I was just looking up GDP for various cities in America and saw that the amount of economic activity in L.A. is almost as much as Chicago and Philadelphia, put together!

Now I know that GDP isn't the best gauge for the underworld BUT, I do think they go hand in hand.

NY $1,358,000,000,000
L.A. $765,000,000,000
Chicago $571,000,000,000
Philly $364,000,000,000

Los Angeles isn't a city in the traditional sense. There's no legit metro area. It's a series of trashy suburbs.

When people say "LA" they're referring to Los Angeles County, not a metro area.

I don't think a lot of Italians migrated there in the wave of Italian immigration in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. I don't think LA had Italian neighborhoods the way NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, or Boston had. That would be my guess.

L.A. is a garbage city. No downtown whatsoever. One giant suburb.

By way of proximity, the nearest destination for Italian immigrants would have been San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf neighborhood, which actually predated Ellis Island as a destination for Italian immigrants by some time. Anyway, San Francisco is still a beautiful and very livable city. Los Angeles is a Mexican suburb.

Lincoln Heights in East LA was a huge Italian neighborhood but like any Italian area in Californian cities, they all became Mexican areas. LA is def a city and a giant one at that. The Asian mob groups, like the Black Dragons and Wah Ching, with the Mexican one La Eme run OC in L.A. these days, and some say the film industry in Hollywood are like the mob.

Mexican Mafia surely has a tight grip on most of the Mexican neighborhoods. And since they recently started working closer with cartels their power will only grow(of course, if they play it right and their big egos from small cells don't fuck shit up for them).

California (San Francisco Area) was also heavily immigrated by mainly Northern Italians, more so than in the Eastern cities of the US which were mainly Southern Italian immigrants. LCN isn't as prevalent within the Northern Italian culture as it is ingrained into Southern Italian and Sicilian cultures. Northern Italians also tend to have lighter features and I am guessing maybe had an easier time obtaining jobs in the US after they immigrated to California and didn't endure as much prejudices and racism as their Southern Italian counterparts endured back in the Eastern United States, just a speculation on my part?

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/italianamericans/

There are also many Sicilians who emigrated to San Diego to work in the tuna industry. They keep expanding the streets of their Little Italy it is growing. Every year we would gather for a convention type meeting or a picnic and bocce tournament through the churches (Italian Catholic Fed) throughout California. San Diego, Orange County, LA County, Palm Desert/Springs, and sometimes ppl would come down from San Francisco area. San Francisco by far had the most Italians. We would visit SF and sometimes we would eat at a "Real Joint" as my pops would say cuz of its wiseguy presence. As far as southern California goes many Italians moved out of the LA County area to Orange County but most of thr people who live in CA now are east coast transplants.
Growing up I know for sure there were wiseguys out here from northern Jersey, NY area some ended up in Vegas.

And the native CA people did NOT like us at first but now they all want to be Italian.
Native CA cops still cannot stand NY or Jersey Italians. I can tell you a story or too.

Yeah the cops in Vegas are extremely racist against NY/NJ Italians, I can tell you from first hand experience!

I have been told that L.A. is a major let down as a touristy destination.

Sounds good on paper..

There never was an extreme concentration of italians in LA- unlike NY, Philly, Jersey or Chicago.

And well, today, as Pizza said its better thought of as part of mexico. You got a mexican guy that failed the bar 3 times (and never passed) as the mayor for a decade.

SF is a beautiful city and among my favorite to visit, but to live there you better be a multi-millionaire and willing to deal with all the weird shit that comes out of the place. I'm neither.

Don't forget a Mexican by the name of Edward James Olmos from East Los, a great guy and actor. Don't also forget the Mexican Carlos Santana who is from the city you mentioned, San Fran

Thanks Everyone!.....I just automatically assumed that L.A. was just like NYC because of:

The notoriety
The big money invested into the Dodgers, just like the Yankees!
6 1/2 mile drive to Hollywwod
The Porn Industry being out there
Big money and drugs go hand in hand

I do see what everyone is saying though, when I searched for photos of Los Angeles Main Street, it showed nothing even close to resembling storefronts like NYC.

Just not many small businesses to take advantage of like the early days of LCN

Los Angeles is not a Mafia powerhouse for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that the Italian population here was traditionally minimal. Second, the ethnic white European populations (Irish, Polish, etc.), which traditionally supports Mafia enterprises (gambling, loansharking, unions, etc.) were never plentiful in L.A. either.
This means that the markets were much smaller for Mafia type enterprise.

