Why Highland Park is L.A.’s Hottest Neighborhood

Reduced crime. York Boulevard. Second Saturday. Those are just a few of the reasons why Highland Park stands out as a neighborhood—especially, argues L.A. Weekly writer Andy Hermann, when compared to Echo Park.

In the latest issue of the Weekly, Echo Park resident Hermann writes that his colleague Hillel Aron is “dead wrong” in “heralding Echo Park as the greatest of L.A.’s many fine neighborhoods.” The greatest neighborhood in Los Angeles, “bar none,” is Highland Park.”

It’s not just Highland Park’s trendiness that arguably puts it way ahead of Echo Park. “What makes HP truly special is that, for all its burgeoning gentrification, it remains one of the few corners of L.A. that is truly a neighborhood,” writes Hermann, providing the following evidence:

“The folks who run Café de Leche live round the way; so does Elliott Caine, the "jazz optometrist" just a few doors down who played trumpet on Beck's Mutations. Walk into nearly any business on York and tell them which Avenues you live between (me: 56 and 57) and you are instantly their new favorite customer.”

Click here to read the full L.A. Weekly article, while discovering the intriguing role of illegal fireworks in Highland Park’s supremacy.