Echo Park, Los Angeles, California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Echo Park is a district of Los Angeles located northwest of downtown. It is east and southeast of Silver Lake, north of Westlake/Mac Arthur Park and southwest of Elysian Park.
Echo Park was named Edendale before the construction of the park itself; the local U.S. Post Office and a public library branch are still named Edendale.
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[edit] History
Echo Park was the original center of the film industry in Los Angeles, before the studios moved to Hollywood just before World War I. Mack Sennett's studio was located in Echo Park until the end of the silent era, and a large number of silent comedies were shot in the neighborhood, as were several Laurel and Hardy , Charlie Chaplin , Our Gang , and Three Stooges shorts. Tom Mix also built his studio here, just over the hill in the Silverlake area, and many Westerns were shot in hills of Echo Park, East Silverlake and the Elysian Hills. Some of the earliest screen performers, including Gloria Swanson and Tom Mix bought homes in the Angelino Heights and surrounding neighborhoods before also moving to Hollywood and other areas. The area has continued to be used as a location for films such as Farewell, My Lovely, Echo Park, Mi Vida Loca and Quinceanera. The 1960s television series Gilligan's Island was shot in the area as well as scenes in Michael Jackson's 1982 music video Thriller, as were parts of the original 1953 film version, The War of the Worlds. The Manor, a house in the television series Charmed, is also located here. The area is popular with modern filmmakers for the pre-World War II look of some districts.
Before World War II Echo Park was a middle class neighborhood, nicknamed "Red Hill" for a concentration of political radicals living there. Postwar flight to the suburbs resulted in Echo Park becoming overwhelmingly Latino; although other ethnic groups have always had a presence in the neighborhood. Many working-class Chinese immigrants have settled in Echo Park due to its proximity to Chinatown, and the area overlaps the Little Manila district of Los Angeles, home to thousands of Filipinos, and a small enclave of African-Americans has existed there, east of Alvarado Blvd. and west of Bonnie Brae Street, since the 1920s. Renowned 70s beauty queen, actress and model, Veronica Porsche, third wife of boxer Muhammed Ali, came from this neighborhood. Since the early 1900's, Echo Park has been known to attract the creative, underground, independent, and iconoclastic elements of society. Famous artist residents have included such luminaries as writers Leo Politi,Carey McWilliams, and Ayn Rand, painters Carlos Almaraz, and Philip Dike, famed muralist Kent Twitchell, actors Anthony Quinn, Steve McQueen and Jack Webb, actress Ann Robinson, king of the Hollyood "gorilla men" and designer and builder of the Martian in George Pal's The War of the Worlds , Charles Gemora, architect and Richard Neutra disciple, Harwell Hamilton Harris, book seller and art dealer Jake Zeitlin, famed wood engraver Paul Landacre, opera singer Marilyn Horne, conductor Henry Lewis, jazz great Art Pepper, film director John Huston, African-American playwright, poet and screenwriter, Lemar Randle Fooks, as well as Edward Middleton Manigault, who exhibited the nation's first exhibtion of modern art. The painter Jackson Pollock, also made his home here as a child.
Echo Park was also home to Art Ingals, who in 1956 built the first Go-Kart in history out of a store front on the 1900 block of Echo Park Blvd, and who started an industry that counts over 1 million competitive racers and several million weekend enthusiasts world-wide. Professional baseball player, Luis (Lou) Gomez, who had been an outstanding prep star at Belmont High School, played for the Minnesota Twins, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Atlanta Braves during the 70s and 80s, resided here as well. Baseball immortal Babe Ruth himself maintained a bachelor's pad at the Crown Hill apartments in South Echo Park for much of the 20s and 30s. Jerry Rubin , famous American social activist and member of the Chicago Seven , lived here and ran a legal and civil rights office on the south-west corner of Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Blvd. for much of the 70s and 80s.
The commercial district along Sunset Boulevard suffered greatly in the 1950s from the condemnation of the residences in nearby Chavez Ravine to build Dodger Stadium. The area in the immediate vicinity of the park itself became seriously beset by problems with drugs and gangs in the 1970s and 1980s. During the 1960s and 70s, the area became known as a hippy enclave, and attracted many young musicians, artists, and craftspeople. Some residents during that era included J.D. Souther & Glenn Fry of the Eagles, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, and Frank Zappa. The writer and poet Charles Bukowski was known to frequent the local dives, as did actor, Reservoir Dogs and movie tough-guy, Lawrence Tierney. The hilly northern part of the district that is adjacent to Elysian Park is called "Elysian Heights" and has always maintained a genteel character.
