The Minutemen and San Pedro

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Been going through a Minutemen phase lately, San Pedro seems to figure a lot in their story. I know there are some southern Californians here. From what I can gather it is near or part of LA's seaport area, working class with large Mexican and Croatian populations and LA's largest Italian contingent. Does that mean decent pizza?  Is it a place one would visit? Does it have a beach? Any other bands come from there? Was it rough and tumble in the past and not so much now? 

[fearlessfreap]

I drove cross country from New York to Los Angeles with a group of friends in 1985. One of them wanted to go to San Pedro to buy a corn dog and have his picture taken eating a corn dog in San Pedro because of the line, “we were fucking corn dogs” in the Minutemen song, History Lesson - Part II. I agreed, providing someone got a picture of me driving 55 miles per hour on the Harbor Parkway at the San Pedro exit to recreate the Double Nickels album cover. I still have the picture, and it’s depressing to see how young and idealistic I once was.

San Pedro wasn’t particularly memorable, but I found it interesting that there was a blue collar beach community in Los Angeles, considering how expensive the property must have been.

I told my father, who was stationed in Long Beach following WWII that we went to San Pedro that day and he said, “why the hell would you want to go there?

[Deleted]

As a SoCal native, I'm sure Hatz can answer this better, but towns like San Pedro, Long Beach, and So. San Francisco and Eureka in NorCal are very similar to places like Liverpool. Because they're in California, everyone kinda expects palm trees and that kinda shit, but they are very blue collar towns that housed longshoremen and other folks associated with shipping and dock work - not very exotic at all. And then there's the distribution, shipping and production that piggybacks off that that's situated nearby.

[Deleted]

It had been a blue collar harbor community,with nautical museums and such in the area, but don't worry, Gentrification is coming ! Like parts of Long Beach started doing a decade ago, they are beginning to upscale the area:

www.sanpedropublicmarket.com/

[Deleted]

Aug 13, 2019 18:13:59 GMT @dayodead said:

It had been a blue collar harbor community,with nautical museums and such in the area, but don't worry, Gentrification is coming ! Like parts of Long Beach started doing a decade ago, they are beginning to upscale the area:

www.sanpedropublicmarket.com/

So much drama in the LBC.

[Deleted]

One must keep their mind on their money and thus their money on their mind...

[Reactionary Rage]

I've come round to the Minutemen. They did some great stuff.

[tg]

When we moved to SoCal in 1968 we lived a couple of miles from San Pedro in the city of Torrance.Pedro is pronounced with a long E and locals often remove the San and simply say Pedro when referring to the place. I lived nearby until around 1980.
Back then it was a maritime city with a sizable skid row on Gaffey Street. It sits just up the coast from Long Beach and the two cities’ ports comprise the largest port system on the west coast. Long Beach had a large naval base so the whole area revolved around the ocean-going concerns.
There is no beach to speak of - the port takes up a lot of real estate.The parts of San Pedro in the hills are (or were) the “other side” of the Palos Verdes Peninsula - a wealthy enclave of large cliff side and cliff adjacent homes - but that cachet eluded the Pedro side until more recent years. I’m pretty sure you couldn’t get a house there for less than $500,000-$600,000, nowadays. And that would be a starter home. Now it’s gentrified like many areas of Los Angeles. The former skid row area is coffee shops and restaurants. There are still higher crime areas but it doesn’t resemble the rough and tumble nature of the town’s earlier years.
One of the odd stories about the area is that it was it’s own city for many years until the city of Santa Monica up the coast started trying to build a port. Los Angeles - relatively landlocked in those days - decided that building a port first would guarantee growth in the future. Not having a suitable location they basically annexed, through eminent domain and other means, a narrow strip of land from what is now downtown LA to San Pedro/Wilmington and then annexed those two towns and built the port before Santa Monica. If you look at a map of the LA area you can see “The Harbor Strip” running south to the ocean. Santa Monica lost the port battle but is now its’ own wealthy enclave and doing just fine, thank you.