This piece was originally posted on Flying Pigeon L.A.'s blog, which can be read here.
A recent LA Weekly article tried to make the case that the Highland Park area is "the new Echo Park". That is, Highland Park is the new place for low rent, young, fashionable people to move.
Lately, a lot of people have been ragging on this fair barrio of mine. Guys with unwashed hair and paint on their jeans complain about how Echo Park is becoming too gentrified, too much like our now-grown-up neighbors in Silver Lake. (Shocking to realize it’s been more than a decade since Beck was couch-surfing his way to stardom.) Someone actually complained the Gold Room isn’t “dangerous enough anymore.”
Eavesdropping on these often drunken conversations, one name keeps getting thrown around as a solution to the existential dilemmas of the ultra-hip. “I’m going to a house eviction party in Highland Park tonight.” “That doom-surf-rock band Sandy Pussy is playing out in Highland Park tonight.”
- Kai Flanders, LA Weekly Pop-Ed, February 3, 2012, “Why Highland Park Is the New Echo Park“
Our local Patch blog, and most commentors, disagreed, but the damage is likely already done.
“Is Highland Park the new Echo Park? L.A. Weekly music writer Kai Flanders seems to think so,
No offense to our neighbors to the west, home to some of the finest folks I’ve met in Los Angeles, but I’m not buying it either.”
- David Fonseca, HighlandPark-MountWashington Patch, Febryary 6, 2012, ““
To stem the tide of move-ins caused by that LA Weekly article, a friend of mine, E., moved his entire household from Highland Park to Echo Park (to escape the flood of hipsters?) this past Sunday, February 19, 2012. An inverse hipster bike move!
The kicker? We moved everything by bike. How hipster can you get? Scroll through through the gallery above for photo documentation of the move.
