November 22, 2006

Nonhistoric Very Little Filipinotown



A throwaway song, "Bebot," from a year-old Black Eyed Peas album, becomes an anthem for California's Filipino American community. From the LA Times:

So begins the story of Allan Pineda, a member of the hip-hop band the Black Eyed Peas, who two years ago wrote a song about his journey from a poverty-stricken district in the Philippines to Los Angeles' Atwater Village...

The Filipino American community... the second-largest Asian group in California behind the Chinese... have never established set 'Filipino' neighborhoods - the equivalent of Monterey Park for Chinese Americans or Little Saigon for Vietnamese Americans.

There is a historic Filipinotown west of downtown LA, but the U.S. census found that less than 15% of its residents are actually Filipino...

Hudgens was living in the Wilshire district at the time but decided to look for a neighborhood where there were mostly Filipinos. The best he could find was a block in Atwater Village, a diverse section of northeast LA that included some Filipinos...

He wanted to pen a song about his roots that people could dance to. It took him about two days in the band's sound studio in Atwater Village.


UPDATE: A stat to back "Bebot." According to the 2000 Los Angeles Almanac, of Atwater Village's 8,042 neighborhood residents, 1,028 are Filipino. That's about 13 percent.

3 comments:

Danielle said...

He should have checked Eagle Rock.

celia said...

Or Cerritos.

sherru said...

YEAH FLIPS REPRESENT!

Also...I'm kind of always sad that there's not much going on in "Historic Filipinotown" nowadays.