Echo Park Guitar Shop The Fretted Frog Opens its Doors

Photo courtesy of Roland

I’m not gonna lie to you guys; I don’t know a damn thing about guitars. But that’s okay because Roland does. Roland is the owner of The Fretted Frog, Echo Park’s newest “alternative acoustic guitar store.”

Roland is a musician/former corporate accountant from Toulouse (southern France), but his story is similar to many Americans’. When the recession hit, he was forced to re-evaluate what he was doing with his life. When his job as a corporate accountant ended, he decided to pursue his other passion: music. He had spent some time in southern California and chose Echo Park as the location for his store because, according to Roland, it has a much more down-to-earth vibe than many other southern California neighborhoods.

Photo courtesy of Roland

Roland runs the store with two other guys, Colin and Aaron. When I stopped by to visit the store the other day, Colin and Roland were seated opposite each other in one of the stores open spaces, jamming. Guitars, banjos, mandolins and ukuleles cover each wall, but every instrument is given a certain amount of space creating the impression that each one is a work of art. Roland has done on this purpose in order to distinguish himself from warehouse-like stores such as Guitar Center. He wants every customer to wander the space, pick up whatever catches their eye, play around with it and, in the end, make their own decision. He’s not a fan of guitar store employees telling customers what to buy.

Again, I don’t know a damn thing about guitars, so if this piques your interest, I suggest stopping in and meeting the guys. Their hours are slightly abbreviated for the next couple of weeks until their grand opening (we’ll let you guys know when). They’re open Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm. They are located at 1200 N. Alvarado St. (right next to where Sunset meets Alvarado.

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Monday Menus: Grill ‘Em All Truck

The Grill ‘Em All truck frequents Echo Park, so it felt right to post its awesome menu.

Click here to follow the truck on Twitter for locations. For the website click here.

Read more

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Woodsist Festival

Tuesday, June 15th

Echoplex

6pm

$10 advance, $12 day of show

18+

Real Estate
Woods
Kurt Vile
Abe Vigoda
Art Museums
The Mantles
Nodzzz
Sun Araw
All Saints Day (Katy from Vivian Girls + Greg from Cat Power)
The Baths

Buy tickets here.

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Wagner at Machine Project Tonight

He’s not actually gonna be there (he died 117 years ago), but starting tonight and continuing through this month Machine Project is going to be hosting some “Wagneriffic” events and installations. They are collectively entitled Basement Wagner: A Brief History of the Bayreuther Festspiele and include an installation by Liz Glynn and performances and workshops organized by her and  Juliana Snapper. The opening reception is tonight (Saturday, June 5) from 6:00 to 10:00 pm. Here’s the full list of all the events:

Saturday June 5th, 6pm – 10pm:
Walking through Wagner
A step-by-step participatory walk-through of Wagner’s complete stage directions for all four operas. Opening night of installation.

Friday June 11th, 8pm:
We Sing the Ring
A Richard Wagner singalong lead by Juliana Snapper. Tone-deaf amateurs and aspiring professionals are welcome to come and learn the major leitmotifs in Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

Saturday June 12th, 8pm:
On the Operatic Origins of the American Space Program
Lecture by Jason Brown

Friday June 18th, 10am – 10pm:
Hojotoho!
Wagner’s song staged by a series of different artists acting as opera director, with Juliana Snapper as Brunhilde.

Saturday June 19th, 8pm:
the ing Cycle
A musical performance by ing. Closing night of installation.

Machine Project is located at 1200 N. Alvarado St.

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Skullphone Show Tonight at Subliminal Projects

From Orrin's Flickr

If you’ve lived in Echo Park for a couple of years, you probably remember seeing the above Skullphone poster perched atop a billboard overlooking Casablanca Furniture.

Skullphone has a new show at Subliminal Projects and the opening reception is tonight (Saturday, June 5) from 8:00 to 11:00 pm. The show is entitled Digital Media and it “examines the contradictions inherent in outdoor digital signage, demonstrating cause for both wonder and concern over the increasingly ubiquitous medium.  The artist explores advertising, government and private enterprise signage, and the California landscape on which outdoor media proliferate, making permanent on panels what is removable and reprogrammable in outdoor space.”

The show will run through July 2. Subliminal Projects is located at 1331 W. Sunset Blvd.

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Mishka Lunch Truck Day on Sunday

Another Mishka L.A. Lunch Truck day this weekend! Sunday, June 6, from 12:00 noon – 4:00 pm.