Third, the sheer geographic size of Los Angeles and the expansive neighborhoods made Mafia style takeover near impossible.

Los Angeles was home to many white collar Mafia enterprises such as film and labor union racketeering. Many of the studios were founded and/or managed by men connected to the East Coast families. Read the book Supermob. It discusses the total domination of the film studios by associates of the Chicago Outfit until about the late 1980s. The Gambino and Colombo Families dominated the pornography industry in the same way until about the late 1990s (with the rise of the internet).

San Francisco is a solid town, I enjoyed living there. I'd say the surrounding nature/landscape is beautiful. The metro area itself is kind of a shithole though. I lived in the Laurel Heights/Jordan Park area & then North Beach.

Not sure why people outside of NorCal have this Utopian vision of SF. It's a small city that's pretty pricey (but they treat their citizens well in return), solid arts/music community for a city of it's modest size, absurdly polluted, relatively shitty restaurants, and the locals are disconnected, aloof, and an overall eerie bunch. That about sums up SF.

White European culture in general doesn't really have much footing west of the Sierra Nevada.

I always wondered about Ports O'Call, the port of Long Beach (LA), there had to be mob presence down there. It's probably one of the busiest ports in the U.S.


Years ago a guy from Jersey who transferred out here with my Pops, a wheeler and dealer type fella, had so many Mercedes and Porsches coming in from Germany to that port. One time I was over his house and there was this couple from Beverly Hills looking at one of his gold metallic brand new Mercedes fresh off the boat. It was around 1982, this car he was selling was $80g's cash. This couple ended up buying it I heard.

That guy is dead now.

This is just one guy selling cars so you can imagine how much merchandise was going in and out of that port back then. $$$$$$$$$$$

La is a shithole. I'm born and raised here... The downtown area is all mexican, then there is the chinese who run the whole garmet center with fucking tons of bootleg everything, clothing,shoes,designer bags,jewelry,perfumes, ect.. They make a killing off selling that garbage in bulk.. All of south la, south of downtown is all blacks, south central la is fucking down right disgusting shit hole.. The hipsters are pretty much taking over everywhere..the whole area surrounding dodger stadium is all hipsters, echo park, silverlake, los feliz,ect..
As far as crime goes honestly.. The mexicans run the street drug trade out of boyle heights/ east la. Blacks and mexicans run it it south central..
Chinatown they got all the bootleg shit I talked about earlier plus a ton of gambling dens and warehouse weed grow operations, but they stick to their own kind heavily..
Personally I can tell you besides the typical mexican connected cartel drug pushers, the people who make the real money illegally are the armenians and other middle easterners (lebanese,syrian,persian) they are masters of all sorts of fraud from medicaid-medicare, to typical credit/debit card, stolen identities, any fake documents you could ever need (I used to get all my fake employment/pay stubs ect. From them to rent apartments/ cars). The amount of fraud they're capable of is staggering. They also love to gamble, mostly on backgammon. I've seen 1 game where 150k was on the line, in cash. Every hookah lounge in the valley is a front for their fraud.. They sit there all day smoking that shit and drinking tea with their 100k cars parked out front.. They also are huge in the pharmaceutical game. Can literally get everything from painkillers and benzos to steroids and viagra and cialis.. I was shocked when I learned how huge the black market demand for viagra and cialis was.. From a young crowd also. Fucking strange.
Well that was my shitty rant about los angeles.. The city itself and the surrounding areas are dogshit. Hollywood included.. The more north west the better.. Some really really nice suburbs 20mins north of la.. Calabasas where pretty much every celebrity lives from the kardashians to drake, justin bieber, pretty much everyone. Then there's malibu and westlake village. Ha the last boss of the la family lived in westlake before he died a couple years ago.

dsbaloo you hit the nail on the head. Great post. Sums it up for LA.
Are you still in LA county?

Thanks alfanosgirl... Yeah I'm still in LA county.. Northern la county.. PM me if you want.

I grew up in orange county [graduated from Buena park high school class of 1960] there were 6 Mexicans in my class, in1994 there were 9 white kids in the whole school. I left in 1968 moved far. far north, out of California. ive never regretted it. you can have the whole state.

I sent you a pm