Word: gardena
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Whenever Mitch Lansdell, manager of the Los Angeles suburb of Gardena, has an important phone call, he swivels his chair to face the northeastern corner of his office. He has permanently sealed one of his office doors and put all his books in the southeastern corner. It's not tidiness. It's the instructions of "intercultural consultant" Angi Ma Wong, a practitioner of feng shui, the Chinese tradition that says success is largely a matter of orienting your surroundings...
...otherwise. The city faced a $4.7 million budget deficit back in 1998 when Lansdell, then acting manager, agreed in desperation to try a feng shui (pronounced fung shway) practitioner. It could be coincidence, but within three weeks of her visit, Lansdell was promoted to full-time manager of Gardena, whose economy then got a boost when Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt bought a bankrupt casino there. This month Lansdell expects Gardena's deficit to decrease to $2.9 million...
...much as 3% of the value of a check. A 1991 Los Angeles city council survey found 133 check-cashing offices -- vs. only 19 bank and savings-and-loan branches -- serving South Central L.A.'s largely minority population of nearly 600,000. Right next door, more affluent (and Anglo) Gardena had 21 bank branches for fewer than 50,000 residents. Elsewhere, many consumers are fleeing to credit unions to escape the escalating bank costs. Membership in these nonprofit institutions, which are typically linked to workplaces, grew nearly 12% in the past five years, to more than 65 million people...
...Karen, 42, began gambling at age eight, flipping baseball cards against garage doors. At 13, she shot craps with boys in the co-ed locker room of Ralston Junior High in Belmont, Calif. As a young married woman, she started going to Las Vegas and the poker tables at Gardena, Calif. "All of a sudden, it wasn't the money anymore," she says. "It was the action, the high." On one occasion, she told her young son to wait on a street corner after school, and she would pick him up at 2:30 p.m. for a dental appointment...
Even when Hector Tabarez, 25, keeps the windows rolled up as he drives his 1985 chocolate brown Nissan pickup, his reputation precedes him. Anyone within a several-block radius can hear Tabarez coming, for he drives what is known as a "boom car." The auto mechanic from Gardena, Calif., spent $8,000 to install the vehicle's current stereo system, which comprises a deluxe Alpine 7902 compact-disc player, two heavy-duty Orion amplifiers and 32 speakers. His rig can deliver a bone-jarring 144 decibels of sound. "I just got carried away," he admits...