By Laura Medina
The director of the urban drama classic, "Boyz n the Hood," a snapshot of the crack's aftermath on what used to be a family-friendly neighborhood into a nefarious crime-ridden ghetto, only to rebound into today's bargain deal for cash-crushed yuppies, John Singleton loves and respected his boyhood South Los Angeles neighborhood so much; that he felts it is now the time to fully explain to folks what happened to his childhood neighborhood.
As a real-deal, true-to-honest, South Los Angeles Angeleno, John Singleton needs to educate people how Reagan's fight against communism in Nicaragua, the Iran-Contra Affair, ruin his neighborhood. Basically, according to hearsay, the CIA created a tunnel system where the Contras would grow, refine, and supply cocaine to Los Angeles' cocaine dealers. In return, the CIA funnel the Los Angeles cocaine profits back to the Contras, to pay for weapons to overthrow the Sandinista socialist government. No decent American tax money involved.
Singleton isn't afraid to say he personally witnessed as tween, watching a safe, family neighborhood transform into a crime-ridden neighborhood, best known for un-family friendly West Coast gangsta rap and its accompanying culture in graffiti urban folk art and the toxic masculine attitude culture.
In "Snowfall," he wanted to show what South Los Angeles used to be pre-crack epidemic and the fall-out that still stings to this very day.
The result is his heart-felt yet heart-breakingly honest tale of how a family-friendly, working-class neighborhood, literally into the cracks, FX's crime-history drama, "Snowfall, https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/snowfall
To celebrate Season 2 of "Snowfall," FX threw an house party in Crestview neighborhood of LA.
The only key signifiers are an huge In N Out Burger Truck (what Angelenos call a real "burger & fries") and a so-called "ice cream truck."
When the crack epidemic, aka "the cocaine economy," in "Snowfall" hits South Los Angeles at its weakest. Franklin the drug dealer turn drug kingpin, used discarded ice cream trucks to sell crack. The crack epidemic came in when the traditional blue-collar factory jobs got up and left LA, leaving South Los Angeles vulnerable, using cocaine and it's cheaper, more addictive crack, as a coping mechanism for the laid-off and the down-graded.
If you watch FX right now, they're running a Snowfall ad, where adults sell their most valuable possessions for crack, out of an ice cream truck.
The ice cream at FX Snowfall's House Party, is for the fans who are in on the joke. Real ice cream vendors refuse to do this party. So, FX was forced to hire a discarded ice truck and they were giving away "Snowfall" t-shirts, not ice cream on an hot July day.
Fortunately, for FX's guests invited to Snowfall House Party, the In N Out Burger Truck is deliciously real.
One meal limited per a person, a burger, a bag of chips, and any choice of soda/drink. Guests literally need a meal ticket to get lunch.
Deceptively plain on the outside, FX's Snowfall House Party was vintage early '80's dupe. The soundtrack is psychological key for viewers to sense the transition that is uniquely LA. Early Eighties innocent, fun-loving funk with a light rap, gave away to what people think and know of LA, the angry, thought-provoking, hard-core gangsta hip hop of N.W.A., Dr. Dre, and Easy E.
Once inside, "Snowfall" House Party was an impromptu graffiti/urban folk art/mural museum-slash-nightclub.
Respected graffiti artists, air-brushed and stenciled sneakers and baseball caps. Even, guests can customized their own caps with magic markers.
Air-brushing and enamel technology from auto detailing to murals, graffiti, and nail art manicures, shows how a rotten time in South Los Angeles, has a profound effect on spreading its culture to fashion, art, music, beauty, and what it means to swagger.
LA is car culture. So much so, that it has some commonality with the thrifty Deep South. If a whole car can't be saved, they salvage what they can then reuse for other usages. An old car re-fitted into a low-rider. The backseat into a couch.
Even the nail bar/spin table painting bar, the backdrop are graffiti-designed tv screens airing snippets and trailers and teasers from the upcoming Season 2 of Snowfall.
When a community is hit the hardest, this is when whatever it's best at, erupts then spreads.
In an economic doldrum, New York gave us hip hop, punk/alt rock, and disco.
When it was South Los Angeles' turn, or downturn, it was forced to be resourceful with whatever they have left then rock it.
Whatever discarded vinyl albums that nobody wants, they simply put it back on the turntable, turning it into a vinyl disco pottery wheel, flip on the switch, forget the needle. Instead, squeeze a squeeze of paint as the record spins into an artform, spin art. It's another form of graffiti.
If LA nail art is graffiti at its highest yet most fashion and attainable form, then spin art is LA's emerging art form.
John Singleton's "Snowfall" on FX is his unknowingly love letter and heart-breaking history of his hometown, the real Los Angeles away from polar opposite of Hollywood manufactured, artificial glamour of transients, striking it rich.
Nope. It's about John Singleton making his hometown real and how its worst time became an culture tidal wave that over took rap and hip hop away from NY then conquered the globe in what is American music, style, and attitude. So influential, that Europeans, Asians, and Africans copy it to this very day.
During it's worst time, Los Angeles set the standard of what is hip and cool.
FX and John Singleton just want to explain to you how West Coast hip hop came about and what South Los Angeles used to be. It was and still is more than just crack.
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