ELBA AND PINI ON NOSTRAND AVE

Elba was a badass broad in every sense of the word. Despite having to rely on immigrant English, she succesfully petitioned Congressperson Kirkpatrick to demand her son, Jose Antonio, be released from the prison where he had been since turning 16. I was in the room when she passed and I can't tell you what it means to me yet, but her ascendancy is assured because she was the tia with the pad on Nostrand Ave. Elba was the reason I was born in a Jewish hospital named for a 13th century seer in Brooklyn. She's the catalyst for my parents forging ahead in parenthood by having my sister. Without her maybe my folks don't leave on a freight ship, they stay in Argentina and get caught up, disappeared, and I don't exist. In fact, the fact you are reading this on this side, and we can share this conscious sentence means Elba overstays her tourist visa with Pinino. Pinino is my Uncle, Elba's husband. He's part goat and part toothpick, and will not be easily surprised by any of the rhetoric you might want to fantabulate towards his earholes. Pinino grew up poor in Buenos Aires and spent a whole year in a cast because of scoliosis. Pinino was no stranger to adversity; he lived near Fort Apache, one of Buenos Aires most notorious slums, and all during high school had to carry a zip gun for protection. But this tale ain't about Pinino, it's about Elba, and what Elba saw in Pinino enough to convince her to immigrate to the blackest part of Brooklyn in 1973.

Because I am a Square, Old Fuck that Lives on the West Side (of Los Angeles)

It’s easy to get things mixed up. We are, however you paint it, a deciduous rabble of debutantes and derelicts in leather pants. We see parking spaces as barometers of whether businesses will actually have any business existing. We prune our echo chambers of signature interference, deny you the merge of conversation, the comeuppance of a dialogue; we rebuke your lane-change-chit-chat. If you’re on a bicycle in the bicycle lane, we’re aiming for your hind quarters. If you’re on an electric scooter we get to clip you between the hip and knee. If you’re a swarthy kid we reserve the right to never have seen you at all. We barrel down neighborhoods in all of our sedan-class tout suiteness. We Armor-All our sunglasses until they display pixelated avatar drivel. We tantalize our mufflers with ragamuffin megaphone elite gravity. We park like czars so as not to share the municipal parking loam. We block driveways, boulder causeways, break collarbone loading zones. We drive two blocks for milk, but not before lauding each other on the brand of dolphin-safe tuna, ignoring the dinosaur in the room. We pretend people bagging our food were born to bag our food. It’s easy to see sacrifice from the dashboard of my thrive. It’s easy to see how things get done when you’re a pilot ace. It’s easy to bury your feelings in a Frosty or thicker, chocolate shake food. It’s easy to believe the we we assume when you are are you. We assume no responsibility for your nuance, doodad, or eunich. We believe belief is the truest route to Wilshire. We believe bike lanes are fake news. We believe eons ago our ego took a really loud picture. We agree to send you via the route that takes you by the dying airport even though it will be sold slab by slab to scions of loft spaces and self-parking mavens.

LAX2MIA

Read the flyer for registration deets!

LA PALABRA SCHEDULE 2021