their emotions and dredge up memories from their subconsciousness.

“We’re not a community that’s well known for being able to tell our story. The military is very masculine-dominated, full of toxic masculinity,” Perkins said. “It’s this inability to share your emotions or understand your own emotions, so the class is a great opportunity to sit down and dig into yourself.”

In his “Survivalist” story, Perkins attempted to untangle the “knot of emotions and life events” that led him to join the Marines. One of his driving motivations was to impress a girl, Monika, who came from a far wealthier family and whose parents looked down their noses at him from the moment he set foot in their house.

Perkins said he found it difficult at first to share the story, but that ultimately, none of the student veterans in the class or at UCLA had reached this point without a willingness to step out of their comfort zones.

“A lot of veterans lock themselves up inside their homes, but this is a different group of people because we’re willing to make a fool of ourselves,” Perkins said. “We’re here to get the most out of our experience here, just like everyone else is.”

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017 PHOTO COURTESY OF TIM PERKINS

the Marines; I am the first out of my immediate family to go to university; and proudly, I am the first out of my immediate family to not get a girl pregnant out of wedlock or OD on heroin. Yea, I guess you can say I come from a place of abuse, dysfunction and a lot of divorce, but hey the Marine Corps is full of that too and for the first time I actually felt like I found something that I had been missing for my whole life … FAMILY.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL WILLIAMSON

“

“That Fuckin’ Motorcycle” eby Donald Stiles The catalyst for my desire

to join the Marine Corps came from the fact that I wanted to buy the YZFYamaha R1 motorcycle.

I was at Chaparral motorsports with my best friend, Chris, who had just enlisted into the DEP for Marines. When he first told everyone that he was joining the Marine Corps, we all just said something like, “have fun with that,” or, in my instance, “see ya

LIFESTYLE

24

in four years, buddy.”

onny Stiles has a love-hate relationship with the military.

The love began at the age of 18 when he attended a combat arms exercise and witnessed a mine-clearing line charge blast a clear lane through a notional minefield. The hate part came from having to leave behind his Marine Corps brothers and the life-threatening experiences they endured together.

“When you get back, it’s a mundane life – there’s not as much excitement,” Stiles said. “You know, getting blown up lets you know you’re alive. You never appreciate life so much until you’ve survived that stuff.”

Stiles has written each of his English Composition M138 stories in 10 minutes flat, except for one. Partly because he’s writing about a subject he loves, and partly because sometimes he forgets and scrambles to get the story ready before rushing to class.

When Wilson gave the prompt to write about someone he met in the military, Stiles immediately thought of Jon, the best buddy he made while on tour in Iraq.

“At first I hated the guy,” Stiles said. “We got into an argument about leadership, and he thought as a sergeant he had the right to beat the shit out of his Marines if they didn’t accomplish a task, and I would never do that at all.

I thought that it was the respect you earned that made people follow you.”

However, the two of them quickly became friends, moving in together when they “got out.”

They took care of each other, and when Jon started having suicidal thoughts, Stiles was there for him. Jon seemed like he was doing OK. “I saw him the day before, and he looked fine, I didn’t see it coming. The shitty thing is that he died in the shower of our apartment in San Diego,” Stiles said.

It wasn’t as if he had never seen someone die before; in fact, Stiles said he prides himself on his ability to compartmentalize. His time in the Marines taught him to become numb to people dying, or at least not to focus or dwell on it.

But with his friend it was different.

“Seeing him dead and calling his mom to tell her was the hardest thing I had done in my life. The official autopsy report said acute ethanol intoxication. My buddy drank himself to death,” Stiles said. “I felt partly responsible because he moved out to California because of me. We were helping each other out, I was having a rough time too, and I failed him. He wouldn’t have died in California if it wasn’t for me.”

Although he couldn’t bring himself to finish his story on Jon, Stiles said he has “made his peace” with the loss of his friend.

As a fifth-year philosophy student and the vice president of the UCLA Student Veterans of America, Stiles now serves as an ambassador for his community.

He recently gave the keynote speech at a scholarship fundraising event, and he said opening up on stage helped others in the community come forward to talk about their experiences. English Composition M138 offers a similar opportunity for the 10 veterans present.

“One of the greatest things about this class is listening to other people’s stories,” Stiles said. “There’s a lot of morbid humor, but that’s just a coping mechanism. I think that letting fear affect you reduces your effectiveness, both in the military and as a person.”

“

PHOTO COURTESY OF DONNY STILES

I never regretted my decision

to join the Marine Corps.

