Plaza Mexico

Today, on our way back from our monthly visit to Orange County for lunch and shopping, we stopped by Plaza Mexico, a shopping center themed as a traditional Mexican town plaza.

I had read about its opening a year or so ago in the Los Angeles Times, and I had wanted to see it for myself ever since. It's located in the city of Lynwood, near the intersection of the 710 and 105 freeways, southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

Besides the extensive Mexican theming, the shopping center also has several stores that cater towards a Latino customer base, such as La Curacao, where immigrants can buy furniture and other goods and have them sent to their hometowns in Latin America.

From San Quinones' article in the Los Angeles Times:

One high-profile example is Plaza Mexico in Lynwood. Plaza Mexico attempts to replicate a traditional Mexican downtown in a strip mall formerly anchored by a Montgomery Ward department store.

The plaza resembles Monte Alban, the ancient Indian ruins in Oaxaca. Its shops have the bold colors of a typical provincial town, and there is a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The plaza's clock tower replicates the facade of the government palace in Guadalajara. The stone and the lamps that light the plaza are imported from Mexico. Even the tiles on the plaza contain occasional figures from loteria, a Mexican children's game.

The governor of the state of Nayarit donated a statue in honor of Mexican mothers that stands at one end of the plaza. And other Mexican governors make appearances there when visiting Southern California.

Plaza Mexico's developer is Donald Chae, a Korean immigrant who has labored to make his shopping center distinctly Mexican in the same way Chinatown is distinctly Chinese. He hired Luis Felipe Nieto, an archaeologist and restoration expert from San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato, to advise on Mexican designs and colors.

There was a miniature train operating in the parking lot, which was a pleasant diversion for our daughter. Unfortunately, the train went around the parking lot, where I was concerned we might be broadsided by a inattentive driver.

When I was taking photos of the central building in the plaza, I was approached by a security guard.

"What are you taking photos for?"

"Just for my interest."

"Well, you can take photos of your family members, but you can't take photos of the buildings or the shopping center without permission from the administration."

"Why not?"

"Because this is private property. You can't take photos of the shopping center without permission."

I suppose I can understand that they would have such a policy, but it just seems hard to draw the line between taking family photos to remember your visit, and taking photos of the place you are visiting. When a shopping center is designed to be a tourist attraction, it seems unreasonable to prevent people from taking photos of the shopping center.

Will 'Star Trek' be 'Lost' under Abrams?

Paramount Pictures announced today that they have signed J.J. Abrams (of TV's Lost and Alias and the upcoming film Mission: Impossible III) to produce and possibly direct the next Star Trek film.

I guess it was inevitable, after Warner Brothers' recent success with the latest versions of the Batman and Superman films by hiring a hot young director to bring some fresh thinking to a film franchise that has lost its way and fallen on hard times lately.

According to Daily Variety, which broke the story in today's edition,
the project will center on the early days of seminal "Trek" characters James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, including their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and first outer space mission.

After reading some web comments like this, I wonder if doing a prequel of the original Star Trek series will be an exercise in nostalgia, much like watching the Star Wars prequel trilogy, where audiences cheered for the appearance of characters from the original films like Yoda and Jabba the Hutt. But because Kirk and Spock will be the main characters in this film, I think there is far greater chance for things to go horribly wrong.

I can't imagine going out of my way to see this new Star Trek movie. I don't watch Lost (although I'd like to see MI3, if only because they shot major scenes on Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles), and I stopped paying attention to Star Trek after Next Generation went off the air. Watching Insurrection in the theater was the last straw.

Another reason not to trust "scientific studies"

A new study from researchers at the University of Chicago claims that people are more satisfied with their sex lives in countries where women and men are considered equal.

"Male-centered cultures where sexual behavior is more oriented toward procreation tend to discount the importance of sexual pleasure for women," [sociologist Edward] Laumann said.

"When mama's not happy, nobody's happy," he said.

Austria tops the list with 71 percent satisfaction, while Spain, Canada, Belgium, and the United States also reported high levels of sexual satisfaction. The survey looked at people between ages 40 and 80 in twenty-nine different countries.

The lowest rate of satisfaction was reported in Japan, with a 25.7 percent rate.

The study was funded by drug maker Pfizer, which manufactures Viagra. One wonders if Pfizer is going to use the study to try to sell more Viagra in non-Western countries. Of course, fewer young people need to use Viagra for sexual dysfunction than those in their 50s and 60s. A better study would have included young people in their 20s and 30s as well.

In addition, one suspects that the survey was not taken in economically disadvantaged countries where Pfizer cannot expect to sell much Viagra.

Reflections on the Big One

Next Tuesday, April 18th, is the one-hundred year anniversary of the great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

Long described as magnitude 8.3 on the Richter scale, the earthquake and subsequent fires are believed to have killed at least 3,000 people. Though the city placed the official number at 478 killed,

a deliberate effort was made to gloss over the impact of the disaster. Everyone with an investment in the city -- from Army brass and insurance executives to Southern Pacific Railroad tycoons and civic boosters -- minimized the damage and the continued threat of danger.

Today researchers estimate that if the same earthquake had hit San Francisco today, there would be several thousand dead, several hundred thousand homeless, and more than $100 billion in damage.

Living along the California coast means living in earthquake country.

I have witnessed several large earthquakes, most notably the 1994 Northridge earthquake, measured at 6.7 magnitude, which killed fifty-one people and caused an estimated $20 billion in property damage.

