Where art lives

Conveniently located across the street from MacArthur Park is the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station, where riders can get on the Red or Purple lines and head east to downtown LA or west toward Hollywood.

The station does not just house the subway lines, however. Inside are several works of art, including a piece called "Urban Oasis" that was designed by Sonia Romero. The piece consists of 13 different scenes, carved in ceramic tile, that line the walls of the station. Romero designed the piece in 2007; it was installed in 2010.

Romero grew up in the LA area, around Echo Park, and grew up right in the center of the art world – both parents were, and are, full-time artists. The piece in the metro station was her first public art job.

Romero said she started developing her idea by visiting the park with a camera and talking to people in the park and in the surrounding shops. She finally got her inspiration after speaking with Sandy Romero, a restaurant manager in the area.

"I got the concept from her because she told me how the park was an oasis and a special place for all the hundreds of thousands of people that live surrounding there," Romero said. "So I looked at it in a positive way...what I did was created 13 designs that showed people using the park in positive ways."

After hearing about the revitalization of the neighborhood, Romero developed the concept of an urban oasis, which eventually became the title of her piece. She defines an urban oasis as "a place where you can escape the dangers or the greyness or the urban jungle," and she believes that MacArthur Park serves that purpose for the community.

Many of the panels she designed are based on scenes she photographed herself, and others are based on historical photos or information. Some of the scenes are children playing, a protest, people playing chess or doing other recreational activities.

"I was trying to show all the facets that people use the park for: the arts and culture, the political history, some of the businesses I represented," Romero said.

In exploring how best to represent the park and its surrounding community, Romero noted that her perception about the area did change.

"I grew up thinking MacArthur Park was a really dangerous area," she said. "But it turned out in the 2000s, things had changed a lot...What the community members told me is that they did improve the safety there by installing security cameras, and the police worked to make it less dangerous in terms of gang activity."

Romero said that what she most enjoyed about the project was talking to community members.

"It was cool to go down there and talk to people and be less afraid and just realize that the people there are just people," she said.

Now, hundreds, maybe thousands of people pass by Romero's artwork every day and see her representation of this dense and diverse community in Los Angeles.

Here is a closer look at some of the panels Romero designed. Hover over the dots to learn more.

The Westlake and MacArthur Park area is overwhelmingly Latino; over 70 percent of residents have Latino heritage. One can hear that heritage on the streets, as street vendors advertise their wares in Spanish. But one can also hear that ancestry in the community's music.

The neighborhood's annual COFECA Festival is just one example. This two-day festival celebrates the culture and traditions of Central American countries with dozens of booths selling Central American food, clothes, flags and more. The festival ends with a parade.

A visit to the 2016 COFECA Festival also revealed a celebration of Latin American music. In the middle of a closed street, separated slightly from the booths, stood a large constructed stage where several different performers sang and danced to the sound of their culture's music.

The Westlake neighborhood is also home to the first mariachi dinner theater restaurant in the world, La Fonda De Los Camperos. Mariachi music and mariachi bands are a tradition stemming from Mexico, and with Mexican being the most common ancestry in the neighborhood, it may seem fitting that the restaurant pays homage to this cultural symbol.

In 1969, musician and director Nati Cano, along with members of his band Mariachi Los Camperos, established La Fonda as a place for people to enjoy both Mexican cuisine and mariachi music at the same time.

"That was part of Nati Cano's vision," said Sergio Alonso, a harpist who has been with Los Camperos for 19 years. "To establish that place where he can have his mariachi be welcoming to everybody who would come here in LA."

For almost four decades, La Fonda became what Alonso described as "the mecca of mariachi musicians" and countless other artists. However, in 2007, problems with the landlord forced Nati Cano to shut La Fonda down.

The restaurant reopened for a brief stretch, but not as a mariachi restaurant – Los Camperos no longer played there. Then La Fonda closed again for three years, only reopening its doors earlier this year, in March, returning to Nati Cano's original vision of a dinner theater restaurant and bringing back the two-time Grammy-winning band, Los Camperos.

"La Fonda was always characterized by that homey feel, that intimate feel where you walk in and...people knew your name," Alonso said. "Now, I think, we shoot for that same feel but more of a tinge of retaining that legacy and that tradition of Nati."

Memorabilia from Los Camperos' history is everywhere inside the restaurant. Photographs of Los Camperos and Nati Cano dating back to the 1970s hang in the stairwell, and mariachi costumes that the band used to wear are enclosed in cases on the wall. Even the bathroom features posters from mariachi conferences that the group attended decades ago. One of the band's Grammy awards is displayed proudly in a glass case.

"When people walk in, they can go and look at some of the photographs that are here or some of the items that were here and remember back to when they used to come to La Fonda and they used to remember some of these guys that were performing here back in the '90s, '80s, '70s, '60s," Alonso said.

Four nights a week, Los Camperos performs a few shows each night, complete with dancers in traditional Mexican dress. For those few hours, La Fonda fills with the sound of mariachi music so loud it can be heard across the street. The band also speaks to the crowd in both Spanish and English, another nod to the community's demographics.

This restaurant allows Los Angeles residents a rich experience of Mexican culture, a culture whose roots run deep in the surrounding neighborhood.