No matter how shitty and miserable I was in a specific moment; it was the best decision of my life. But, if I want to be completely honest with myself, I joined for two reasons. One, my shithead best friend chose the Marine Corps for some ungodly reason. Two, I rrrreeeeaaallly fuckin’ wanted that motorcycle.”

25

“

I am the first out of my immediate family to join

D

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

THE DAILY GRIND ILLUSTRATIONS BY INSUN PARK

S

tudents and professors look to campus coffee shops for their daily doses of energy to make it up all those hills. Their minds are often on their mocha lattes and double espressos, but have they ever stopped to think what it’s like to be behind the counter? Join prime as we explore a day in the life of student baristas.

6 a.m.

The sun has just begun to rise.

A little groggy, Michael Adia walks from his dorm to Kerckhoff Coffeehouse for his opening shift. He collects the cash for the day from Ackerman Union, switches on the cash registers and begins brewing the first batch of coffee.

When the coffee shop opens at 7 a.m., Adia is immediately swamped with a line of customers that trails out the door.

“Coffee makes their world go round,” said Adia, a second-year civil engineering student.

Amid the morning rush, a man who works at Counseling and Psychological Services comes in, asking for his usual tall soy mocha. He specifies – as he does every morning – that his name is Bryan with a Y and asks for a receipt.

Adia draws a smiley face on his cup.

Later, Adia and his co-workers greet another UCLA employee who frequents the cafe. Adia has already prepared

his piping hot grande Italian coffee, with room.

“After you give it to him, he’ll always say, ‘Terrific!’”

Adia said. “I remember one morning when I didn't see him and to me, that was odd because he’s been coming here longer than I’ve been working here.”

As the minutes go by, Adia hands out cup after cup to student after student. He said he dreams of becoming an 80-year-old barista at his very own coffee shop.

10 a.m.

Daniel Leventhal, wearing a baseball cap, ambles toward UCLA’s smallest coffee shop: Terasaki Cafe.

Leventhal, a fourth-year Portuguese student, is the only employee on shift. He prepares the usual tea bags and bagels at a coffee stand no bigger than a golf cart.

Students, researchers and even firefighters trickle into the courtyard throughout the morning and patiently wait

for their coffee and pastries. Between customers, Leventhal finds some time to do his homework.

Among the usual crowd of students and professors, the UCLA mariachi band, Mariachi de Uclatlán, approaches Leventhal, asking for some coffee. Surprised by their arrival, he asks them to sing for him. They put on a show right there in the courtyard, the upbeat sounds of guitars and trumpets carrying into the nearby buildings.

And then it’s back to work.

“Terasaki never gets awfully busy,” he said. “But since I work alone, I have to make things happen by myself.”

After a couple of hours of brewing, waste water accumulates in the stand’s tank. Leventhal collects a pipe from the storeroom, attaches it to the receptacle and allows the liquid to drain out. The pipe leaks a little, and he quickly cleans it up to avoid a sticky floor and an angry building manager.

noon Mariana Loza gathers up her books after studying at Young Research Library and rushes to change into her navy work polo and cap. Loza, a fourth-year fine arts student, begins work nearby at Cafe 451, located on the first floor of the library. The cafe is named in honor of Ray Bradbury's famous novel "Fahrenheit 451," which was written in UCLA's Powell Library.

“

Coffee makes their world go round.”

-michael adia

“Most people are there in the afternoon to study or to meet,” Loza said. “The cafe is busy in a quieter sort of way because it’s in a library.”

Throughout the afternoon, Loza restocks snacks, throws out the old coffee and makes fresh hot and iced coffee – a schedule with little room for anything else.

But then a student worker tries to plug in a phone charger into one of the coffee shop outlets and it suddenly sparks up, creating a miniature fire. Loza and her coworker, in a state of panic, run to get the fire extinguisher from the room next door, rushing back just in time to put out the flames.

“The funny thing is the customers saw us freaking out, but they didn't react at all,” Loza said. “They just kept studying.”

27

WRITTEN BY KUHELIKA GHOSH

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

3 p.m.

Students napping on the lawns of the Murphy Sculpture Garden in the lazy afternoon pick up some coffee to recharge themselves at the tiny and secluded cafe next door – Stage Canteen.

From behind her counter in MacGowan Hall’s courtwatches people sing and recite film scripts. Occasionally, they break into a dance if their part involves choreography.

“People in the film school are always very loud, and I like it,” Ganesh said.

Ganesh’s favorite customer, a graduate student, comes in. She steams the milk and mixes powder into his tall chai latte.

