In Los Angeles prior to 1992, the slums of South Central virtually didn't exist for many people. They were just freeway exits to be accelerated by without notice. But when the "not guilty" verdict came in from the first Rodney King beating trial, South Central exploded into the forefront of everyone's consciousness.   The popular images of a balmy land of Rose Parades, palm trees, convertibles, and surfboards were stripped away to reveal a far grittier reality.

Virtually overnight, the Los Angeles of popular conception became a cauldron of gangs and drugs and graffiti and drive-by shootings; a place where decent people lived in fear behind the self-imposed imprisonment of "burglar bars" at their doors and windows.

What most of the country was unable to see was that, no less than its airbrushed predecessor, this newer, more ominous view of LA was also primarily a media image, still largely out of touch with the prevailing realities of life in Southern California.

In my own case, I lived in a middle-class Los Angeles neighborhood that was as neighborly and cozy and safe as virtually any small town, anywhere. All the neighbors knew one another, there hadn't been so much as a burglary in years, and women safely walked alone late at night.

Oddly, though, once the LA-as-urban-jungle image began to take hold in the general imagination, a significant number of the people I knew began worrying about their safety.   Could their kids walk the three blocks to the corner park? What about gangs?

Never mind the fact that the gangs lived in entirely different neighborhoods, that they had never been seen at the park in question, and that in all likelihood they didn't even know that this park existed. For the worriers, the Los Angeles of popular imagination had effectively supplanted the literal one that they saw and experienced every day of their lives.