anyway, here are my favorite things about Highland Park:

- familiar faces at the not-too-crowded Trader Joes
- the new Fresh n’ Easy (they won me over!)
- All Star Lanes karaoke and secret rock shows
- huge Craftsman houses
- Brownstone pizza
- Follerio’s pizza
- The York for rare burgers and beets & buratta
- Johnny’s for drinks and pool
- all the medical marijuana shops
- the weaving studio next to the tattoo shop on York (the owners and their dog Suzuki are so cool!)
- the Farmer’s Market on Fridays
- LA ESTRELLA at 54 and York
- oh, i can afford to live alone!!
- lots of friendly dog-walkin’ neighbors!
- neighborhood hardware store on York btwn 50 and 51 (and the chain-smoking owner guy is rad)
- El Atacor #11 potato tacos after too many drinks at Footsies
- close enough to Pasadena w/out all the a-holes.
- the Bodies of Water live here

I LOVE HIGHLAND PARK

BTW I heard the venerable Bucket Burger has a new owner (hence the new paint job) - has anyone tried it yet?

http://www.laweekly.com/eat+drink/counter-intelligence/my-taco-frying-high/17730/

MY TACO: FRYING HIGH
Carne asada fries — the Everest of fine gabacho cuisine
-Jonathan Gold

Have you ever seen a plate of carne asada fries? If done properly, the dish is an awesome assemblage, a totem of unspeakable desires — a football-size construction of guacamole, gobs of melted cheese and a mound of French fries that seems to reach halfway to the ceiling, paved with double handfuls of well-charred pellets of grilled beef, crunchy and oozy and spicy and impossibly rich.

The phenomenon of carne asada fries, a dish with even shallower Mexican roots than the pastrami burrito or the bacon-wrapped hot dog, is centered in the San Diego area, but its local admirers are legion: Queries about local purveyors of the stuff are as relentless as requests for great Westside Chinese restaurants around here, and are just as likely to be greeted with a smile, a shrug and the address of a restaurant that is 30 miles farther than you wanted to go.

The premier exponent of carne asada fries in Los Angeles may well be My Taco, a gleaming mini-mall joint in a grungy corner of Highland Park, a place with a name so unpromising in this neighborhood of regional Mexican cooking that you could drive past it 500 times without suspecting that the place served anything more inspiring than bean-and-cheese burritos. Even among mini-malls, this one is unpromising: My Taco is next to a restaurant called Super Panda China Buffet. But My Taco is kind of nice inside, rough block walls painted in bright Frida Kahlo colors, cheerful wooden chairs around the tables, a spiffy glass case for the jugs of homemade aguas frescas, of which I highly recommend the watermelon on the rare occasions it makes it into the lineup. A flat-screen television above the salsa bar shows everything from telanovelas to The Man From U.N.C.L.E., although I wouldn’t count on catching the afternoon soccer games, and at lunch there are usually as many Highland Park businessmen in suits as there are guys in work overalls. The salsa bar itself is well stocked with fresh chipotle sauce, the house pico de gallo and a thinnish, spicy guacamole that may be among the best taqueria-style guacamoles I have ever tasted, even when made off-season with less-ripe avocados.

The specialty of My Taco is barbacoa, a soft, spicy, well-blackened mash of long-stewed lamb sizzled to a crisp on a hot griddle, flanked with chopped onions and cilantro, and served with a Styrofoam cup of sharply clove-scented goat consommé, which actually seems more apt to its task than the lamb consommé served with barbacoa at most of the Guerrero-style restaurants where it is a specialty. You grab a bit of the lamb with a tortilla, fold it into a taco with onions and salsa, and chase it with a shot of the soup. Or you moisten the lamb. Or you scoop up lamb with your spoon and wet it in the soup. It reminds me a little of the Iranian dish dizie, at least as served at the Westwood Iranian sandwich shop Attari, but dizie is never speckled with those delicious crunchy bits, dizie does not leak chile-stained orange grease, and dizie is rarely served with rice and beans. Barbacoa is reason enough to visit My Taco.

Which is good, because after the barbacoa, My Taco is pretty hit-or-miss, a diner with deeply flavored chicken soup but bland goat stew, decent huevos rancheros at breakfast but limp chilaquiles, reliably good pork carnitas but sopes that taste more like compressed grits than they do anything fashioned out of masa. The pozole is the right stuff, a red, lightly gamy broth inflected with the funks of hominy and long-cooked pig’s foot. Tortas, Mexican sandwiches, are clearly not a house specialty, but the taste is clean and the smear of avocado is rich, although the tortas tend to be soft as Big Macs. There is a big following for the tacos de papas: corn tortillas folded around gobs of chile-infused mashed potatoes and deep-fried to an oily crunch — not as irresistible as the thin potato tacos down the street at El Atacor #11, perhaps, but undeniably more sophisticated, the potato tacos you would make for company if your grandmother happened to have a secret recipe.