“He always complains it’s hot in LA, yet he always gets a hot drink,” Ganesh said.

While designing some latte art in his drink, he and Ganesh have conversations about their countries of origin, their lives and sometimes the weather.

“We were just talking and we found out we have the same kind of heritage,” she said. “He’s Sri Lankan and I’m half Sri Lankan as well. I don’t know why it was interesting, but I just remember that moment all the time.”

Ganesh hands him his cup, waving goodbye as he leaves.

5 p.m.

Customers slowly start to drift away from Music Cafe and head back home as their need for coffee diminishes with the sun’s rays.

However, student barista Lauren Kean’s work shift has just begun. A fourth-year atmospheric, oceanic and environmental sciences student, Kean makes herself a quick cup of coffee to get through her closing shift at Music

Cafe.

Five minutes after the cafe closes, a woman comes in and orders a decaffeinated coffee. Kean has already cleaned out the coffee tumblers, so she apologizes to the customer and explains the situation. The woman is persistent and approaches Kean again, hoping to change her mind. In order to appease the customer, Kean brews the decaffeinated coffee again and ends up staying overtime.

“I was annoyed at how demanding someone could be, and I still think of it from time to time,” Kean said. “I saw her at Barney’s (Beanery) in Westwood one time and ... all the feelings came back.”

Kean gets over the negative experiences at work by laughing about them with her co-workers.

“I usually remember the bad customers more than the good customers,” Kean said.

"(But my coworkers and I) manage the stress of the day by drinking lots of coffee, eating pastries, complaining a lot and playing music.”

Growers Direct T

he first shop in the warehouse, Growers Direct Flowers Inc., has sunlight pouring through the windows onto the orchids and leafy stems hanging over the counter at which flower designer Sylvia Lozano crafts floral arrangements. Next to the flowers is a wooden table topped with a coffee machine for Lozano’s meetings with potential clients. As a flower designer, Lozano works with customers to envision how arrangements can be used to set the scene for quinceaneras or weddings.

Because Grower’s Direct specializes in large events, Lozano’s job requires an eye for aesthetics along with

BEHIND THE BOUQUETS WRITTEN BY ADRIJA CHAKRABARTY PHOTOS BY ERIN RICE

B

rimming with vibrant sunflowers, dark red roses and periwinkle hydrangeas, the California Flower Mall is one of several flower shopping destinations in the Los Angeles Flower District. Located inside a large warehouse, various vendors sell their floral fare from 4:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Saturday and 5 a.m. to noon on Sundays.

Although many of the other flower shops in the district specialize in a certain type of flower – orchid and rose shops being some of the most frequented specialty stores – the California Flower Mall features a collection of 30 vendor stalls, all of which either market certain flowers or present a vast collection for customers to

peruse. Some stores are lined with only gerberas in a multitude of colors like electrifying blue, bright green and sunny yellow. Others feature a plethora of options, selling sunflowers alongside irises and roses.

But behind the bouquets being showcased at each of the stands is a vendor arranging the buds, petals and leaves of the flowers to his or her taste. Each vendor spends the day receiving shipments of seasonal flowers, which they gather into wedding centerpieces or floral arrangements. Join prime as we explore the vendors’ stories at the California Flower Mall that constitute the ever-blossoming flower industry.

a mind for logistics. Lozano claims it is the balance of the creative with the analytical that makes her job so satisfying.

“We try to see what vision (customers) have and we try to make that happen with flowers,” Lozano said.

“We have to plan matching colors and matching bases all under a budget, so we take a lot into consideration.”

Lozano mainly works on arranging floral designs for weddings. Since weddings are such an important date in a person’s life, being involved in the planning process is an honor Lozano does not take lightly, she said.

LIFESTYLE

30

“One time we had a bride who lost her father and wanted a specific flower that reminded her of him,” Lozano said. “Even though the flower was not in season, we got it for her, and she cried when she saw the bouquets.”

Working with momentous events like weddings and coming-of-age ceremonies can be challenging when clients have expectations that cannot be fulfilled.

Lozano often has to remind clients to keep an alternate plan in case the flowers are out of season or unattainable at the time.

“I have personally delivered flowers out of season for a bride before and I will go out of my way to make a client’s wish come true,” Lozano said. “But I am still working with nature so we have to be realistic.”

Lozano also loves engaging with her customers in face-to-face interactions and give the flower-arranging process more significance. Because she can see her clients’ emotions, Lozano is able to be more passionate about her job and come through for her customers, she said.