In recent years the neighborhood has experienced a considerable amount of commercial and residential gentrification, attracting musicians, artists, young singles and entertainment industry workers, as well as a variety of new clubs, restaurants and retail storefronts along Sunset Boulevard and Echo Park Avenue. Echo Park has become the new center of the underground fashion scene with boutiques popping up all over Echo Park Ave. A new generation of young home buyers has moved into the area the past 5 years. Finding that they had been priced out of the upscale neighborhoods of Silverlake, Atwater Village, East Hollywood, and Los Feliz, they have flocked in droves to the still reasonably priced and pictureseque green hills of Echo Park. At first, the original longtime residents, a diverse mix of old hippies, 50s Reds, radicals and intellectuals, actors, craftsmen, Latinos, Filipinos, Greeks, Jazz musicians, city workers, retirees, bikers, surfers, Eastern European immigrants, and film and television workers, resented the yuppie intrusion, but as is the case in most demographic change and gentrification, property values increased geometrically as more yuppies moved in, turning many of the original residents into instant millionaires.
[edit] Attractions
Local attractions include the eponymous Echo Park, with a small lake which is said to contain the largest planting of lotuses outside Asia.
There is also a Cuban festival held on the birthday of Cuban poet and patriot José Martí, who has a statue in the park.
Bordering the park are the cathedral of the Episcopalian diocese of Los Angeles and the famous Angelus Temple, a large Foursquare Gospel church built by Canadian-born Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in 1923.
[edit] Lotus Festival
Given the large amount of lotus leaves in the lake, the Echo Park is the site of the annual Lotus Festival, a pan-Asian celebration complete with Chinese dragon boat races. The event has been held since the late 1970s and it showcases a different Asian ethnicity (such as Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Bangladeshi, etc.) every year. It attracts Asian Americans as well as other local residents. The festival itself came under criticism by locals in 1979, when festival directors refused to let the local garage band, The Alleyheads, which comprised of Asians, Latinos, and whites, play at the festival, yet let several tame white and Asian "pop" groups approved by the city, perform. The community was outraged that the festival directors did not let the Alleyheads play,especially since the guitar player for the band , Nathan Mercado, was the son of the leader of one of the greatest Asian singing groups of the 50s, Doy Mercado and the Orientones, who had performed on Ed Sullivan Show during their heyday. The members of the band, lead guitar Alfred Corpuz (Filipino-American), drummer Michael Miller (German-American), bass player Ralph Gonzales (Portugese-American), rhythm guitar, Nathan Mercado (Japanese-Hawaiian-Filipino), manager and renowned 70s poster maker, Rudy Zappa Martinez (Puerto Rican-Mexican-American),reflected the diverse nature of the community, yet festival directors did not let them play in favor of out-of-town performers. The Alleyheads persisted for three more years , but each time were refused by the festival committee. Complaints mounted until the city and festival committee dropped their ban on rock bands in the middle 80s, but ironically hired only all-white rock bands at first, none of which were indigenous to Echo Park itself. This situation has since changed , however, and the festival now showcases a wide range of diverse musical acts and performers that better mirror the demographics of the City of Los Angeles and Pacific region to which it belongs.
Echo Park was home to the Metropolitan Street Hockey League (MSHL) from 1971 until 1977, one of the first organized street hockey & roller hockey associations in the Los Angeles area, and which produced the Preston Sharks, winners of the street hockey city championship in 1974, 1975 and 1976.
Echo Park is and continues to be home to the world famous, Echo Park Ducks, originally formed in 1967 as a loosely organized social , sports & community activist club, and which attracted many of the hippies and free spirits of the area at the time. They were immortalized when Billy Shire began selling the now famous Echo Park Ducks T-Shirt out of his Sunset Blvd store in 1972.
Currently, Echo Park is home to many unique businesses, such as the Echo Park Film Center, Epitaph Records, the Taix French restaurant, Pioneer Chicken , several boutiques, live music venues and art galleries, and an eclectic night-life, including the whimsical Midnight Ridazz, an after-dark bicycle rally where as many as 1000 people show up on the second Friday of each month for themed bicycle rides throughout the streets of Los Angeles. Each ride's theme is announced several days in advance through emails,Yahoo Groups, and flyers, the actual route being kept secret until the beginning of the ride. The cyclists meet at Echo Park at Sunset Boulevard at 9:30 p.m.
[edit] External links
- Echo Park
- 2006 Cuban Festival, Echo Park photos
- Los Angeles Times, Real Estate section, Neighborly Advice column: "[Echo Park:]"It's absolutely evolutionary" (4 Dec 2005)
- Sonia Paulino, local photographer, documents the community
- Midnight Ridazz, largest after-dark bike rally in the USA
- Historic Echo Park
- OLL Alumni Website for alumni of Our Lady Of Loretto Grammar School in the Echo Park area
- The War of the Worlds at the Internet Movie Database
- The War of the Worlds Movie Site
- Making of the movie at site dedicated to all things War Of The Worlds
