Pacoima

When I was a kid Pacoima was just a city with a funny name. I had no real sense of where it was and I doubt I ever stepped foot in it. In my entire life I may have gone through Pacoima once. Pacoima is now called “Pacas” or “Pactown” and it is home to nearly 80, 000 people.

Pactown is nowhere you want to live. It is totally gang territory. There are homeless people, drugs, guns going off in the night, pitbulls wandering loose in the streets. In the last three years there have been 38 murders in Pacoima. In Woodland Hills there have been four. Granted, Woodland Hill has less than half the number of people living here, but that is still three times higher even if you take population into account. But it doesn’t really matter where you compare it to. Burbank has a larger population than Pacoima and they have only had 5 murders. Van Nuys has comparable number and they had 24 murders.

The streets around Pactown are much like those in Sylmar, except a bit more crowded and lots more worn down. The place generally has a shabby look to it. This is not to say that there aren’t some okay areas. The Whiteman Airport is there for people training to be pilots and the Hanson Dam park area is a good place to golf or hike. There are lots of veterans in Pacoima and there are some construction for them there. People also say that Pacoima is slowly but surely improving.

The schools here, however are some of the worst in the Valley by just about any standard. They don’t excel academically or in terms of sports; and, of course, they are unsafe.

Despite all this, just about everyone that I have met from Pacoima speaks of it with a certain pride as the place from which they hail. People form Pacoima will often act as if they wear their origins as a badge of honor or pride. They aren’t afraid of it the way that people in Panorama City seem scared. Perhaps it is just a defense mechanism.

I would certainly live scared if I lived in Pacoima.