BALANCE of CULTURE

Big Money Wins, Public Health Loses in NYC

A look at St. Vincent's Hospital--and what it once was--in Manhattan. It's now a pricey and controversial condo complex built by ambitious developers:

These go from about $1.4 million to $8.2 million, if you're interested in rubbing shoulders with some people you may have heard of. 

While these sure look nice and spacious considering you're in the middle of New York City, the fancy development has left many with no choice but "urgent care" clinics in other parts of the city as a last resort. Kind of shocking, as I thought there was plenty of hospital care in that area. 

This is one of the more subtle and insidious reasons why the US needs universal health care. A balanced system will not allow public health and private enterprise to mesh in this way. Big money almost always wins in local controversies like this, undermining basic local needs. 

The bright side: at least this is forcing the medical community there to explore new ways for health care reform. 

Gateway to Little Bangladesh: soju and phuchka

As a Korean-American Angeleno, I love Los Angeles' Koreatown (big surprise!) - and I love it even more now that a small portion of it is officially designated as Little Bangladesh. It may not look like an established or fully-themed part of town just yet (though signs along 3rd Street and other blocks now show slight changes in businesses), but the community regards Little India in Artesia as a prime example of what could develop:

There are some signs of progress. The new owner of the 99-cent store at 3rd and Ardmore Avenue plans to open a halal butcher shop next door, catering to the area's new Muslim residents. And a halal butcher nearby is looking to open a restaurant. Other Bangladeshi merchants are looking at every open storefront but say the rents are too high.

The community regards Little India in Artesia as a model. Although Little India, unlike Little Bangladesh, doesn't have an official county designation, it is known across the region as the place to go for saris, gold jewelry and Indian food. The new neighborhood must work to establish that kind of recognition, its leaders said.

Though Little India is technically in southeast Los Angeles County, the community's proximity to Orange County provides an easy entry point for local suburban residents to get a taste of some of the best Indian restaurants that Southern California has to offer (which is how I also became familiar with the area).

[Via]

Bring on the Bangladeshi experience and the cultural gentrifiers will come. Considering that Bangladeshi food is a staple of Britain's national cuisine, this development within LA's diverse Koreatown shouldn't be too difficult!

Let's hear it for these "security guards"

The video below had only a couple thousand views when I first saw it yesterday and it has accumulated nearly 17,000 views since. Watch as a local cyclist returns to his locked bicycle at downtown Long Beach's City Place shopping center only to find a stranger hovering over it and cutting the bike's lock. The uniformed security guards do nothing at all and nearby witnesses start to creep around and intimidate the victim. Nobody seems to realize they're being videotaped, and the viewer can clearly see the suspect's full face as well as his Long Beach City College attire. The security guards proceed to blame the victim as soon as the suspect leaves the scene, which is infuriating.



Long Beach, a city just south of the Los Angeles area, seems to be dealing with gentrification issues of its own, joining areas such as the Echo Park/Highland Park communities of LA. These areas have had their share of skirmishes between certain residents and recent cycling enthusiasts.

I can't help but think that this video brings forth an entirely separate issue from the gentrification angle, however. Let's talk about the security guards - this video shows them doing exactly what I expect from most of them, which is nothing. Security guards rarely seem to care about what is happening around them and they seem only willing to take action if it's completely and utterly safe for them...which pretty much makes them useless most of the time since it's clear that they do not even deter crimes from happening in the first place. Thugs know that these 'security guards' won't challenge them and who knows - the suspects and the guards on duty may even have been in cahoots this entire time.

Thanks Blogging LA!

A graffiti art supply boutique for those inspired by Banksy

According to a local favorite blog The Eastsider LA, a boutique dedicated to all things graffiti will open up later this month in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Kelly Raval, a partner in the store, stated it will stock about "4,000 cans of paint, includng a custom-made display rack with 3,000 canisters priced at about $6 each. On the other side of the store, a faux street scene wall - complete with a brick wall, fire hydrant and parking meter - will serve as a gallery of spray paint art created by visiting artists." Photos below courtesy of The Eastsider LA:

There is already considerable debate about whether the store's presence will exacerbate the tagging problem which exists in the neighborhood already. The store owners insist that their focus is on art, not graffiti.

This area of Los Angeles - Echo Park, Silver Lake, Atwater Village, etc. - does have a graffiti/tagging issue. This neighborhood also happens to usually be considered the most artistic area in Los Angeles where graffiti artists, MFA students and emerging musicians all congregate in a bohemian/yuppie/gentrifying context with the long-time locals as well as myriad Hollywood types.

