Monday, May 14, 2012
Gregory Rodriguez was born in Los Feliz, but he's spent a lifetime reflecting on the meaning of immigration for Angelenos.
The Los Angeles Times pundit was born at the intersection of Vermont Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. That makes him an L.A.native. But, as he writes in an Op-Ed Monday for the Times, immigration is an issue that's dogged him all his life, first as an interpreter for newcomers and then as someone assumed to be from another place: It was impossible not to be swept up in the debate over immigration, legal and illegal. Though immigrant-bashers always insisted their beef was with illegal immigrants, long-established Mexican Americans were not immune from their invective. A combination of demographic change and a polarized debate had imposed the specter of foreignness — even illegality — on all of us. Rodriguez says he's curious how America--and he…
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) describes why the Los Angeles River should continue with renewal projects. He and other legislators are strong supporters of the channel that is coming back to life.
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Saturday, May 5
Rep. Adam Schiff released this op-ed Thursday. It originally appeared on the Los Feliz Ledger: In the past, many viewed the Los Angeles River as little more than a concrete channel winding its way through our backyards, often dry and ignored. But we have now come to recognize that the river’s 32-mile journey through the heart of Los Angeles provides us with an excellent opportunity to unite our communities around a new and exciting waterway. In fact, the river is an asset with the power to connect hundreds of thousands of Angelinos. In 2007, the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan breathed new life into the L.A. River. Under the plan, a renewed River would be a continuous, functioning ecosystem that supports native fish, bird and…
Friday, May 4, 2012
The story of muralists Phil Stein and David Siqueiros is emerging.
Anne Stein and Gary Leonard, long time Echo Park residents, who run Take My Picture Gallery downtown at 860 South Broadway, are planning to showcase the paintings of Anne's father, Philip Stein (Estano) in conjunction with the opening of the Interpretive Center at Olvera Street later this year. Anne Stein was born in Mexico City in the 1950s because her father Phil had left Los Angeles on the GI bill to study art in San Miguel. He ended up working with the great Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, from 1948-1958 on all his major murals. He then brought his family back to the New York area and except for an eight year sojourn in Spain, spent the rest of his life as an artist and activist back east. When Stein died at 90 in 2009, Anne …
Thursday, May 3, 2012
There's a science behind hitting the trail: Besides getting fitter, benefits include improved brain function and mood (toss those Prozac pills over the mountaintop).
It doesn’t take much smarts to figure out that hiking can be a healthy pastime, but did you know that it can also help make you smarter? From losing weight to staving off the degenerative effects of depression and Alzheimer’s, hiking may be the best choice for a comprehensive workout benefiting mind, body and spirit. It’s well known that increased foot mileage decreases the waistline, but there are benefits to hiking that can’t be found on a treadmill or within the confines of a gym. Fresh air, loads of sunshine and even the dirt beneath one’s feet can be credited for improving cognitive function while decreasing anxiety and depression. It’s no coincidence that in addition to hats, shades and sunblock, many people hitting the trails …
Monday, April 23, 2012
April 29, 2012 is the official 20th anniversary of the events some call the L.A. Riots. All week, we feature columnists' and bloggers' memories of that city-changing event. Columnist Johnny Wendell kicks things off.
LA burned down 20 years ago Sunday--if you don't remember, you were a baby, have age related disabilities or you weren't here at all. No Angeleno could forget boulevards in smoking ruins, Reginald Denny's assault or the arrival of the Guard to encamp in our streets. No Angeleno with a brain larger than that of a walnut could not have predicted this would have happened at 2:30 in the afternoon of the verdicts in the trials of the four cops that beat Rodney King on that infamous video--I watched them delivered on our tiny telly in the one bedroom my wife to be and I shared with another couple just off Pico by the beach in Santa Monica. Picked up phone and dialed my friend and fellow Masshole emigre Justin (who, unfortunately, was in the East…
Monday, April 16, 2012
We are now "Echo Park-Silver Lake Patch." But we'll be keeping an eye on Los Feliz too.
Maybe you've noticed already. Echo Park Patch is no more. But it is not a sad thing. We are now the Echo Park-Silver Lake Patch--a change many of you have suggested. It formalizes what we've done for a while: cover the news and views of Echo Park and Silver Lake, where Editor Anthea Raymond has lived for a decade. We have no plans to stop doing that--in fact, we'll do it better. And we'll throw in news about another nearby creative community, Los Feliz, for good measure. What will change is our now-expanded capacity to list Silver Lake and Los Feliz businesses in our "Patch Places" directory. Click through to see a video about "Patch Places" listing here. It will also mean more bloggers, more events and more announcements from you. Click …
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Writer Phyl Van Ammers and her obsession with a place called Edendale.
When I started up Boryanabooks.com, my intention was not to make it a local publication. I was thinking more like international. But when Phyl Van Ammers signed on as one of my top writers, the site became local by definition. It was very much tied to place and time. Phyl was obsessed by a place called Edendale, a kind of mythical place made up of some very real communities--Echo park, Silver Lake, even Los Feliz and East Hollywood, if you enjoy stretching definitions the way I do. Still, Edendale is a mythical place. Something larger than the sum of its parts, you might say. I don’t quite remember how she talked me into serializing her book about Edendale, but she did. Mostly it was because Phyl Van Ammers was my star writer--other than …
Monday, April 2, 2012
The author says tear down Dodger Stadium and build public housing there. He says it's time for real justice.
Magic Johnson doesn’t come across as a Frank McCourt, so maybe he will be successful in his effort to rebuild the Dodgers, but I don’t necessarily wish him luck. In the relatively short time Frank McCourt owned the Dodgers and that valuable real estate in Elysian Park near downtown, he managed to trash the franchise. He was such an obvious repulsive billionaire slimeball, people stayed away from his enterprise in droves. From my standpoint, that wasn’t necessarily bad. Because people stopped going to the ballgame, I was able to commute from downtown Los Angeles home to Atwater late at night without getting stuck in all the traffic leaving the stadium. McCourt was good for the traffic patterns on the freeways around his property. Now I fear…
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Though often thought of as a nuisance, these birds are among the smartest on the planet
They're enthusiastic, intelligent, and socially evolved. They’re also loud, messy, and opportunistic. They’re crows. Ordinarily I welcome birds to my yard; the more the merrier, but I always had a thing against crows, maybe from living in the Midwest. But the more I learn, the better I like them. Crows are all over Los Angeles, but then, they’re all over everywhere, and can claim relations in every continent except Antarctica. They believe in close knit families. You might say they take family values to extreme–perhaps absurd--lengths. The kids are spoiled, coddled and remain emotionally immature for quite some time; apparently many will hang around the house sponging off the parents until well into middle age. The parents don’t seem to …
The greatest parties in Echo Park have been going on for nearly a century at the top of Echo Park Avenue at the home of Les and Annie Claypool.
A little more than 50 years ago, a guy named Les Claypool lived with his lovely wife Annie at the top of Echo Park Avenue. They lived in a home built on the steep hillside out of giant redwood lumber and lots of glass and sunshine. It was a lovely place to wake up in after a great night of partying. Annie was the librarian at Bell Gardens High School, a city known in those days for having more ex-prisoners than any other city in the state at the time. In those days the residents were still mostly poor white trash--Oakies, or from Georgia or Alabama. The Claypool’s home was a famous spot in Echo Park bohemianism. Only a few years shy of a century ago, folks like photographer Edward Weston, avant garde composer John Cage, Carl Sandberg, …
Susan R
1:36 pm on Sunday, May 6, 2012
Give peace and quiet and clean air to those that live along the LA River. http://lametrolinkpollution.com/index.html more ›