2002 Nicolaides 2002 

Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965, with photographs by Robbert Flick. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2002, 1960, 1960s, 1950, 1940, 1939, 1930, 1930s, 1908

     ". . . In 1908, Los Angeles passed the first major land-use zoning law in the United States, eight years before the more famous New York City measure . . . reserved the west side for 'higher class residential areas.'" p. 50

      On page 90, ". . . in 1930 . . .  Many of the natural attractions-like the beaches and mountains-were free to all comers. As a result, outdoor recreation came to represent a sort of social leveler in Los Angeles, a place where people of different classes might mix. Although the upper classed tried to change this by establishing elite beach clubs, designed to keep away the "riffraff," most L.A. beaches remained open to a wide cross section of classes. The line, however, was drawn when it came to race. Nearly all Southern California beaches were off-limits to blacks, more by de facto practice than written law. Although no beaches explicitly prohibited blacks, public officials and public pressure encouraged blacks to use certain beaches set aside for them, such as a part of Santa Monica known as 'the Inkwell' and a section of Manhattan Beach."

     Page 132, "In late 1930 Santa Monica adopted 'a handbill ordinance' that prohibited out-of-town businesses from advertising in Santa Monica."

     on p. 192 "Scattered working-class pockets around Santa Monica and southwestern Los Angeles likewise got red-lined although not always for racial reasons."-1939 HOLC appraisers.

     on p. 201, "Table 5-2, gives the Santa Monica Median Family Income in 1939 as $2,667, in 1950, $3677, and 1960, $6845." I'm not sure if these are adjusted dollar amounts.

     on page 41, "Using the Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, gives the percentage of residents with working-class jobs in Santa Monica, whose population was then 53,500, as 53.2%."

     on p. 260 reports that in the early sixties, (Ray Markle, with his wife and friends from Southgate) "danced to Spade Cooley's country-and-western band at the Santa Monica Pier."

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017