“I love talking to the brides to plan the flower arrangements,” Lozano said. “When I see their excitement before, I want to make flowers that make them feel the same way on their special day.”

Vinny’s Wholesale V

El Poblano Flowers

A

LIFESTYLE

32

fter browsing through the numerous vendor stalls in the California Flower Mall, I stumbled upon a shop whose appearance looked straight out of a mythic tale. Bathed in blue light with crystals hanging off a flower arch, El Poblano Flowers specializes in delivering grandeur to whatever event they work on, said Myrna Alba, the stall’s vendor.

When I asked Alba for a breakdown of the company’s best-selling products, she took us behind the crystal-beaded entrance and walked us through the whole inventory. The arrangement designs are made primarily by her husband, Angel Alba. El Poblano’s specialty is not in wholesale, but in offering smaller, more unique arrangements for customers, Myrna Alba said.

The Albas became involved with the flower business eight years ago through family connections, but did not have the California Flower Mall stall until about a year ago, when Angel took over his late brother’s flower shop.

“He found this empty space and decided to jump on the opportunity ... to start making his own unique floral designs,” Myrna Alba said.

Diverging from the usual bouquets and wood basket centerpieces of the other stalls, El Poblano’s signature product is its topiary, featuring the trunk of a miniature grapevine with a bush of a dozen crimson roses pinned to the top.

In addition to the topiary, El Poblano has a host of other specialized pieces that incorporate foliage and flowers to create complex arrangements. For instance, several of the arrangements make use of unconventional accessories like tea leaves, Casablanca lilies or colorful heads of cabbage to create striking pieces.

Beyond offering a variety of unique floral arrangements, El Poblano places a large emphasis on party rentals. Since flower arrangements often go hand in hand with big life events, Myrna Alba has options for renting out flower arches – like the beaded one that greets customers – and extravagant thrones for quinceaneras or weddings.

“We love offering other options to our customers beyond the flowers,” Myrna Alba said. “It is a big day for them usually, and we want to offer them the best services we have.”

33

inny’s Wholesale Plants and Flowers is the second stall in the row of flower shops. With alluring bouquets in a kaleidoscope of colors placed next to pristine, white floral centerpieces for the wedding collection, the stall’s strategic contrasting of color schemes instantly drew my eye. I went up to the two vendors behind the stand to ask if I could converse with them, they smiled and warmly said yes before pointing at the other to indicate who would do the talking. I asked if the two were related, and they informed me they were husband and wife. Incidentally, Jovana Vazquez had met her husband Geraldo Rojas at another flower market in Anaheim, California.

“I got in the business through my husband,” Vazquez said. “I met him at the flower market and we really hit it off. As I fell in love with him, I fell in love with the flowers.”

Vazquez joined her husband’s family business of wholesale floral service. Vinny’s is a business run by four different family members with four different units, three stalls in Los Angeles and one in Anaheim.

With two stalls inside the California Flower Market, family members are able to run their business alongside each other.

“We are definitely very family oriented,” Vazquez said. “That is why I love being there during family events like weddings and funerals to offer flowers and services.”

Both Rojas and Vazquez enjoy the freedom of working for themselves and collaborating with family members for business decisions.

“I enjoy that I am self employed and do not have to answer to a boss,” Rojas said. “Plus, I work with my hands and am not stuck in an office filling out papers.”

Hearing this statement, Vazquez enthusiastically nodded and expanded on her husband’s sentiment, citing creative freedom as the main appeal of her job.

“The best part of this job is the freedom, especially when it comes to creativity.” Vazquez said. “I work with different arrangements and create a range of arrangements for so many different people.”

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

flower pressing

instructions

WRITTEN & PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARYROSE KULICK

T

he city of Los Angeles is in full bloom – a super bloom, in fact. All of the winter storms and showers have brought about an eruption of spring flowers. Southern California hillsides are painted with a variety of wildflowers – yellow, orange and purple – that have struggled through years of drought.

Unfortunately, my tiny apartment in Westwood boasts views of cement sidewalks rather than lush hillsides, so I’ve taken to purchasing bouquets from Trader Joe’s to evoke a little bit of that wild spring feeling. However, as the weather turns warmer the wildflowers are beginning to dry up and disappear, just as my tabletop flower arrangements start to wilt after only a few days. One simple remedy to make spring last longer, however, is flower pressing.

