South Central L.A.
South Los Angeles, more widely known as South Central Los Angeles was a notoriously dangerous region of the City of Los Angeles which had an extensive history of gang violence starting in the 1920s with white gangs and evolving to black and Hispanic gangs. Crime has steadily dropped in South Los Angeles since the late '90s. However gang activity has not declined.
South Central had become a byword for urban decay, its bad reputation spread by movies such as Colors, South Central, Menace II Society, Poetic Justice, Tales from the Hood, Friday, and in particular, South Central native John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood. Even more recent films such as Baby Boy, Training Day, Harsh Times, Dirty, Gridiron Gang, Waist Deep, Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club, Street Kings and End of Watch, including drama series such as Southland, Law & Order: LA and The Closer continue the poor image. The rap group N.W.A.'s album Straight Outta Compton and the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas also popularized South Central's bad image, with upcoming Grand Theft Auto V also expected to do so.
Read more about this topic: Crime In Los Angeles
Famous quotes containing the words south and/or central:
“There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear—the city of London and the South Seas.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
—Anonymous.
An axiom from economics popular in the 1960s, the words have no known source, though have been dated to the 1840s, when they were used in saloons where snacks were offered to customers. Ascribed to an Italian immigrant outside Grand Central Station, New York, in Alistair Cooke’s America (epilogue, 1973)