Hey bag lady! Unload those extra reusable bags in Echo Park

Flickr photo via Earth911.com

Flickr photo via Earth911.com

Find yourself with too many reusable bags in the cupboard? Perhaps you overdid the free bag give-aways at the last tradeshow? Maybe you just don’t need all 50 of those bags, and they’re cluttering up your space?

Echo Park resident Beth Zeigler (she’s the uber organizer who runs the local Bneato) has been collecting your extra reusable bags for a couple of months now at local drop-off points in Echo Park, Atwater Village, and Silver Lake. She plans on reusing the reusables by redistributing them (say that 10 times fast) for free on Saturday afternoon.

The idea being that people who just can’t afford to buy them, or maybe haven’t thought about using them, will have the opportunity to get free bags. “While many folks take reusable bags with them to shop at my local Vons and Trader Joe’s, I’d love to see more people getting excited about using them,” Beth said in a press release. And she’s got a TON of them to give out.

I’m pretty good about using them at the Farmers Market and even a clothing store, but perhaps Beth can convince the hubby to start carrying them?

Reusable bag collection drive: Bags for Bneato
Vons in Echo Park and Trader Joe’s in Silver Lake
Saturday, November 12, 2011
12:00 noon to 4:00 pm
Contact Beth Zeigler at info@bneato.com for more info

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Echo Park in the News

At the bottom of Echo Park Lake with KPCC

KPCC joins Eric Garcetti to explore the bottom of the now-drained Echo Park Lake (well, before the rainy weekend we had). “We’ve polluted this lake, it’s lost its character,” Garcetti told them, “It’s time to bring it back to something that’s healthy for the next hundred years.”

Listen to the radio segment (there’s a funny moment where Senior Adviser of Garcetti’s office Mitch O’Farrell loses a shoe in the lake’s muck), and watch the video at on the KPCC website.

Fed up Echo park resident starts the popular “Bank Transfer Day”

When Bank of America announced it would start charging $5 per month debit card fees, 27-year-old Echo Park resident Kristen Christian took it to the social media streets. Bank of America has since retracted the planned fees, but after tens of thousands of people pledged to transfer their banks by Saturday, November 5. Kristen has been all over the media, making television appearances and talking about her cause. If you’re still interested in a credit union, Echo Park Time Bank recommends the California Credit Union near Echo Park.

Read about it on the LA Times and Echo Park Patch.

More hidden stairways

We’ve huffed and puffed our way up these stairs before, but the views are worth it! The Eastsider LA posted a video today of the Loma Vista stairway between Echo Park and Silver Lake. Hopefully the rain will hold off long enough this week for you to check it out!

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Along Glendale Blvd.: A thriving world of art you’d never know existed

Shandu One sculpts amongst his favorite graffiti pieces in La Fonderie

This weekend, the community along with the Echo Park Improvement Association (which I am a member of) will start a major cleanup of Glendale Boulevard, an almost blighted entryway to our beautiful Echo Park neighborhood. Throughout the planning process, we’ve been slowly discovering these amazing businesses located along the thoroughfare that you would honestly never know existed. Forget the recycling centers, empty lots, and graffiti-covered buildings. Here we are lucky to have places like La Fonderie located in Keystone Studios, an exciting world of LA’s best artists inside a huge brick building on Glendale Boulevard.

You probably recognize the building on Glendale Boulevard by the big graffiti/mural by JR (now infamous in Echo Park). But I got the idea for this article from friend, real estate agent, and EPIA chairperson Darren Hubert. He and Josh Post – the Echo Park resident who started and organized the Glendale Boulevard cleanup – visited as many businesses as possible one day, hoping to encourage everyone to contribute to the day of cleanup. Granted, I had read about the art space in a The Eastsider LA article when it first opened in June of 2009, but I really had no idea what was really going on these days.

Read more

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Mohawk Bend now serving up weekend lunch and beer flights

Weekend lunch hours in Echo Park are a great time to explore the neighborhood – it’s usually too early to witness the walk of shame by those non-Echo Parkian visitors from other corners of LA, so it’s usually nice and quiet. And, gosh darnett, The Park closes at 2:00pm! But for a couple of weeks now, Mohawk Bend has adopted new hours, helping absorb any weekend lunch crowds and making it easier to grab a little early afternoon brewsky (or a Bloody Mary! AYC used to be the only place with these spicy morning treats).

In addition to the new weekend hours, the doors now open at noon, they now offer pre-set tasting flights every evening from 5:00 – 7:00 pm. For $9 you get four 4 oz. California craft beers to try. The menu during lunch will stay the same, so I suggest trying out a Dork Burger, Fish ‘n Chips, and the calamari. Now I’m hungry!

New hours are:

Monday through Thursday, 5:00 pm – 11:30 pm
Friday,  5:00 pm – 1:30 am
Saturday, 12:00 noon – 1:30 am
Sunday, 12 noon – 11:30 pm

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Photo: A rooftop view of Echo Park

Photo by Arturo Rivera

This awesome photo was emailed to us by Arturo Rivera, taken from a rooftop in Echo Park. Nice view from up there!

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