This is a great opportunity to check out the Mishka store and try those mobile food trucks you never seem to get to. Dosa Truck (Indian sourdough crepes), Mandoline Grill (Vietnamese cuisine), Lomo Arigato (Japanese cuisine), and Coolhaus (ice cream sandwiches!) trucks will be parked outside Mishka.

Mishka L.A. is located at 1547 Echo Park Ave.

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6th Annual EPFC Youth Film Festival

The 6th Annual Echo Park Film Center Youth Film Festival is tomorrow! There are two events, one in the early afternoon, and the other in the evening. Check out the details:

Youth Film Festival: FEED THE MONSTER

1:00 pm at The Smell (247 S. Main Street) in Downtown

Free, all ages welcome

EPFC will be screening youth films from around the world, plus video poems by King Middle School youth poets. There will also be an interactive video and musical performance, where audience members participate in some film loop making and musical improve (musical instruments encouraged!). In the final hour of the event, they will display the results of the interactive video/music-making.

Selected films, images and music will also be posted on EPFC ’s YouTube Channel here.

Work: EPFC Spring 2010 Youth Class Screening

Potluck at 6:00 pm, screening at 7:00 pm followed by a Q&A with filmmakers and instructors

Downtown Independent Theater (251 S. Main Street)

Free, all ages welcome

The EPFC’s youth class will debut their films they’ve been working on for the past three months. The films explore work in our society, turning the cameras “on the worker and becoming craftsmen themselves.”

Visit the Echo Park Film Center website for contact information.

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Flashback Fridays: Communists in Echo Park!

I've only found two pictures of Manewitz and they are both slightly creepy.

Big news! A suspected communist was arrested at his apartment at 1420 Echo Park Ave. and charged with “teaching and advocating overthrow of the U.S. government by violence”… on September 17, 1952.

Echo Park was home to a lot of communists and socialists during the couple of decades after the first Red Scare (in the 1920’s) and before the second Red Scare (in the 1950’s). However, it’s difficult to find information on the group’s activities as it is (understandably) not widely published. Most of the information we have are personal accounts and newspaper articles. That’s where the handy-dandy Los Angeles Times archive at the L.A. Public Library comes in!

I found an interesting little nugget of an article about a man named Robert Manewitz who was picked up by the FBI at his apartment in Echo Park. A long-time Communist Party member and the son of Russian immigrants, Manewitz first started organizing laborers and protests in the Midwest in the 1930’s. According to the article, he came to Los Angeles from Missouri in order to “take over the duties of some of California Communist Party leaders who had been arrested on similar charges of Smith Act violations.”

The Smith Act is a statute that basically says it’s illegal to do or say anything that could be seen as an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. And you wanna know the really fun part? Although most of the cases under it were thrown out as unconstitutional, it’s still on the books today.

And what did Manewitz say to the press? “He refused to comment on the charges against him, saying only: ‘I don’t know what it is all about.'” Good man.

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EPIA Meeting Tonight

No plans to watch the Laker game tonight? Join your neighbors for the monthly Echo Park Improvement Association meeting to learn about what’s going on in the area.

On the agenda tonight, CD1 and CD13 council reps will update us on any district news (for instance, Alejandra Marroquin, Field Deputy for Garcetti’s office, usually provides updates on issues like the Echo Park Lake Rehab project, among others). Northeast and Rampart Division reps will also address the community on any police updates.

The featured speaker is a rep from Congressman Xavier Becerra’s office.

The meeting takes place from 7:00 – 9:00 pm in Williams Hall at Barlow Hospital (2000 Stadium Way). All are welcome!

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Get Ready for The Big Parade II

Feeling in shape (or out of shape) these days? Maybe it’s your time to join your neighbors for a free two-day, 35 mile walk throughout Los Angeles from Saturday, June 12 through Sunday, June 13.

The Big Parade is a two-day walk through Los Angeles. It starts at the famous Angel’s Flight Stairs, downtown, and works its way west, through multiple neighborhoods, stopping at the famous Music Box Stairs in Silver Lake – named after Laurel & Hardy’s Oscar-winning 1932 short film – for an overnight campout. Then, we continue through the stairways of Silver Lake, on to the Franklin Hills and Los Feliz. We traverse Griffith Park, and then walk through the Beachwood Canyon/Hollywoodland neighborhood, all the way to the Hollywood Sign.

Anyone can come along – for an hour, a day, or the whole hike. The group had a couple of practice hikes at the end of May to get everyone geared up and in shape, but there may just be another one this weekend (June 5 or 6) before the big day. Visit The Big Parade website for more information on those practice hikes and the event.

