It's an ad hoc capture of the southland in the early 70s. I like to reference IMDB to try to see if the landmarks in the show still exist. Some do, some don't. The criminals used to live in some very nice houses up in Bel Air.
A recent example had Colombo at a winery. Well, the Pomona and Cucamonga Valley is where many of the wineries were back in the day. But, that's been transitioning away from that area for some time. The Ontario Airport exists where that winery was in the show.
But there's still vestiges of all that in the area, and the area is still in rapid change. What used to be dairy farms are all turning into warehouses or new residences. Yet, there's still that same old local convenience store on the corner in its 70+ year old building just down the street.
It's a very interesting place to just watch the change happen around you.
We now live in a place where the locals are warm and welcoming, but I'll never be one of them. My kids are, but I'm just a little different. When I go back to where I was raised, I'm no longer a local there either, just a little bit different. It's more than the place itself changing. It's as if there is some continuity that's been broken somewhere.
It's not bad, just odd. I can't quite put my finger on it.
Which, you are right, isn’t bad. Just odd.
Unmoored is adequate.
Even if nothing gets built or demolished, trees grow.
But, looking back, I was the gentrifier.
I've seen what it was a few years before moving in there: prostitutes on the street at night. Mobile soup kitchen feeding them, and a group of eccentric locals who included a man without legs in a wheelchair. Folks who got pushed out of other parts of the city - finding a home and a place to just _be_
What I'm trying to say is that: your "from" and your nostalgia was somebody else's "to". Somebody else lost what was there, and then you came. And then you left and something else came. The city builds up layers. And there is a longing and a nostalgia and a wrenching... but those feelings are part of what's always been there even before you. Now that you feel those feelings, you've joined in another part of the cycle.
That's beautifully put. Every city I've lived in, there were stories of the good old days. "You should have seen this place ten years ago." As I grew older and lived in more places, I would hear stories about a city where I was "from". How it's changed now with all the new people moving in, how it used to be in the glory days. And I was there, living those glory days that they're reminiscing about, a place in the past that no longer exists.
As I'm getting ready to move from yet another city, I reflect on how it's changed. She's no longer the city I used to know - and I'm no longer the person I was when I moved here. It's time to go find my next "to". Others will move in and make where I'm "from" theirs.
I loved your story and the pictures. The rebirth was satisfying to see, how the merchants were able to find a new home for their village.
Ironically his former home got turned to a, well not a mall, but a convenience store.
- Heraclitus ~5th century BC