Other fatal California earthquakes in my lifetime include the 1971 Sylmar earthquake (sixty-five deaths), which I was too young to remember, the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake (eight deaths), which I missed by virtue of being in the San Francisco Bay area for college, and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake south of San Francisco (at least sixty-three deaths), which I missed by being overseas for study abroad.

The Northridge earthquake happened at 4:30 in the morning. I remember a deep rumbling sound as I awoke, and the bedroom shaking back and forth wildly. I had been in many smaller earthquakes, but I remember thinking that the Big One had come, expecting the house to collapse, and wondering if I was about to die.

Our house survived the earthquake with just a few cracks. Other people were not so lucky. I was working for my father three days a week at the time. We left home at about 5:30, but as we saw a number of collapses structures and carports, we decided to return home in case there should be unexpected trouble.

Last year, I went to Baton Rouge and New Orleans a few days after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast. After witnessing the government's failure to provide supplies and medical treatment for those who could not evacuate, it really hit home how precarious our situation is in Los Angeles, with almost ten million people in Los Angeles County. If a catastrophic earthquake were to hit, presumably with no warning, millions could be without water or electricity, with most major roadways shut down. The civil disturbances that might result could easily dwarf what we saw in New Orleans last September.

In the meantime, my wife and I have put together earthquake supply kits for our home and our cars, including water, food, first aid, and emergency cash. We have to assume that our local and federal officials will not be able to do much to help us. There are numerous handbooks online for preparing for the next big earthquake, including this one.

I whole-heartedly agree with cartoonist Ted Rall's outlook on natural disaster zones in this country.

Not ready for Vegas

With this week's start of the major league baseball season, I have been conducting an experiment:

How well can I predict the winners and losers of each day's baseball games?

Using the day's baseball listings from the Los Angeles Times sports pages, I have marked my predictions for the day's winning teams. The Times' listings show the starting pitchers for each team, their win-loss record, Earned Run Average, their team's record when the pitcher started a game, and their win-loss, innings pitched, and ERA against that day's opponent. At this point in the season, the statistics are for last season.

The results so far have been mixed. Sadly, I am not ready to drive to Las Vegas and start betting money at a casino sportsbook.

On Monday, there were 13 games played--almost a full schedule, with Chicago vs. Cleveland getting a head start on Sunday, and the first game between Minnesota and Toronto on Tuesday. I picked an amazing 11 winners, with only 2 wrong guesses.

On Tuesday, flushed with my early success, I went mostly with the same teams I had picked on Monday, with dismal results. There were only 8 games played that day, but I only picked 2 winners.

On Wednesday, with 15 games being played, a full schedule, I came out almost even--8 correct winners, and 7 incorrect.

Generally speaking, one should do slightly better than 50 percent by always picking the home team, as even the worst teams usually win at least half their home games. What distinguishes the better teams is how well they can do on the road.

Monday's starting pitchers were the top starters for each team, and made it easier to divide the stronger teams from the weaker ones. But it's harder to predict when less successful pitchers are matched against each other, and it's also hard for even the best teams to sweep all three games in a series from weaker teams.

Of course, with more information, such as how well a team's batters do against a certain pitcher, which players are injured, etc, it should be possible to make better guesses. But in a long 162-game season, when the best teams win 90-100 games, and the worst teams lost 90-100 games, there is a lot of chance in determining which team will win any random game.

Songkran in Los Angeles

Today we went to the annual Songkran (Thai New Year) festival in Thai Town, the area of east Hollywood with a concentration of Thai restaurants, markets, and other stores.

They had closed down a 10-12 block section of Hollywood Boulevard, from maybe Vermont Avenue all the way to Western Avenue (if you're not familiar with Los Angeles, the section of Hollywood Blvd most tourists visit is two or three miles further west, with Grauman's Chinese Theater, the El Capitan Theater, and Hollywood and Vine). We parked across from the Sunset/Vermont subway station and rode the MTA Red Line to Western Avenue.

The festival organizers had long sections of booths, two wide, all the way down Hollywood Blvd. The first booth we visited had amazingly detailed fruit carving, including flower designs cut from a watermelon and a swan cut from a melon.

We came across a kid's play area, with coloring tables, sand boxes, and bubble-makers. My wife spent about twenty minutes there with our daughter, while I searched for the parade location.

On the way, I found a boxing ring featuring Thai kickboxing demonstrations, a stage with Thai cultural acts, and many people dressed in traditional Thai costumes.

I made my way back, and we worked our way through the crowds to the end of the parade route, at Hollywood and Kingsley. A woman at the information booth had told me the parade would be turning down Kingsley, but when the start of the parade reached where we were, the marchers simply disbanded and disappeared into the crowds.

As we worked our way back to Western, we saw Mayor Villaraigosa dressed in fairly ordinary clothes walking with a couple of aides toward the stage. My wife asked me, "Why don't you take a picture?" I told her that I had seen the mayor at least a dozen times before (I believe he rides in every parade held in the city of Los Angeles) .

My wife did a little shopping at a Thai market that we often visit, and we spent some more time at the children's play area before returning home via the MTA Red Line.

A vendor selling the stinkiest fruit known on the seven continents, the durien. It is quite popular in countries like Thailand and Vietnam. Apparently it is an acquired taste, like Americans' love for peanut butter.