Comments on: LA Times Tries to Define Los Angeles

By: queequeg

queequeg — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:18:11 +0000

@ EL CHAVO!: Thanks much for catching that; it’s been fixed.

By: EL CHAVO!

EL CHAVO! — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:24:39 +0000

BTW, your link to the map site isn’t working, it has an extra “p” or something.

By: Jodi101

Jodi101 — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:19:02 +0000

Jason is spot on with his comment above. In the L.A. Times division, my house falls into Toluca Lake. One of the comments points out that it’s actually in “Toluca Woods,” which was just made up, in my opinion, to give our houses a little more oomph in real estate ads. Otherwise, we’re North Hollywood, which we are and I don’t really have a problem with that. Until I want to sell my house some day. Then I’ll care.

By: evan

evan — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:58:29 +0000

They probably only made USC its own neighborhood because so many Times people are Trojans, and they wanted it to be separate from the neighborhood.

By: queequeg

queequeg — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:51:40 +0000

@fatpinkchicken: Yup, I stand corrected. It is totally weird to me that there is an artificial distinction between University Park and Exposition Park. As far I can tell, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two. If people insist upon carving out a neighborhood for USC, then, at the very least, it should be considered part of University Park. I probably should be posting this on the Times’s website …

@cybele: HA! You probably are right.

By: cybele

cybele — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:22:32 +0000

for newcomers to the city, if you want to piss off someone from that neighborhood, combining the two words is the way to do it

Hahah! I’ve lived in Silverlake for 16 years and still make it one word.

Here’s some trivia for you, it was named for Herman Silver, a water commissioner for the DWP. I think the confusing part is most of the time when a lake is named for a person, it’s reversed, Lake X. Like Lake George, Lake Mead or Lake Powell. Nobody’d be tempted to call it Lakesilver.

(I think this whole neighborhood thing is just an excellent project so LA Times can get lots of web traffic.)

By: fatpinkchicken

fatpinkchicken — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:28:10 +0000

oh and as far as USC goes, USC is in Expo Park, I believe, and the area north of Jefferson but south of Adams is North University Park.

At least that’s what the signs say. West Adams is kind of in there somewhere, too, somehow.

By: calmproto

calmproto — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:54:31 +0000

This map shows me in Mar Vista.
My mail goes through Culver City.
LA Police patrol the streets.
DWP serves power and water.
Verizon has my phone franchise.
I’m not a number, nor a place.

By: Jason Burns

Jason Burns — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:50:05 +0000

Our house – according to those wacky blue signs – is supposedly in Valley Glen. But, the United States Postal Service says it’s North Hollywood. So did the MLS.

I used to live in North Hollywood. But, my mail said Studio City. Or Toluca Lake. Or North Hollywood.

It used to be that I didn’t care about any of this. But, neighborhood pride aside, it does matter when you own your home. Toluca Lake has a lot higher resale value than NoHo. So you can see where this will get very, very ugly.

By: evan

evan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:33:31 +0000

Ugh, it’s no use.

My big gripe with their defition is that they list the Pico/Robertson neighborhood as being on the Westside, including parts east of Robertson, and the southern border at 18th St. Yet if you go south of 18th, you’re suddently in “Mid City” which is defined as Central–in other words, you’re suddenly east of where you were by not moving east at all! Examples like this make it clear that mapping has a whole lot to do with racial and socioeconomic factors, not just geographic ones (Pico/Robertson having houses and being more white, and the neighborhood to the south having more apartments and black and Latino residents).