Archive
Everything on this site, laid out properly
Fourteen pieces across four sections. The front page carries an edit of this; here is the whole thing.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
- 1.1The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965Removing the national-origin quotas turned a few thousand people into one of the fastest-growing populations in the country within two decades.
- 1.2Before the Act: Hawaii, 1903The first arrivals were recruited to sugar plantations, a few thousand people, and then the door effectively closed for sixty years.
- 1.3What changed in two decadesThe growth is legible in census tables before it is legible on any street.
Five streets, and what each one sells
- 2.1Five streets, and what each one sellsKoreatown in Los Angeles, Annandale, Flushing, Albany Park and Duluth each have a different trade base and a different generational split.
- 2.2Koreatown, Los Angeles — the densest of the fiveA district with a defined boundary, its own press, and a length of Olympic Boulevard that carries most of it.
- 2.3Annandale, Virginia — a Koreatown read from a carSuburban form changes what a commercial district looks like and who can reach it.
- 2.4Flushing, Queens — where the produce trade meets the streetThe wholesale connection is the thing that built the storefronts here.
- 2.5Albany Park and Duluth — the oldest honorary street and the newest suburbAn honorary street name and a Georgia subdivision mark the two ends of the chronology.
- 3.1Twenty households, one pot, and a lease signed on FridayRotating credit associations financed a great many storefronts before any bank would, and they worked on documented rules.
- 3.2How the rotation worksEverybody pays in, one person takes the pot, and the order is the whole mechanism.
- 3.3The second generation left the storefrontThe move out of small business is one of the most documented features of the cohort.
- 4.1What the census can and cannot sayCategory changes across decades make the series harder to read than the headline numbers suggest.
- 4.2The community pressKorean-language newspapers are the fullest running record of the districts they served.
- 4.31992, as documented eventsNamed, dated, and stated from the published findings — the causes are the subject, not the spectacle.