World-famous graf artist Banksy, who many believe instigated the global phenomenon of street art culture, held an exhibition in a downtrodden warehouse in downtown Los Angeles in 2006. Many people are for some reason inclined to think that this spectacle of a show, Barely Legal, was Banksy's first Los Angeles exhibition (maybe it was the presence of celebrity art lovers such as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Perry Farrell that skewed this perception) but it was actually his second exhibit in the city. Though I was lucky enough to have attended that highly anticipated opening with the big red elephant in the room, I missed Banky's actual first exhibit in Los Angeles which was held in Silver Lake, in a nondescript little art gallery on Silver Lake Boulevard in 2002 (and is no longer in business there). My husband Nikos, a long time Silver Lake stakeholder, did attend this exhibit and has observed Banksy emerge from virtually unknown to becoming a household name.

Because this area of the city is so artistically inclined and liberal with its values, I can't say I'm surprised by the news that someone has decided to open up a shop for graffiti artists here. The shop will likely run into resistance from certain locals while being embraced by others. While we cannot predict how this store's presence will affect the city's current vandalism issues, I somehow doubt that "gang-affiliated" taggers will frequent the boutique as much as plain old artists will, graffiti types or otherwise.

Gentrifying Third World Medical Care

In his Foreign Affairs article titled “The New Population Bomb: The Four Megatrends That Will Change the World,” Jack A. Goldstone contemplates the future scenarios of both developed and developing nations based upon four future global shifts in immigration, emigration and populations. He ends his essay with these few paragraphs regarding healthcare for senior citizens:

One somewhat daring approach to immigration would be to encourage a reverse flow of older immigrants from developed to developing countries. If older residents of developed countries took their retirements along the southern coast of the Mediterranean or in Latin America or Africa, it would greatly reduce the strain on their home countries' public entitlement systems. The developing countries involved, meanwhile, would benefit because caring for the elderly and providing retirement and leisure services is highly labor intensive. Relocating a portion of these activities to developing countries would provide employment and valuable training to the young, growing populations of the Second and Third Worlds.

This would require developing residential and medical facilities of First World quality in Second and Third World countries. Yet even this difficult task would be preferable to the status quo, by which low wages and poor facilities lead to a steady drain of medical and nursing talent from developing to developed countries. Many residents of developed countries who desire cheaper medical procedures already practice medical tourism today, with India, Singapore, and Thailand being the most common destinations. (For example, the international consulting firm Deloitte estimated that 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for care in 2008.)
Never since 1800 has a majority of the world's economic growth occurred outside of Europe, the United States, and Canada.

Never have so many people in those regions been over 60 years old. And never have low-income countries' populations been so young and so urbanized. But such will be the world's demography in the twenty-first century. The strategic and economic policies of the twentieth century are obsolete, and it is time to find new ones.

No matter what your opinion is regarding US healthcare one thing is clear: you have to know where to go for honest medical care--a challenging feat already for many of us in the United States, let alone a foreign country. Goldstone reminded me of a recent trip that my husband and I took to the Maldives. The island we stayed on was extremely remote, even by Maldivian standards--upon landing at the capital of Male we had to take another microscopic plane for an hour, then take a speedboat for an additional hour before finally arriving to our destination (and, coming from Los Angeles, this was already after a full 24 hours of travel time). A few days into the trip we visited a neighboring island to see a doctor at the local hospital. Our female Indian doctor behaved in the same rushed and disinterested manner that so many people complain about regarding their American counterparts (this is not a busy hospital by the way)—and gave us the wrong medication to boot. Some extra money was made off of us buy the medicine they prescribed (we're talking like an extra fifteen US dollars here), which I’m guessing was the point of the “mistake.” No harm done, but duly noted.

Entrance of the hospital in the nearby atoll

From what we experienced, the simple Maldivian hospital above fits perfectly into Goldstone's scenario of influencing Second and Third World medical care to standards of the First World. The first paragraph in his excerpt reminds me of a form of gentrification--but broader in its transnational context and more specific because it is a healthcare related focus. Undoubtedly his suggestion, which Goldstone himself labels as "daring," invites much critique and debate. I'm sure that this gentrifying angle can be taken further to the issue of modern day colonization. While I do not think that this was his objective, perhaps his well intentioned motives are precisely what constitute an imperialistic and purely Western perspective.

Realistically, can Second and Third World infrastructures remain uninvaded by technologically superior foreign cultures in our globalized, interconnected world today? Further, can these infrastructures grow without external influence and investment?

And just in case you’re contemplating retiring abroad, here’s a great link to compare the cost of living in a foreign country with that of a New York City lifestyle: http://eiu.enumerate.com/asp/wcol_WCOLHome.asp

Technorati Tags: balance of culture, cultural diplomacy, Foreign Affairs, gentrification, healthcare, imperialism, Jack Goldstone, Linda Constant, Maldives, poverty, retirement, soft power, travel