Flower pressing is a process that completely dries out the plant’s petals and leaves by flattening it. The flower is then preserved in a two dimensional form that won’t wither or decay. Overall, it’s a simple process that requires few materials and results in a charming decoration for your home. It’s ideal for making keepsakes out of flowers from your graduation, your secret admirer, or like us at prime, preserving spring.

materials

1 2 3 4

• Plain paper or flat cardboard

Place the flowers between two pieces of paper – for this example, we used flat pieces of cardboard. This will help absorb moisture from the flowers while they are being pressed.

Place the flowers inside a book. If you are using thin papers, choose a book you don’t mind leaving imprints on – “The Complete Works of Shakespeare” was my pick. Then place the book in a safe, dry location, and stack more books or heavy objects on top. This provides an excellent chance to make use of textbooks you’ve neglected to sell back.

Wait two to three weeks – patience is indeed a virtue.

5 • Flowers

Choose your flowers. Smaller, less bulky flowers will likely press more uniformly.

Carefully open the book and remove the flowers, keeping in mind that they are very delicate. If desired, gently glue the flowers to a piece of paper and then place into a frame.

6

Hang the frame on your wall and enjoy springtime, even when it’s long gone.

• Multiple books or heavy objects • Picture frame

LIFESTYLE

34

35

• Glue @dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

taco the town WRITTEN BY YOUNGJUN PARK PHOTOS BY AXEL LOPEZ

L

os Angeles is blessed with some of the hottest and spiciest taco joints in the nation. But with a plethora of options, it can be a bit overwhelming to decide where to go. To make your lives a little easier, I picked out four of the most flavorpacked taco joints that are accessible to UCLA students. At each stop on my trip, I ordered the most popular item on the menu to crown the righteous Rey de Tacos.

4

Tacos Tu Madre 1945 1/2 Westwood Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90025

korean bbq taco: $3.75

T

LIFESTYLE

36

37

acos Tu Madre is a small joint about 2 miles away from UCLA. It offers a variety of choices, many of which are unconventional, such as fried chicken tacos and Korean BBQ tacos. As a Korean, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Korean BBQ was one of its most popular choices. After getting the taco, I was thrilled – it was one of the most beautifully presented dishes I had ever seen. The red peppers were carefully placed around the kimchi and beef, and the streaks of green from cilantro and avocado looked like a flower garden. This best-selling taco cost a hefty $3.75, so I expected to get the best taco in town. Though the portion was rather small, it looked worth it. Disappointingly, however, what I tasted was subpar – overcooked meat coated in sweet-and-sour sauce. The not-so-soft shell was not the quality I was expecting from one of the most expensive tacos I had ever purchased.

Although the different ingredients complemented each other well, it did not possess the “wow” factor I was looking for in order for it to be crowned Rey de Tacos.

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

Leo’s tacos truck 1515 S la brea ave. los angeles, CA 90019

L

eo’s Tacos Truck is the place to go for the ultimate street taco experience. If you visit at night, a spit grill dressed with fresh roasted al pastor – spit-grilled meat – will greet you outside the truck. A salsa bar was set up where I could customize my tacos with any of the addons, such as diced onions, radishes and habanero peppers.

Each taco is $1.25, but the portions are pretty small, so I ordered multiple al pastor tacos – their signature item.

Although the cheap store-bought quality of the ingredients – pretty much everything besides the al pastor – was not quite up to the standards set by other eateries I’ve visited, the tacos were well worth the money. Just thinking about the juicy al pastor paired with chunks of fresh pineapple makes me want to wait in line again for a couple more. The best part about Leo’s Tacos Truck was its customizability. I was able to load up on habanero peppers and diced onions to make one of the best tacos I’ve ever had. Although there is always a line and little space to eat, if you are a taco fan, Leo’s Tacos Truck is a must-try on your bucket list.

al pastor: $1.25

3

guisados

pinches tacos

8935 SANTA MONICA BLVD. WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA 90069

1030 Glendon ave. los angeles, ca 90024

asada: $3.50

ocated next to Westwood’s Trader Joe’s, Pinches Tacos is a taco paradise right under our noses. The restaurant is decorated with Spanish graffiti, adding a bit of a lively flair. Although Pinches Tacos boasts handpicked ingredients and homemade tortillas, the tacos were a little pricey – mostly $3 to $4 each. I ordered the asada tacos by the restaurant’s recommendation. At first, I was skeptical as to whether it would be worth the splurge for two – maybe three – bites. But as soon as I had a taste, I was more than convinced that Pinches Tacos was the real deal. Contrary to the common firm and chewy beef in a typical asada taco, the Angus beef was tender and easy on my teeth. Plus, it came complete with tomatillo salsa, onions and cilantro, providing the kick needed to enhance the juicy meat. Within walking distance from UCLA’s campus, Pinches Tacos is a close runner-up in this competition for the very best.

