Monday, August 01, 2005

Legendary White Spot

I have grown to know and love the White Spot Restaurants chain. You know: pirate packs, triple-o sauce, beef dips and all. When I was growing up, long it was rumoured that once upon a time, "white" in "white spot" mean caucasian, to the exclusion of all others. As I munched on my fries and gravy as a kid, I would react in horror to this concept. But it wasn't out of the realm of possibility: I've had enough oral history in my family about department stores in Vancouver that excluded non-whites.

Recently, I reviewed Nat Bailey's meteroric rise as a restauranteur to find that his explanation was that he named White Spot after a LA joint in 1928: "Why not call in White Spot like that fellow on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles?"

This opened up a fascinating world for me where apparently a nickname for Los Angeles was once "White Spot". This in fact was more insidious in nature given that one of the forefathers of L.A., Harrison Otis, kept coined the city as "White Spot" just like Seattle is "the Emerald City" and NYC "the Big Apple". According to researchers, it seems like Otis wanted to attract anglo settlers to the burgeoning city - particularly those of professional classes. Other academic writings on suburban white flight and development of neighbourhoods by race seem to also confirm the geographically focus of "white" in L.A. in its historical roots.

Could the Wilshire Boulveard "White Spot" be rooted in this somewhat racist concept of a geographical spot designated for certain types (à la "British" in "British Properties")? I'm afraid I am at my limit for web surfing research and will have to leave it to one of my UCLA-bound friends to take this up and find out more!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home