According to a recent LA Weekly article, my favorite new gelato shop, not to mention Chango one of my favorite coffee shops, are cited as signs of Silver Lake/Echo Park gentrification. In fact, the LA weekly likens the movement of gentrified neighborhoods to a flood -- a little insensitive I think to our friends in New Orleans, but titillating none the less. While enjoying a delectable cup of frozen strawberry yogurt and mint limencello the other night I even said out loud "I love my neighborhood". A plethora of races and classes was packed in the little shop at 9pm on a weekday making quite the pretty sidewalk scene. Yes, the hipsters often outnumber the locals regularly at the east end of Sunset Blvd, but I would much rather deal with the sign of the times at hand and fight poorly crafted condos going up over historical landmarks instead of locally run businesses. In a nutshell, the article gives something for us all to ponder but provides little new information. Nor does the paper suggest solutions to ease the guilt. We can't take where we're living for granted. As the LA Weekly warns us, Echo Park could be bulldozed just as easily as McMansions replaced the bungalows in Manhattan Beach. Very scary indeed.

Labels: local, newsworthy