2

1 G

uisados is a 15-minute car ride away from UCLA. When my friends highly recommended I try this place, I was unsure whether it would be worth the drive. Bottom line, up front, it’s a firm yes. In contrast to other taco joints, the hipster restaurant gives off a distinctly modern aura, with its brick walls and metallic furniture. Local art was on display in the “featured artist” section for the customers to admire while enjoying their food. Every taco on the menu was $2.75; I ordered a cochinita pibil with a spice level of five

out of 10, upon the cashier’s recommendation. At first the taco looked like a blob of saucy meat, but I mean, who eats a taco for its looks? The tender pork with an added crunch from the pickled onion, along with the sweet salsa and black beans, melted in my mouth. All I could think was, “This is one good taco.” Guisados was easily the best taco joint on this trip, and I will be returning soon with my buddies. Despite its distance from UCLA, Guisados is rightfully crowned Rey de Tacos.

LIFESTYLE

38

39

L

cochinita pibil: $2.75

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

RECIPE:

EMPANADAS video available online

FILLING

Pastry

1 cup brown mushrooms, sliced 1 shallot, sliced 1/2 cup spinach 1/2 cup ricotta 1/2 cup mozzarella, shredded 1 pinch nutmeg Salt and pepper to taste 2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

1 1/3 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup shortening or cold butter 3 tablespoons cold water 1 tablespoon vodka 1 egg yolk 1 teaspoon milk *Makes four empanadas

STEPS

graphics.dailybruin.com/prime

For the filling:

sliced shallots, salt, pepper and olive oil 1orAdd butter to pan and sauté over medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes or until the shallots are soft and translucent.

Add the mushrooms and continue to sauté for additional five to 10 minutes, or until the mushrooms have browned and the shallots caramelized.

Take pan off heat. Add spinach and stir. The residual heat should cook the spinach enough so that it wilts down significantly.

Add ricotta, mozzarella and nutmeg to a bowl.

Remove grease from pan with a paper towel, and add the vegetable mixture to the cheese. Stir until well combined. Reserve.

2

3 4

For the pastry:

WRITTEN BY ANDREW WARNER

W

hen I first bit into the flaky pastry, I was utterly disappointed.

I was in a summer cooking class with a gaggle of other third- and fourth-graders and couldn’t have been more excited to be cooking something I had never heard of before: empanadas. But unfortunately, the recipe had clearly been dumbed down for the palates of picky little children like me – it didn’t taste much different from the plain beef and potato pies that I ate growing up in my own home.

It wasn’t until after I became a vegetarian eight years later that I would try empanadas again. I was at a summer food festival with my family, sunburned and sweaty under the sizzling Sacramento sun, when

PHOTOS BY MARYROSE KULICK I stumbled upon an Argentine empanada food tent.

To my surprise, they had a vegetarian mushroom and cheese option, filled with sweet caramelized shallots, rich mozzarella and ricotta. It tasted exactly how you’d expect a fried, cheese-filled pastry to taste – greasy, heavy and rich. But most of all, delicious.

Here’s my attempt at recreating that savory treat. I took a couple of liberties with the recipe, adding nutmeg to the filling as it adds a sweet and bitter touch that pairs beautifully with ricotta cheese, and baking the pastry instead of frying it simply because it’s a much easier and cleaner method of cooking. But despite those changes, it’s still just as tasty and filling as the pastry I consumed on that scorching hot summer day.

and whisk together. Add shortening or butter to bowl and cut in with a fork or pastry blender until the dough resembles the texture of coarse sand.

Add 1 tablespoon of water, and stir with a fork to combine. Add the vodka, and stir again to combine. Repeat with water, until the dough is moistened and can be formed into a ball.

Roll the dough into one big ball. Cut ball into quarters. Roll quarters into balls, and using a floured rolling pin, roll each ball out into circles, each about a quarter of an inch thick.

3

4

1 to 2 spoonfuls of filling 5toAdd one half of the dough circles,

being careful to leave about a half inch of space at the edges of the dough. Using a finger, dab the edges of the dough with a small amount of water to make the dough stick.

Fold the dough over, creating a semicircle. Press the edges of the dough with a fork, or crimp as desired to ensure that the pastry doesn’t open up when cooking.

Prick the center of the empanada with a fork to make holes for steam to escape when cooking.

Whisk egg yolk and milk together to create an egg wash. Brush egg wash over each empanada.

Place empanadas on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the pastry is flaky and golden-brown.

