Neighborhoods In Transition: Silver Lake & Echo Park

Neighborhoods change over time. Several of LA's neighborhoods have gone from middle class or wealthy white Anglo to working class Latino following post-World War 2 White Flight and Suburbanization, and are in the process of going back to wealthy white Anglo. This process is called “gentrification” which is when the “gentry” (the wealthy) displace the poor. Even in Ancient Roman times there exists accounts of the gentry clearing out working class neighborhoods to build villas. As I am someone who enjoys variety and diversity, I think these neighborhoods are fascinating for their current mixture of incomes, ethnicities, architecture, history, and all else that you can find. I do however lament the struggle for the working class as their businesses close and their rents rise and there are less and less places for them to live and thrive. I have noticed that the people who move into these neighborhoods are seeking a sense of “authenticity” or "substance" that was lacking in where ever they had formerly lived. I think it is interesting that we see the inner city areas that had originally been abandoned by whites in the 20^th century, become popular with them again, as formerly white suburban areas like the San Fernando Valley become more diverse ethnically and economically. This same process has happened in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City area. The Paris model of urban development sees the inner city be the whitest and wealthiest and the surrounding suburban areas are working class or poor multi-ethnic areas. From the late 1940s onward the US was the direct opposite (the "doughnut model" of an empty center); the inner city was left to decay or became ethnically diverse and the suburbs were “Leave It To Beaver”. In the US, “inner city” has a different connotation than in Paris or indeed most Latin American cities or cities in Asia. Now we see the process reverse, gradually the “creative class” who has more money to throw around moves into downtown lofts, condos, “flips” older housing stock in inner-suburbs, and the outer suburbs become more ethnically and economically diverse. At some point, there will be a balance where the inner city and outer city are essentially comprised of a mixture of incomes and ethnicities.

Silver Lake and Echo Park are hilly districts just northwest of Downtown Los Angeles, and east of Hollywood.  (Silver Lake and Echo Park are seen here from the top of LA City Hall on a smoggy day)

Silver Lake- this, along with Venice, is the original “bohemian” LA neighborhood . It's mixture of hills, abundance of eclectic architecture, pleasant tree-lined streets and a tolerant environment attracted artists and “creative types”, who started taking up residence in the area along with other “fringe types” of the time including gays . In the mid-20^th century it saw mid-century modernists like Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler develop zen-like houses and it was a transition point between the wealthy inhabitants of the hills and the working class and grittier areas to the south and east. The Black Cat bar (now called Barcito) was a gay-friendly nightspot as far back as the 1960s and was the site of the first gay rights demonstrations in the late 1960s (pre-Stonewall). Tensions between the working class Latino families and the newer influx of artists and gays lead to the first Sunset Junction street fair in 1980, where all the diverse residents of the area could come together and have fun. As the area took on the role of LA's “edgy/artsy/hip” neighborhood, in came the “fauxhemians” (people who like being around that kind of vibe but are not actually creative, artists, or even very interesting). These people came in the late 1980s and early 1990s and “flipped” the housing stock and brought in trendy boutiques and cafes which inflated the cost of living and drove out the working class and original artists who had inhabited the area seeking a low-rent pleasant urban environment to work and live in. This is called the “SoHo Effect” after a famous example of a Manhattan neighborhood that underwent this “gentrification”. While the artsy and tolerant character of the neighborhood hasn't changed, (and to some people it might even still seem pretty “edgy”), the cost of living went beyond the grasp of many, and these original “urban pioneers” ventured further east into...

 Echo Park- Following years of being a pleasant late Victorian-era suburb of Downtown Los Angeles, Echo Park (or Edendale) was the site of many early film shoots in the 1920s (think black and white Laurel and Hardy or Keystone Kops type stuff). It was an early haven for alternative religious groups including the famed evangelist Aimee McPherson as well as early practitioners of Hinduism, yoga, Zen Buddhism and theosophy. The neighborhood morphed from a wealthy inner city-suburban neighborhood in the late 1890s and early 1900s to a working class neighborhood of Europeans and Filipinos by the 1940s and 1950s and into a working class Latino neighborhood by the 1960s and 1970s. The Echo Park of the 1980s and early 1990s was the typical image of an LA barrio with murals to Virgen de Guadelupe, lowriders, cholos, greasers, gang violence, but still with an overall family-oriented hard working ethic to manifest the dreams of countless immigrants who settled in the area. (The tips of Downtown LA's skyscrapers are visible above the trees of Echo Park).

 By the late 1990s and early 2000s, creative types who had been priced out of neighboring Silver Lake had settled in the area, establishing things like the Echo Park Film Center and Machine Project and some other gallery spaces as well as frequenting the bars in the area. In addition, most of the "hip" places in LA to see bands perform happen to be in the Echo Park area. These bars and clubs begun to attract people from all over the LA area seeking a gritty low-key “cool” spot to hang out. Surveying the night-time scene in Echo Park and Silver Lake, one would assume that the areas are 70% white, though the majority of those nightlife partakers in acuality live elsewhere. It's the LA version of what in New York is called "the Bridge and Tunnel" crowd.

Little Joy (a former gay Latino bar) became a happening place to drink alongside various members of assorted indie rock bands. The Short Stop (a bar that had been popular with off-duty cops and Dodger fans from nearby Dodger Stadium) became labeled by Rolling Stone magazine as “The Coolest Bar In America”. Nayarit (a Mexican cantina) became “The Echo”, the preeminent spot in LA to hear indie, post-punk, dub, etc and the new owners never bothered changing the sign. The Gold Room (a Latino dive bar) is perhaps the best place to see the neighborhood in transition illustrated before your very eyes. On a weeknight it has older Latino men drinking beer, watching futbol and listening to Vicente Fernandez on the jukebox. On weekends the place is packed with young “hip” stylish white Anglos listening to whatever semi-obscure band is currently cool. Some nights the two tribes awkwardly inhabit the same space. All of this has lead to more “fauxhemians” and more gentrification. The SoHo Effect moved into Echo Park. Houses were flipped. High-priced lofts opened up. An American Apparel. Trendy boutiques. Vegan restaurants and so on. By about 2009 even the major Los Angeles Times newspaper had taken note and published an article on the gentrification of Echo Park. By this point the SoHo Effect and wave of fauxhemian gentrification knew no geographic thrust, though it continued in a generally northeasterly direction.

Post-script. The changing demographics  of Silver Lake and Echo Park are nowhere near as dramatic as one would be lead to believe. While it is true that rents are up, houses flipped, and the nightlife sees an influx of non-Hispanic White anglo revelers, Silver Lake's actual residential population remains 42% Latino and 18% Asian (and 34% white). Echo Park remains 59% Latino and 13% Asian (and 23% white). Neither of these areas have large black populations. [insert- I have noticed that the non-white population seems to be more concentrated south of Sunset Boulevard]. As these neighborhoods were originally non-Hispanic white anglo up until the 1950s, then predominately Latino and Asian through the 1990s, it is interesting to note the current mixture which will ultimately be well-balanced. As suburban areas like the San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel Valley have emerged from being white flight havens (the SFV was 90% white only 40 years ago and is now 41% white), all areas will be a mixture. White influx into inner city areas and non-white influx into outer suburb areas is producing an over-all diverse region.