Echo Park

Echo Park is at least a half-hipster hipster neighborhood now, but what it was when Brando Skyhorse was growing up there was quite different: one of the working-class parts of town ringing Dodger Stadium, home to a lot of Latinos, among them Skyhorse's family. I talked to him a while back about his novel "The Madonnas of Echo Park," and just popped off an email to him this week to congratulate him on the news that HBO is working on making "Madonnas" into a dramatic series.

First published on March 20, 2011. Revised and expanded in early 2012. It's not easy being the lungs of Los Angeles. But Griffith Park, the foremost green space in a city notorious for meager parkland and abundant smog, endures bravely, maybe even heroically. Venture into the park, or nearby Elysian Park, or one of the creative neighborhoods in between, and you'll find not only beloved landmarks such as Griffith Observatory and Dodger Stadium, but also happy surprises, such as the time-travel supply shop, or the cafe where cops dine daily to the sound of echoing gunfire, or the Korean greetings that echo at dawn every day atop Mt. Hollywood.

It was on a smoking patio in Echo Park that an older woman named Annie shattered my illusions about finding a suitable boyfriend in my 30s. "Tell them, 'If you don't have jack, don't call back,'" she said, while I fiddled guiltily with an American Spirit (I had "quit" two weeks earlier). I nodded, thinking I understood. "J.A.C.," she said again, holding up three fingers. "Job, apartment or car. " Had it come to this? Was my baseline for dating in Los Angeles really a guy's possession of J.A.C.?

Much of the real estate market is still stuck in deep winter, but Highland Park is showing signs of spring. Investors have descended on this and other communities in Northeast Los Angeles, snatching up bargain-priced Craftsman homes located within an easy distance of downtown. It's an echo of the housing boom, only this time speculators are drawn by the crash in prices. Attracted by an abundance of foreclosures and aided by interest rates near record lows, renovators are giving distressed properties a makeover.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals did a few things right when it opened its new West Coast headquarters in Echo Park last month. First, PETA spent $7.4 million buying and renovating its 82-year-old building, equipping it with such eco-industrial flourishes as a restored Art Deco facade, exposed ducts, vintage glass casement windows and cork flooring. Next, the animal rights group brought in 60 jobs - mostly transfers from its main office in Norfolk, Va. - but some local hires as well.

Miriam Jones doesn't waste time analyzing how an Amish girl in long skirts and bonnets went on to become the owner of a salon in the heart of Echo Park's hipster enclave. In her first 30 years, in addition to starting a business, she's butchered large farm animals, killed snapping turtles with a crossbow, sewn her own clothes, grown and canned her food, learned to fly a helicopter and raised a 12-year-old daughter. Clearly, she's been busy. But one moonlit night earlier this year — as Jones stood at a lookout off Mulholland Drive, dressed in drag to perform in a gender-bending art film by actor James Franco — she said she had to take a breath and wonder, what am I doing here?

When Kristen Christian learned that Bank of America Corp. planned to charge her a $5 monthly debit card fee, she did what many people do these days when they get mad: She ranted on Facebook. What followed was an illustration of the power of social media. Her Facebook post urging friends to abandon big banks unwittingly blossomed into a national campaign. More than 75,000 people have pledged to participate in "Bank Transfer Day" by moving their money from large U.S. banks to nonprofit credit unions by Saturday, Christian said.

For those without an airline ticket to some far off land this weekend, the international sounds have come to Echo Park with Filter Magazine's Culture Collide Festival, a multi-day super-eclectic music event that features 80 artists from 24 countries and is taking over a two-block stretch of clubs and venues. Now in its second year, the festival is a rare opportunity to see the catchy Danish pop band the Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Australia's Cameras -- or even recently reformed East Coast indie band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

So far there have been no dead bodies, no safes stuffed with soggy cash, no rusty stolen cars. The only things exposed by the receding water at Echo Park Lake have been shopping carts, 55-gallon steel barrels, a parking-enforcement "boot" and lots of skateboards. But who knows what is still hidden in the muck at the bottom of the 13-acre lake, soon to be dredged and outfitted with a leak-proof clay liner? Officials say that leaks once required them to replenish the lake with valuable drinking water.

Tuesday night is league play night at Pins and Needles, a pinball club that Molly Atkinson runs out of her big costuming studio in Echo Park. A clamorous din of bells clanging, explosions booming, quarters dropping and hands slapping at buttons fills the room as rock music blares from speakers and about 30 people shout and talk over the machines. But this is no commercial arcade. "People come here expecting an arcade sometimes, and it's more like going to someone's aunt's house for their Scrabble club," said Atkinson, 32, with brown hair tied back, an L.A. Dodgers insignia tattooed behind her right ear and big eyes that pop with excitement.