Are LA Hipsters Trying To Be Eastsiders?
Los Angeles blogger Chanfles says he’s tired of “gabachos” via blogging.la or LAist saying Echo Park and Silver Lake are the eastside of LA. According to him, this is a recent hipster trend that little white children say to earn street cred from their boring, white Westside parents. Edgy!
It should be noted, for those that aren’t from LA, that the Eastside has been the Mexican part of town. The new fake “eastside” is being used to demarcate the subtle differences between the same social classes of a mostly gabacho heritage, (on the historical westside) and whether one can tolerate a bit of sand in the communal potato salad. It’s a complete disconnect from the actual meaning of Eastside, given meaning only by those that want to differentiate themselves from their fellow westsiders.
Chanfles admits this is a sore point with him. Full disclosure: Even we were a victim of his bitter ire some months ago when we mistakenly called Echo Park East LA. That being total New York ignorance on our part rather than some need to gain cred. Chanfles goes on to link to this Googlemap to point out the offending areas he’s read about in the aforementioned blogs. This is a story that’s as old as SoHo. (That’s in New York, y’all.) Gentrification, displacement, anger. The sad truth is, you can’t stop progress or rich people. So our advice is just take their money and run. Chances are your neighborhood was stolen from some Indians or Jews way back when anyway. America was built on displacing your fellow man. So just sell abuelita’s bungalow and head to Oaxaca. What say ye, Angelenos?
Eastside 101 [Chanfles]
Image [Flickr]
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well technically i guess it is east of LA, albeit NORTH east of it.
Posted by mare | December 06, 2007
well actually, thinking even more…Silver Lake etc are not West of LA so what does that make them? “East” of LA. So thats probably why they’re using the term. I’m sure no gabacho hipster wants to claim the real “East LA” as their home turf unless they’re in the movie American Me etc..
Posted by mare | December 06, 2007
mare - nope. no and no. echo park and silverlake are west of downtown, west of the river, west of the 110… so it ain’t “technically” east of anything, except the current gabacho center of gravity.
gentrification hurts, but dont sound the alarm until they actually start holing up somewhere east of the river and south of the 110 (which, i say, wont happen).
Posted by boooo!!! | December 06, 2007
Yes.
But not because what you say about gentrification is any less horrible than the tide of displacement that actually takes place.
It’s plain ignorant to name Silver Lake or Echo Park (the very northwest part of central L.A.) the Eastside is to somehow turn Hollywood into Central L.A. (which is the east side of the west side…).
It ignores the strange way in which the Greater Los Angeles region has been sliced into small towns and unincorporated cities that are at the city’s periphery and are just as much a part of L.A. But what’s anything East of the Harbor Freeway now to these geographical geniuses? Is it as unknown as Bell, Florence, La Puente, or shit, El Monte? It’s all Pico Rivera to them.
They’re doing whatever they think is alright without doing the homework and getting to know a city that is not exclusively theirs. That’s what bothers me. It’s like playing Guitar Hero without having even picked up a guitar and thinking that it qualifies you to be able to talk about writing a song on a guitar.
Damn…hipsters are lazy. They’re the Mexican’s version of what angry people think about Mexicans, except that the hipsters have more money. And are white.
Posted by pocho_guey_al_norte | December 06, 2007
WWSGD?
(what would sad girl do?)
what do we call them? hisp-ters?
Posted by el smrtmnky | December 06, 2007
ok so i had a brain fart this morning. you’d think i moved from LA (the place i was raised) more than only 2 years ago. pendeja me.. anyhow, i totally understand why they think silver lake etc is the “eastside”. no hipster dare go past downtown. its like a manhattanite who would never go into the other boroughs. its like the west side or east side in the city.
Posted by mare | December 06, 2007
Dad?
Posted by Churrasco | December 06, 2007
How did you all find a pic of El Chavo?
Posted by chimatli | December 06, 2007
@mare: Exactly, no hipster dares go past downtown.
It’s almost like going south of the border for them. And if they do, they’re completely avoiding downtown by going slightly northeast to Highland Park and Pasadena.
I used to live in Echo Park (And I’m more than likely at my tia’s house there on weekends) and it’s sad to see that it’s pretty much on its way to become Silver Lake v2.0. If you don’t believe me, American Apparel has a store there. Enough said.
Posted by Dan | December 06, 2007
The Militant Angeleno just calls them all “gentros.”
Posted by militant angeleno | December 06, 2007
You guys read too fast. The Google map is a collection of posts I do for blogging.la about places on the Eastside, as a service to those readers that dare not cross the river. It’s not “the offending areas.” Here’s the post that kicked things off: http://blogging.la/archives/2007/06/eastside_101_hollenbeck_park.phtml
I don’t get your closing paragraph (“take the money and run”) as all I’m trying to do is challenge those that would erase the sense of place that comes with the term Eastside. When Boyle Heights was a mostly Jewish area, it was still the Eastside and if new people move in fine, but the name for the place is the same. Not that the bastards have any problem writing us off the map, they’re too busy yawning. http://laist.com/2007/12/06/extra_extra_123.php
Posted by EL CHAVO! | December 06, 2007