Allow five minutes to cool before serving.

6 7

8

41

Preheat oven to 450 1degrees Fahrenheit.

Add flour and salt to 2a medium-sized bowl

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

prime

malibu

LAGUIDE CITY

WRITTEN & PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARYROSE KULICK

Corral Canyon Loop

F

I

t was a beautiful Saturday morning – the sun shone softly, the Santa Ana winds blew through the pair of palm trees in front of our apartment. We packed the trunk of my roommate’s car with water bottles, beach towels, swimsuits and snacks and lathered ourselves in sunscreen. Driving west along the Pacific Coast Highway, ocean waves crash to our left and yellow mustard plants decorated the Santa Monica Mountains to our right.

Malibu, with a total population of less than 13,000, is a relatively small community in Los Angeles County that offers the best of land and sea. While it is primarily known as a beach city – Zuma and Point Dume are two of its most popular beaches – and a desirable locale for scouting celebrity real estate, there are also plenty of opportunities for hiking and indulging your seafood cravings. Follow prime’s Malibu exploration for a taste of that coastal California lifestyle.

or our first stop, we pulled into the parking lot of the Corral Canyon Loop, a trail just off the PCH. Our plan was to start our day with a short hike before gorging on lunch at Malibu Seafood, conveniently located less than 100 yards from the trailhead. Since the restaurant wasn’t open yet, the lot was all but empty, and we were able to quickly park, lace up our sneakers and take to the trail.

The hike is a 2.5-mile loop, and shortly after crossing a small creek, we were met with a junction. We took the trail to the right, which offered a steady incline and regular views of the ocean. We lucked out with a clear day – the water was a deep blue, and flowers ranging from lupine to small sunflowers covered the landscape. As we continued, however, the climb grew steeper and the plants thicker. The winter rains had done their job, and the trail was mostly overgrown. Instead of completing the loop, we turned back for a leisurely stroll downhill. We made friends with fellow hikers, lizards, a caterpillar and Billy the dog, whose idea of hiking was just to lie in the shade. Good thinking, Billy.

When we were almost back at the parking lot, a hand on my arm stopped me abruptly – just a few feet in front of me, a rattlesnake’s tail slid silently into the bushes. That’s a friend to watch out for, as well.

LIFESTYLE

42

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

A

little jittery from that close encounter, I hurried back to our car, just in time for Malibu Seafood to open its doors.

The parking lot had filled up, and a line was starting to form underneath the restaurant’s sign, which features the image of a red lobster in a Hawaiian shirt.

The menu has just about every kind of seafood you can think of – clams, mussels, calamari, halibut, generic unidentified fish – to go along with an order of french fries.

To try something new, I ordered a grilled giant squid steak and a basket of fried scallops.

We took our buzzer and tried to find a table in the restaurant’s shaded pavilion, which was a challenge because the hot sun had deterred most customers from the outdoor

options. But we managed, and our food arrived relatively quickly. My scallops all but melted in my mouth, and the squid steak was mildly chewy and wholly delicious, as long as I didn’t think about what I was eating. My friend’s mussels also looked like fried food heaven, and I had to snag a bite. Can confirm – mussels are great.

We cleaned our plates and patted our stomachs, satisfied. Although Malibu Seafood’s menu is more on the pricey end, it was a pit stop worth taking, especially before the beach.

El Matador State Beach

N

LIFESTYLE

ot wanting to get stuck on a crowded beach on a Saturday, we drove about 9 miles west of the restaurant to El Matador State Beach, avoiding popular Zuma and Point Dume.

The beach, tucked within rocky bluffs, is accessible by a steep trail and a set of stairs. I made my way down and took off my shoes, and we searched for a sandy spot to lay out our towels. There were plenty of people around, sunbathing or taking photos by the large rocks protruding from the water, but it didn’t feel too crowded. If anything, El Matador is a swell beach for people-watching.

At least two professional photo shoots seemed to be in progress when we arrived. On one side of a rock,

two women wore glittery makeup, pastel dresses and seashell crowns. They posed with serious expressions for the camera, I assume evoking their inner mermaids. On the other side, a male model in red board shorts ran around in circles tossing a football to himself, while a photographer snapped the action. In the water, two surfers were trying to catch tiny waves, flipping their hair every time they emerged from the water. It all felt very LA. But it was just a typical beach as well, with typical beach activities. We built a sand castle, spotted sea lions, explored small sea caves and ran out of the ocean screaming from the cold. The only reasons we left were to prevent sunburn and beat the traffic home.