We will post the route map as soon as the event organizers do (camping sites are also being finalized). For now, feel free to get yourself geared up on your own by taking a tour of some Echo Park stairways.

Click here to download the PDF flyer for the event.

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Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in Angelino Heights

Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through June 20, The Oasis Theater Company will be performing Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” in a private home in Angelino Heights. The play is interactive and is staged in different rooms throughout the house, with the audience sometimes sitting down to watch the action and other times following the actors from room to room. And if you get there an hour an hour early, you’ll be served some free borscht, bread, wine or vodka, and dessert!

Click here for more info and to buy tickets. Cost is $40 and show times are: Friday at 6:00 pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 pm.

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Dodgers vs. Diamondbacks series brings protesters

Photo via gmazariego on TwitPic (Elysian Park gate)

Protesters gathered yesterday around Dodger Stadium protesting the Arizona’s immigration law during the first of three Dodgers vs. Diamondbacks series (LA Now reports there ended up being a few hundred). The Diamondbacks are being focused on because owner Ken Kendrick has been supposedly tied to the Republican party in Arizona, which spearheaded the current immigration law. Click here for a call-to-action posted on the KPFK website for yesterday’s protest.

The Dodgers play the Diamondbacks again tonight at 7:10 pm.

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Echo Park Resident Band Health At The Echoplex

Tuesday, June 8th

8:00 pm

The Echoplex

$12 advance, $14 day of show, all ages

Health

HEALTH presumably have a saying: if you do something right once, remix, remix again. They did it two years ago with HEALTH/DISCO, which included remixes of HEALTH tracks by Pictureplane, CFCF, Nosajthing, and of course Crystal Castles, whose version of “Crimewave” threatened to be more popular than HEALTH’s original for a short while. In keeping with this tradition, HEALTH have announced DISCO2, to be released June 22 on Lovepump United.

Like the previous remix album, DISCO2 collects reworkings of tracks from the studio album that preceded it (a little gem called GET COLOR [TMT Review]). Crystal Castles and a few of the same guys from HEALTH/DISCO are back for more, but there are also remixes by Javelin, Small Black, Gold Panda, Tobacco, and Salem. The album’s single and opening track, “USA BOYS,” was mixed by producer Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode). And the excitement just keeps coming: HEALTH are topping it off with a US tour, ending with Lollapalooza in Chicago. – Tiny Mix Tapes

with:
Best Coast
Indian Jewelry
Gold Panda

Buy tickets here.

Listen to Health’s new single, USA Boys (flash required)

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GEPENC Meeting Wednesday in Echo Park

Looks like GEPENC is back!

Last Tuesday (May 25), GEPENC board members were sworn in during a last minute meeting. The next Board of Governors meeting will be tomorrow, Wednesday, June 2 at 6:30 pm at its new community center on Echo Park Avenue (behind the Bank of America).

Here’s the agenda for the meeting:

  1. Administrative Items:
    1. Call to Order
    2. Roll Call – GEPENC Board of Governors
    3. Flag Salute
    4. Adoption of Minutes
  2. Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items
    1. Comments from the public on non-agenda items within the Board’s jurisdiction.  Two minutes per speaker.
  3. Motions & Resolutions (Discussion/Possible Action Items):
    1. Regular Calendar Items:
      1. [2010-06-01] Discussion and/or Possible Action on request from the Board President for the GEPENC Board of Governors to approve recommendations of the Chairs and Vice Chairs for the 2010 – 2102 Standing and Ad Hoc Committees.
      2. [2010-06-02] Presentation and Discussion on the Proposed Fiscal Year 2010 – 2011 Neighborhood Council Budget.
  4. Announcements
  5. Adjournment
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Art Opening for Echo Park Artist

Echo Park resident Karen Frimkess Wolff will be having an art opening at a Hollywood studio called Happy later this week.

While the Echo Park artist is known for her sculpture and installations, the artwork that will be displayed, shown above, are new graphite and pencil drawings. From the press release:

Using pure white gesso on press board as her surface, Karen’s landscapes convey a complex visual vocabulary that combine flora and fauna and a treasury of objects that sometimes soar, sometimes lay perfectly still, but always possess deep meaning.  A brilliant draftsman and master storyteller, Karen returns to the simple act of drawing with a sense of aplomb, a hand that is always present and the soul of a gentle soothsayer.

Artist Carlos Ulloa will also be displaying his signature collage silhouettes.

The opening reception is on Friday, June 4 from 6-10:00 pm, and will continue through July 31.

Happy is located at 4675 Hollywood Blvd. Email Paul for more information: paul@happylosangeles.com

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