I moved to Southern California 30 years ago. My Dad asked me, as a courtesy, when I was in Connecticut at Christmas time, to pay a visit to his pal, who had gone to college in L.A. - and had the time of his life. The pal was waxing, nostalgically about the good old days, in his apartment on Santa Barbara Av. Then he asked “hey, how’s that area, these days?” I replied “Well, they renamed it Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, if that gives you any indication”. The smile disappeared from his face, as he looked down at the ground, and then changed the subject to how much he missed the warm winters. :(
That area around Santa Barbara Blvd and Crenshaw Blvd is Lemeirt Park. My family lived there until the late 1950’s. It was a great neighborhood until the ethnic makeup changed. Now Lemeirt Park is the “cultural center of Afrocentricity.” It as though the people who built that area never existed.
If not for the Koreans and their shops the area would be even worse.