F

eeling a bit dehydrated from the sun, I was in the mood for a smoothie.

We made a U-turn on the PCH to check out a joint a friend told me about, but a big white sign with a bright red strawberry painted on it hailed us down first. Strawberries are my favorite fruit, so naturally we had to stop. We parked in a turnout next to a convertible with the top down and made our way over to the fruit vendor. The strawberries were giant, sweet and delicious. We purchased half a box, only to determine that wasn’t nearly enough, and went back for more.

It’s a shame that strawberries are seasonal fruits, otherwise this would be my go-to stop in Malibu all year round.

SunLife Organics

B

ack on track, I was ready for that smoothie.

The overall vibe in SunLife Organics was very no-shirt-no-shoes-no-problem, as shirtless and bikiniclad customers crowded the succulent-decorated counter, ordering fresh-pressed juices and acai bowls.

The restaurant specializes in smoothies, juices, and superfood products using ingredients like kale, bee pollen, raw cacao, chia seeds and buffered vitamin C crystals – whatever that means. I was feeling mildly adventurous and ordered the Fountain of Youth, one of their signature superfood shakes. It contained strawberries, bananas, acai, goji, resveratrol, coconut and apple juice. I only didn’t recognize two of those ingredients, so it felt like a safe pick. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from the flavor, but overall I was pleasantly surprised. It tasted as a normal smoothie should taste, but with a somewhat chalky texture reminiscent of a milkshake.

I don’t think I’m hip enough to frequent SunLife, but as I sipped my youth-preserving drink on the ride home, I found myself thinking about the next Malibu day trip and what shake I would try then – perhaps the one with grass-fed whey protein isolate?

Maybe not.

45

Malibu Seafood

Strawberry stands

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

“

A moment of freedom and isolation from the busy city.

WRITTEN & PHOTOGRAPHED BY

OWEN EMERSON

A

s I drive north on the 405 Freeway from UCLA, the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing to me through my radio. I pass Sherman Oaks, Panorama City and Mission Hills and keep driving. By San Fernando Valley, I continue on I-5 north and make my way onto the Antelope Valley Freeway, driving with the edge of the Angeles National Forest in my sight. I’m not in Los Angeles anymore. At least not conventional LA, where popular hikes lie minutes away from a Starbucks.

I have hiked in Griffith Park many times, seen the Eaton Canyon waterfall in summer and winter, walked the shady trails of Will Rogers State Historic Park and strolled through the flowers of Topanga. Frankly, I’m bored with

the conventional, regular scenes of the city that I’m used to. I’m looking for a new area that’s definitely out of the way.

Located in the north side of the Angeles National Forest, southeast of Palmdale, Devil’s Punchbowl looks nothing like a punch bowl. Its name comes from the nearby Punchbowl Fault, which created the formation.

The eerie silence of the scenery, the mysterious rock formations that jut out like glass shards and the rocks’ red-orange hues give a devilish, dark feeling to the area.

Starting the hike from the parking area, the trailhead offers a few options. On the right lies a 1.1 mile loop trail heading down into the “bowl” and back up to the parking lot. The left side offers a scenic walkway and various hiker-made trails where you can create your own adventure, scrambling and exploring the sandstone rocks.

I stepped to the left to discover what those before me had found and made my way to the rocks. I scrambled around with my camera on the small peaks, taking pictures and taking in the environment.

It’s a wild scene that, because it offers a Mars-like landscape, gives you a moment of freedom and isolation

from the busy city. I let my eyes and body run free, as I carefully navigated the slopes and walked through boulders. I allowed myself time to explore and take pictures, but the complete isolation and quietness became a double-edged sword, so I decided to turn back.

I then tried the trail to the right, starting on the 1.1 mile through the bowl. The actual “bowl” is a miniature canyon with a sandy trail and rocks all over. The landscape had much more vegetation, with a variety of trees and shrubs, compared to the barren rocks I was climbing earlier. I felt like I was passing through a shrunken national park, reminiscent of the Yosemite or Zion national parks. As I walked along the floor of the bowl, the giant sandstone rock slabs towered above me – a killer spot for rock climbing, with trees growing higher up on the slab. After a slow walk of photographing the sights and making friends with a mixed border collie and her owner, I headed out.

I emerged after a tiring summit and walked out to my car. I took another look back at the area. There was something mystifying and beautiful about this place that I’m not used to. It took me completely out of hectic Los Angeles and to somewhere peaceful.

47

HIKE LA

Devil’s Punchbowl

@dailybruinprime | SPRING 2017

LIFESTYLE

48