by Elise Nakhnikian
Within view of the mountains to the north of L.A., Glendale is a quiet, pleasant place, full of neat lawns, pretty houses, and meticulously landscaped main avenues. Its residents are overwhelmingly middle-to upper-middle-class and conservative. Up until recently, they were also overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon Americans.
In the '60s, 70s, and early '80s, Armenians began moving to Glendale, mostly from Iran. They blended in well, becoming prosperous, productive members of the community. One such immigrant, Larry Zarian, even served as the city's mayor. There was friction here and there, but that was mostly "normal jealousy," says Arthur Garapetian, an Iranian Armenian who co-owns a jewelry business in Glendale and lives in an exclusive neighborhood in the foothills nearby. For some longtime Glendale residents, he says, it was understandably difficult to accept "a bunch of foreigners who are buying all the houses, all the businesses." And even that unpleasantness was minimal, since the newcomers and their children adapted so well that soon they hardly seemed "foreign" at all.
Things are different now. Glendale is still a middle-class community, but since 1988 it has absorbed too many Armenian immigrants - many of them from the former Soviet Union - to remain unchanged. In the evening, the placid surfaces of certain neighborhoods have been disturbed by the pungent smells of Armenian cooking and the sounds of singing, loud laughter, and even louder farewells as newcomers entertain their friends. On weekdays, the school system struggles mightily to educate the newcomers: young people whose primary language is Armenian made up 30% of the student body during the last school year, and only 15% of them were fluent and achieving academically in English. And on Sunday mornings, pious Glendale residents are shocked to see the parking lots and sidewalks outside Glendale's Armenian churches full of men who smoke and gossip while their wives attend the services inside. Meanwhile, Glendale's longtime Armenian residents, unwilling to criticize their countrymen but unhappy about many of the changes in their city, struggle to reconcile divided loyalties.
Alice Petrossian's family moved from Iran about 30 years ago. They settled in Hollywood, but she and most of her friends went to school in Glendale. Now the director of special projects and intercultural education for the Glendale Unified School District, Petrossian remembers the old days fondly. "When I grew up here, Armenians were a high-status culture. There were a handful of us, and it was wonderful being Armenian, because everyone who was Armenian was a success." Plenty of the kids in her schools are headed for success as well, she is quick to add-at Glendale High this year, for instance, both the valedictorian and salutatorian were Armenians. But she estimates that only about 30 percent of her Armenian students do well academically.
Petrossian is full of empathy for her less successful students, but she sometimes loses patience with their parents. When she looks at boys who join Armenian Power gangs, she sees "young people who are disillusioned and who don't see any other way to deal with life than to join a group that uses violence. All they see is yelling, hitting, fighting at home and they reproduce that. Those immigrant kids are going home to a depressed environment. Their parents would rather sit and drink coffee or eat watermelon than read a book, read a local newspaper. Even when they discuss political issues, it's very knee-jerk; it isn't based on something they know, it's opinion based on opinion. So these young people don't have the understanding or the values of literature, reading, research-" This disturbs Petrossian as an educator-and as an Armenian. In a speech to the Armenian Professional Society in 1988, she said, "Some Armenians display mannerisms unacceptable in American society. But on the whole, we are all labeled loud, pushy, dishonest."
Vachik Stepanian, the owner of Century 21 Apple Realty and a member of the board of directors of the Glendale Board of Realtors, feels the weight of that stereotype. During the 14 years he has been selling real estate in Glendale, he says, he never hesitated to let people know he was Armenian until recently. "About four, five years ago, when (real estate) was a booming business, a lot of Armenians came and they were desperate, so they decided to go into real estate and eventually construction. Unfortunately, eighty percent, if not ninety percent, of the projects that were built by Armenians in the city of Glendale that I know of have such a poor quality that you are just ashamed to say who built them. All the projects that were built as of four, five years ago aren't worth much. Lawsuit after lawsuit."
Just recently, Stepanian says, Glendale created an architectural review board to ensure that new buildings fit in with the city's carefully cultivated look. "You have to give a sample of the color, the landscaping, the size of the windows, how many windows, the back of the building, side of the building. And this came up because of the poor designs being constructed by Armenian builders. They were building things that looked like a box." Some builders still find ways around building codes, such as the one that requires five feet of landscaping at the side of every building. "What they would usually do was landscape it temporarily for the inspection to pass, but afterward they would just pour concrete." Worse yet, many of the buildings are made with inferior workmanship, Stepanian says. After moving into one property built by an Armenian, for instance, the new owners called Stepanian when the first rain fell. "I got real depressed-man, the whole kitchen was flooded!" he recalls. Several windows, he found, had been installed upside down, so the gutter where water should run out was on top.
Not only the quality of Armenian developers' and realtors' work but the nature of their dealings have gotten a bad reputation, Stepanian adds. "I just talked to someone who says he formed a partnership (with fellow Armenians). They bought land under the partnership name, but the grand deed was under the name of just one of the partners. They built a unit, and just recently this person went and borrowed money against the property and none of the other partners knew about it. Right now, it's in the courts. You talk to American agents and they tell stories that are just disgusting about this guy did this and that guy did that."
Although he has a personal reputation for honesty among the people who know him, Stepanian believes the bad name Armenians have earned makes it hard for him to get new business. "There was just a big article in the paper that an Armenian person is suing an Armenian guy and escrow company because they formed a partnership and then he got cheated out of nine thousand dollars. That's in the Glendale News-Press. So you don't think that's going to affect us? Today, in this community, sometimes I'm not proud to say I'm Armenian. Sometimes I just say nothing. One day, I was sitting behind my desk and a man walked in and said he wanted to sell his house. He says-you'll have to excuse me, but I'm quoting him-'These goddamn Armenians are eating us alive!' He was pissed off at the neighbors, you know. I didn't get the listing."
In fact, he says, It's virtually impossible for him to get non-Armenian clients. "If you see one of my signs on a piece of property, ninety-nine percent of the time the seller is Armenian. If you ask other (Armenian) brokers how many of their listings are Armenians, you will find the same thing. It's tough for us to get listings from other nationalities."
For other kinds of Armenian businesses in Glendale, attracting non-Armenian customers is not so difficult. Zankou Chicken, an extremely popular Armenian fast food restaurant best known for the garlicky "secret sauce" it serves with roasted chicken, draws every kind of customer to its Glendale store, says manager Dzovig Marjik: "Middle Eastern, white, Chinese, Japanese-all of them." The problem is usually the other way around: Armenians avoid American businesses and institutions.
Alice Petrossian is convinced this attitude must change before L.A.'s Armenians can move forward. "I believe that keeping the culture together is of value. But I also believe that we have to integrate into the American system. And we're not, now -not in Glendale, not in Pasadena, not in Hollywood. We have our own churches, we have our own schools, we have our own businesses, we have our own organizations-we've made our own little ghetto."
