Mobile Hi Fi

Immigrant_Newcomer

2002-Now_COMPOSITE

“Where is that?” is an all too common question about Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown.

What’s Filipino or historic about it? How does it fit into “The Big Picture” story of Los Angeles?

In many ways, Hi Fi epitomizes L. A.: a diverse population, a significant percentage of low-income and recent immigrants, and a history that has been erased or is hard to find. How then do you experience the history of a place with few visible cultural markers? How do you access the hundreds of stories permeating non-descript buildings, now-empty lots, and commercial strip malls that, taken collectively, result in that Historic Filipinotown sign by the 101 Freeway? How do you dig up the past, peel back the layers of a neighborhood’s evolution over time and make it meaningful to a contemporary audience?

That’s where PDUB’s Mobile Hi Fi Tours come in: historical excavation through time travel, experienced through the perspectives of immigrants from different time periods. Using GPS-enabled Nokia tablets, users can access audio, photos and maps that comprise these Immigrant’s Guides while walking around the neighborhood.

IMMIGRANT’S GUIDES:

1898-1945 Filipino Fountain Pen Boys

1945-1965 Filipino Farm Workers

1965-2002 Latina Teen

2002-Present Filipina Caregiver

What were these immigrants’ lives like? How did they survive and thrive in the midst of racism and exclusionary laws. Topics include housing, employment, language, transportation, social life and recreation.

FEATURED CONTENT INCLUDES:

**Audio recordings of oral histories from the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, read by PDUB Youth and PWC members, primarily immigrants themselves and many of whom work in domestic service jobs, such as caregivers

**Audio readings by PDUB Youth and PWC members from key Filipino authors like Carlos Bulosan and the autobiography of Philip Vera Cruz, the Vice-President of the United Farm Workers (UFW)

**Haranas, traditional Filipino seranades, performed by Filipino immigrant seniors from the Silver Lake Adult Day Care Center

**Interviews, stories and statements from key members of Hi Fi’s Filipino and Latino communities

**Photographs contributed by community members that give invaluable insight into neighborhood life

**Photos from UCLA and USC’s historic archives

**Features on local businesses, churches and nonprofits

25d_PDUB_with_Community_Members
1898-1945_Audio_Bulosan

These Immigrant Guides are the result of a collective effort. The process of creating them is participatory, multi-generational, and cross-disciplinary. Contents are generated through workshops, research, and interviews with community members, university classes and the direct input of community members. In fact, these Guides have galvanized support among Hi Fi community members because the project enables them to contribute content, shape its conceptual framework and its public presentation. They are eager to speak with local youth, share photos, record their stories and volunteer. They recognize PDUB’s Mobile Hi Fi Tours as a much-needed repository of the stories and value people have placed in the neighborhood, that they effectively allow a community to tell its own story, with all the weight and meaning that only its members can bring.

PDUB’s Mobile Hi Fi Tours aim to promote and benefit Historic Filipinotown as a neighborhood, to increase its public visibility, to drive interest, investment, and foot traffic into the area, and to enable it to more effectively advocate on its own behalf. It seeks to: