Curbed LA – Echo Park Now

Vote for Echo Park for Curbed’s neighborhood of the year

The annual Curbed Cup is back – where website Curbed LA pegs sixteen neighborhoods against each other, competing for LA’s best neighborhood by popular vote over several rounds. Echo Park went up for the challenge last year and lost to Old Bank (ultimately, Hollywood took the title).

Today, Curbed LA features Echo Park versus North Hollywood in round one. Here’s how Curbed LA describes our little neighborhood:

“What is this, 2006?” you’re surely asking. Yeah, yeah, Echo Park already happened (even the LA Times discovered it late last year), but all those hipster move-ins were just prelude to the bigger and badder gentrification now underway. This year, a tiny 1881 bungalow went for $695,000, a hipster flip went for $739,000, and Heyday Partners’ Dick+Jane townhouses both sold almost immediately for asking or close to it. The Smurf Village/Durbin and the small lot subdivision Morton Village both got reanimated this year, as did the Metropolitan Water District apartments on a neglected side of the neighborhood. EP’s namesake lake was drained for a rehab this year and even snooty Conde Nast Traveler wanted in on the neighborhood action.

So far, Echo Park has the lead at 65%. Click here to vote!

December 15, 2011/1 Comment/by Kelly

Eat & Shop, Lifestyle

Headline of the day: “Giant Blue Penis Appears and Disappears in Echo Park”

Shield your mothers from the computer, this might be the most graphic thing we’ve ever posted on EPN… (scandalous!!).

We can’t help it, this is one of those headlines that makes you wonder. Curbed LA posted this little tidbit today along with the following head-scratching photo:

Photo from Curbed LA

A tipster sends in this photo of what we’re pretty sure is not a Smurfs promotion and writes: “As if Echo Park isn’t strange enough, this blue penis sculpture was just merrily sitting on the hellstrip on Allesandro at Whitmore this afternoon. It disappeared in just a few hours. Who put it there? Who picked it up? How strange is this place?” Pretty damn strange, EP! Your move, Silver Lake.

Perhaps this is a replica of the murder weapon used in A Cockwork Orange? Oops, I mean A Clockwork Orange?

Curbed LA, you are a cheeky and clever internet friend. We dig it.

August 1, 2011/212 Comments/by Kelly

Lifestyle, Opinions

Curbed Cup 2010: Will Echo Park make LA’s best neighborhood?

Graphic from Curbed LA

Popular website Curbed LA took on renaming the “not Eastside,” that is everything east of Western and west of the Los Angeles River including Echo Park, earlier this year by putting it to a vote (they now call it North Central). Now they are working on the annual “Curbed Cup,” where eight neighborhoods compete for LA’s best neighborhood by popular vote. Echo Park is not only one of those neighborhoods, it made it to round two – beating South Park in round one (no competition there).

The question is, will Echo Park defeat Old Bank in round two, which opens up for voting tomorrow?

Curbed LA has a colorful description of Old Bank for your voting education:

Even though the Old Bank District/Historic Core is a previous winner, so the neighborhood returns again to the competition. The area saw plans submitted for the Spring Street pocket park, while up the street, a new park unrolled at the site of the LAPD headquarters. Developments like the El Dorado and the Medallion opened, while Barry Shy’s animal kingdom painting distracted everyone from the large holes he blew in his building. With The Last Bookstore drawing patrons, and the new restaurants drawing diners, the Old Bank District still remains a popular contender. Bonus points for its always-lively street scene–good place to people watch.

As for Echo Park, well I can’t say this exactly describes why I personally live here, but just for the sake of sharing this is how Curbed LA describes our neighborhood:

Echo Park, the neighborhood the Los Angeles Times just discovered, was quite a hub of action this year. Panic! At the Disco Rocker bought in the hood, the and the area beat back a controversial townhome project (and continued its love of Tiki shacks). Numerous new restaurants and shops arrived–notably, a yuppie deli named Cookbook opened, while a micro-brewery (gentrification alert!) will open soon on Sunset Boulevard. And did we mention this region tried on a new name this year? North Central is still being tested out, but Echo Park, you’re officially so hip, the hipsters are already packing and moving to Highland Park. *Trader Joes’s expansion was in Silver Lake, not EP.

Even if Echo Park wins the fake trophy for LA’s best neighborhood, do we really want to draw more attention to us after the recent LA Times hipster article?

December 20, 2010/by Kelly

Lifestyle

Curbed LA Voters Rename the “Not Eastside”

As we wrote a couple of weeks ago, Curbed LA reignited the “Eastside” debate and decided to refer to everything east of Western and west of the Los Angeles River as something other than the “Eastside.” Well, they put it to an online vote, and here are the results:

Curbed LA votes tallied

Missing from the vote was the option to keep it the Eastside, or a “none of the above” option. A few readers on the original Curbed LA post did bring this up, one commenter writing, “I thought it was called ‘The Eastside’ while East LA was … well east of the LA River…”

Frankly, none of those names seem appealing nor will it settle any debate (Middle Earth?). However, Curbed LA seems to be following through as a recent post announces that “North Central is both geographically and culturally descriptive” for the area. So it seems from now on, Curbed LA will be referring to Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz, etc. as “North Central,” but don’t expect others to follow (The Eastsider LA renamed “North Central LA”? I don’t think so!). We’ll see how long it sticks for Curbed LA.

May 13, 2010/88 Comments/by Kelly

Lifestyle

Echo Park is… Where is that again?

This tickles me, because so many people chastise The Eastsider LA for covering areas like Echo Park under the “eastside” guise. Well, Curbed LA editors have apparently had enough themselves, citing a recent post where commenters argued whether or not the areas included in the video post, titled The East Side of Los Angeles on a Sunny Day, are indeed the “eastside.”

So Curbed L.A. has decided to rename everything east of Western and west of the Los Angeles River, leaving the name suggestions to a public vote:

…because it’s just too cumbersome to get all those neighborhood names out every time you want to say something condescending about hipsters, we’re giving the area a new collective handle too, with the help of the Curbed army. Leave your suggestions in the comments or send them into the tipline, and the best will be put to a vote. The winning name will designate the area from then on out and no one will ever refer to East Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, or Echo Park as the eastside ever again for the rest of time.

So far, suggestions include North Central L.A., East Westside, Uptown, and more. View the Curbed LA article and maybe even post your suggestions here.

Granted, LA neighborhood boundaries are consistently… inconsistent. The neighborhood of Echo Park itself more often than not includes Angeleno Heights, Elysian Heights, and even sometimes Historic Filipinotown. But the eastside debate is another entity entirely, with those like the LA Eastside blog passionately arguing for the true eastside being “east of LA River,” others, like in this LA Times article, argue it’s not just a geographical issue but also a cultural identity tied to the Chicano movement, adding, “The newly gentrified area started to collectively call itself the Eastside – as in east of the riches of the Westside.” Other arguments outline a few different historical viewpoints, an arena we will be covering in a later post.

For us at Echo Park Now, there’s hopefully no question about the areas of Echo Park we cover. But one thing’s for sure – even if Curbed LA renames this area, the eastside debate will never end.

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