Rumor Mill: the Echo Park Magic Gas ‘incident’

Some of you may have read our post or noticed other posts circulating about the “shut-down” of the Echo Park Magic Gas station earlier this week. Hopefully this will help clear up some rumors and other conversations going around about its brief closure.

• Mixing water with gas: A comment on the Echo Elysian Forum argues that the problem was  the owners mixing water with gas. Subsequent comments deny that mixing water with gas is even plausible. A quick Google search confirmed the latter, but I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject.
• We received a comment from our last post from Matthew about his experience: “YES! I went there once a few years ago and filled up and my tank BARELY reached half full! I told the guy in the shop that something seemed wrong and he immediately started yelling at me! Im so glad they got busted!” Thanks for your comment, Matthew, and hopefully you’ll be happy to know that the station has been under new ownership since around April last year. Lets hope new owners Zina Mikayelyan and Art Bagousky won’t yell at you if you have any issues in the future!
• An “anonymous” comment on the Eastsider LA post wrote, “Those little mom n pop stations oftentimes stock the ‘dregs’ at the bottom of the tanker trucks, after the trucks are done filling up the shell, arco, mobil stations etc. which means it’s lower quality gas generally. water in the tanks, though, is another story….” As I’m not an expert on the matter… no comment.

As for what really happened? The owners told the Eastsider LA in an update that “the investigators were there in response to a legal judgment and tax issues related to the previous owner. ‘If there was anything wrong, I would have been gone a long time ago,’ said Mikayelyan as a gasoline tanker truck pulled up with a new supply of fuel.”