In September my Bay Area friend Mistah Rick and I met once again in Southern California to sample some new breweries. This time he drove down from Oakland and I Metrorailed up from Long Beach to meet at the California Science Museum in Exposition Park near downtown Los Angeles. After sating our minds and imaginations with the amazing exhibit of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, we headed off to other parts of Los Angeles to attend to our tastebuds. By mid-afternoon we decided to venture out of central LA to the South Bay. Our first stop was in Hawthorne, where Rick and I met and became good friends several decades ago when we were scientific programmers developing a 3D CAD system for the Northrop Corporation, which was founded in the city in 1939. Named after the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who shared his birthday with the daughter of one of the developers, the city of Hawthorne was founded in 1905 and soon became what was known as a sundown town, where signs were posted everywhere warning African Americans to be out of town by sundown. Sadly enough, as I discovered when I recently read City of Quartz by LA historian Mike Davis, there were many communities like this in the early days of Los Angeles, including the very first place I lived as an infant before my family wisely moved to Long Beach. Fortunately time has moved on, people have become more aware, and communities have evolved quite a bit -- although this doesn’t really explain the current state of the White House. But don’t get me started… | ![]() |