Echo Park

Sylbrian Calimpusan learned to sleep through the late-night foot-stomping, tambourine-shaking and speaking in tongues. He got used to the unexpected visitors, such as the woman from Montana who showed up before dawn with kids in tow, asking for permission to come in and pray. "They drove so far," Calimpusan recalls. "We couldn't say 'no.' " If growing up in the little house brought inconveniences, they were small prices to pay for the privilege of dwelling in a holy place that helped stoke his faith.

Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't find a way to get porn and hunger into the same column. But when you fish for a living, you never know what you might catch. The story begins with my neighbor Hilda working out one morning at Curves, where her buddy Gloria from Echo Park tells her about a mysterious problem she's having with gay sex magazines.

As Danny Hoch ambles through Echo Park, a familiar sight catches his eye. Although he's far from his home in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, Hoch instantly recognizes the telltale signs of approaching urban Armageddon: pasty-faced guys in porkpie hats, prowling for overpriced espressos; pierced and tattooed young women pushing strollers; a vintage clothing store rubbing elbows with a Salvadoran pupuseria.

Anthony E. Escobar was fatally gunned down Thursday night by suspected gang members after the 13-year-old crossed his Echo Park street to get lemons from a neighbor's tree. When his adult cousin found his nearly lifeless body lying in the driveway, he had two lemons in his hands.

A wealth of wildlife was stirring in Echo Park on this first evening of spring. The squawking of geese and gulls drifted across the lake, mingling with children's calls from the little playground. Palms barely swayed in the cool air. But in the lake's famous lotus beds, only dry orange-brown stalks protruded from the murky water, most bent over like weary elders.

In Echo Park, it's not uncommon to find a young, well-heeled professional living next door to a family that sells corn and candy from shopping carts in the park. The narrative is so familiar that it came as no surprise when a humble pupuseria named La Paz transformed into an attractive New American bistro named 15.

Lot 1 may have the highest-profile chef -- Josef Centeno -- now cooking in Echo Park, but foodie haunts are sprouting all along Sunset Boulevard in a neighborhood that until recently was better known for its indie music scene. Young chefs and entrepreneurs are moving in and wrangling up interesting spaces faster than you can pull on a pair of skinny jeans and zip up a hoodie.

In the span of three hours Tuesday night, the 21 men and women who form the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council found the time to accuse one another, loudly and publicly, of "whining" and "bullying," of racism and reverse racism, of violating the separation of church and state, and of cultural insensitivity. Council President Jose Sigala was in dire need of a gavel, banging his pen on the table with increasing urgency while trying to shout down his out-of-order colleagues: "Mr.

The Day of the Lotus might as well be called the Day of the Dead. Echo Park's famous lotus beds are nothing more than a scattering of a few sickly, brownish pads floating in foul-smelling water, a scene that in two weeks will greet about 150,000 visitors who are expected to attend the 2008 Lotus Festival. Gone are the hundreds of pink- and cream-colored flowers atop a lush green expanse of umbrella-like leaves that were once described as the largest lotus beds in the nation.

It's not the Lotus Festival that's gone missing this weekend. The dragon boats are still speeding across Echo Park Lake, the drums are beating and the scent of chicken satay and papaya salad wafts through the crowds. It's the lotuses that are gone, dead after gracing the lake with their broad leaves and delicate flowers for decades. Visitors stood solemnly Saturday, alone and in small groups, gazing at the empty water as if paying their respects at a gravesite.