Comments on: Best New Restaurant In The Eastside Echo Park/Silverlake…?

By: Eastside Story

Eastside Story — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:29:00 +0000

Thanks Michele for taking the time to find out the facts and for clarifying the issue for a lot of people.
As a Eastside vegetarian, I’m looking forward to trying out the new restaurant!

By: e@v

e@v — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 23:54:33 +0000

vegans are from the westside, carnivores are from the eastside

By: michele

michele — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 22:30:31 +0000

After much semi-sober reflection and some offlist chatting with El Chavo, I concede that “The Eastside” is anything east of the LA River. So I’ve changed the headline to reflect that. I still think, however, that this RESTAURANT (hello, this was a post about a fricken’ restaurant…go eat there, for fuck’s sake) is one of the best joints to open this past year in the half of LA that I brutally, senselessly and randomly chop off at Western Avenue. If there are new restaurants in East LA, Lincoln Heights, Montecito Heights, Echo Park, Silverlake, Edendale, Highland Park, Mount Washington, Glassell Park, Alhambra, Monterey Park, City Terrace, Cypress Park, Boyle Heights, Central City East, Westlake, Wilshire Center, K-Town, Atwater, Los Feliz or East Hollywood that are just as good, better than, or even approaching this one in sheer tastiness, presentation, atmosphere & style, speak now or forever hold your peace.
Heh.

By: sawny bean

sawny bean — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:44:37 +0000

If the West Side ends at La Cienega, then that leaves more than half of West Hollywood, part of Beverly Hills, and a tiny part of Culver City out of the “West Side”. Fairfax is probably more a more accurate boundary – using that definition, all of Beverly Hills and Culver City, and more than half of WeHo (i.e. the part closer to Beverly Hills than to Hollywood proper), would be in the West Side.

The new “Eastside” – which is ridiculous to anyone who grew up in L.A. – was originated to describe Los Feliz and Silver Lake because – prior to gentrification in Echo Park and downtown- those were the farthest east areas in L.A. that had substantial numbers of non-Latino whites. I’d refer to that as the “white peoples’ east side”.

Of course there are people from Silver Lake and East Hollywood who think that the West Side begins at Vine St., and people from Venice who think the “west side” ends at Centinela Ave. or even Lincoln Blvd., but those aren’t serious definitions.

By: e@v

e@v — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 17:09:22 +0000

I will agree with El Chavo that the hipster eastside is quickly being branded by newbies. However, it can also be considered the new hipster Eastside was the old Eastside at the turn of the century. I’ve been to the Eastside Deli in Chinatown and it’s linked to a former Little Italy that was long buried away.

With the shift of demographics, eastside was linked with East LA — across the LA river where it runs north and south that includes Boyle Heights and LH. (Nerdly I add, East LA is county, not city and they are looking to incorporate)

But Chavo, I have to respect Lincoln Heights history as part of East LA. Lincoln Heights Jail is where the “Christmas Eve Massacre” occurred and Lincoln Heights High School is where the 1960s walkout took place. All deemed part of East LA civil rights history. Now with a layer of Latinos with no ties to ‘chicanoism’, the ethos is changing as we speak.

There will be constant overlapping of neighborhoods. With it’s rich history as Edendale — Silverlake and EchoPark grew from Downtown, so it’s just LA to me. A soulful noir LA. Eastside? Maybe. East LA? No.

As long as people are here establishing new layers of neighborhood identity, it can be valid as long as all the history is taken into context. Maybe not all 225 years, and not just 50 year. At least the last 100 years.

By: EL CHAVO!

EL CHAVO! — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 05:28:16 +0000

See what I mean? You let the newbies start doctoring local history and you get an Eastside nestled between Griffith Park and Glendale, whatever you say! Why not just call it Atwater, or Upper Frogtown if you want to be special? I don’t even call Lincoln Heights the Eastside, it’s LH! But really, that whole Western thing just proves the point: you want the term Eastside just to wave it as a flag for your culture battle with the clods from the West-Westside, and they’re not even looking. For some of us, the term actually means something.
If you’re so insecure that you need their social gaze for validity, have at your boring little fight. Just leave “Eastside” out of it.

By: Atwater Village Newbie

Atwater Village Newbie — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 19:36:04 +0000

El Chavo, I’m not dismissing your part of town. I’m
trying to join it. Half of Atwater Village is Hispanic. And all of it is east of the LA River. No matter how you look at it, you and me, we’re both east-siders. Peace?

By: LA City Nerd

LA City Nerd — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 15:04:00 +0000

To tie it all up… I am confident in saying that there is no “line” that divides the City east and west. There is an Eastside, commonly accepted as east of the river, and a Westside, which I assert is west of La Cienega (generally). The area in between is neither east nor west: it’s either Hollywood, Mid City, Downtown or any number of derivitives. So, if you’re talking about Silver Lake, guess what, call it Silver Lake – becasue that’s what it is.

More here.

By: pieter

pieter — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:49:22 +0000

5000!: much of that 40 miles east of say Boyle Heights has only existed as settled, suburban areas contiguous with say downtown Los Angeles for mostly well less than 50 years, and even since then, mostly as suburban sprawl lacking clear centers of history and identity. While Boyle Heights et al were populated and contiguous with downtown Los Angeles with very established communities with all the services that that includes well before WWII, Covina et al were still largely citrus farms. Many of the areas just east of downtown that we’re talking about have been settled/developed and incorporated into the metropole of Los Angeles for nearly a full century, in some cases even longer. While places like Pomona and Ontario and Covina certainly had small settlements of residents, and may even have incorporated themselves nearly as long ago, they were distinctly not a part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which is probably why for those residents here with a sense of history and longer family memories, those places don’t figure in the equation, as they are not commonly identified as part of the city of Los Angeles (even if we understand that that sense of city includes places like Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Culver City, all of which are not the city of Los Angeles itself).

And, I’d argue, those cities east of the “eastside” still don’t figure in to the equation of the sense of what is Los Angeles.

But I really, REALLY, *REALLY* don’t want to start another argument about what divides the Eastside of LA from what’s just east of LA. Otherwise, soon we’ll be arguing about the Mississippi River!

By: 5000!

5000! — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 03:03:04 +0000

I’ve never been a huge fan of calling Silverlake/Echo Park the “eastside,” but I’ve always found it funny that people in East LA or Lincoln Heights or Boyle Heights will argue about it ’til they’re blue in the face while ignoring the fact that theres, oh, 40 miles of city to the east of them. If anybody’s going to be a geographical bitch about it (as opposed to recognizing the cultural justifications for calling it the eastside), then they’d better STFU and give some props to Covina or Glendora.