And then there are the carne asada fries. If you have ever encountered such a plate of carne asada fries, if you are an aficionado, you undoubtedly will recognize the sensations, like a rock climber facing El Capitan for the first time: fear, desire and awe, followed shortly by the sensations that usually follow the ingestion of two weeks’ worth of calories in less than five minutes. Leave nachos to the amateurs — My Taco’s plate of carne asada fries is the Mount Everest of fine gabacho cuisine.

My Taco, 6300 York Blvd., Highland Park, (323) 256-2698. Mon.–Wed. 8 a.m.–9 p.m., Thurs.–Sun. 8 a.m.–10 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. MC, V. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $8–$20. Recommended dishes: barbacoa, carne asada fries, potato tacos.

The eccentric neighborhood of Highland Park sits in a compact valley stretching between downtown L.A. and Pasadena, along the Arroyo Seco. Once a bucolic arts colony, it’s now a cross-cultural inner-city neighborhood on the rebound. Dotted with bungalow courts, Craftsman bungalows and Mission Revival homes, it’s best known for housing such venerable institutions as the Southwest Museum (L.A.’s first) at 234 Museum Drive (free wild sage in the ethnobotanical garden), El Alisal, 200 E. Avenue 43 (the rustic stone and adobe home hand built by Southwest founder Charles Fletcher Lummis) and the Audubon Center at Debs Park at 4700 N. Griffin Ave., located amid 282 acres of native woodlands and grassy fields.

Look

A WEALTH OF CULTURE

If highbrow history put the neighborhood on the map, its deeply ingrained affection for the arts extends even to vacant plots. Behind the Craftsman-style Arroyo Seco library at 6145 N. Figueroa stands a beloved 1995 Luis Becerra mural (above, right) presenting a potent image equating library cutbacks with censorship. And in the wake of the ‘92 riots, artist Trisha Ward and community volunteers created La Tierra de la Culebra at 240 S. Avenue 57. Reclaiming an abandoned lot, they dedicated it to the Shoshoni people (the area has a notable Native American population) and transformed it into a quirky art park with a 450-foot-long stone and piqué tiled snake.

AND CHICKEN BOY, OF COURSE

To maximize the artistic possibilities, schedule an excursion for the second Saturday of any month, when the numerous galleries band together for after-hours shenanigans ( http://www.nelaart.com). But whenever you go, The Outpost — a sort of “visitors bureau” for art tourists — is a good place to begin. Founder Julie Deamer might point you in the direction of spots like Future Studio, the home of Chicken Boy and his parents Stuart Rapeport and Amy Inouye. Inside their bright green gallery, peruse monthly shows and shop the Chicken Boy gift store (Chicken Boy magnets, Chicken Boy-as-Elvis posters and . . . old snow globes from Connecticut). The nearby Avenue 50 gallery has been championing local artists, many of them Latino, for over a decade. At the tip-top of Figueroa is the Judson Stained Glass Studio, housed in a whimsical 1910 white-shingled workshop. Here David Judson, great-grandson to founder William Lees Judson, still oversees production of stained glass masterworks. His gallery is open daily to the public.

Shop

DREAM WEAVER

North Figueroa and York Boulevard used to serve as a prominent commercial hub. These days, not so much, but intimate storefronts still hide treasures. Should you require a bust of Nefertiti, a figurine of a Chinese nobleman or the ability to operate a shuttlecock, look no further than garage-sale-meets-weaving-studio Pets With Fez (5123 1/2 York Blvd.). Banajan — a master craftsman, instructor and sometime Smithsonian consultant — is a fanciful raconteur who learned his craft from his Assyrian Kurd father.

Eat

A WORLD OF FOOD

A number of fragrant bakeries perfume the main thoroughfares, but of special note is Antigua Breadat 5703 N. Figueroa. Recently opened by three denizens on a quest for a good cup of joe, Antigua boasts a full kitchen as well as homemade pastries like the sweet and savory pan gusano. Neighborhood pub meets East Coast style at The York (5018 York Blvd.), the place to get an heirloom tomato and burrata cheese salad and a microbrew. Cinnamon (5511 N. Figueroa) just brought canelazo (a robust South American cinnamon tea) and tasty vegetarian sopes to the community. Galco’s Soda Pop Stop (5702 York Blvd.) sells an orgy of over 500 specialty sodas (i.e. Mint Julep and Manhattan Special) and 450 off-the-beaten-track beers. The father of owner John Nese (below) opened the place in 1955, when Italian Americans reached a critical mass in Highland Park. The deli counter is still open, serving old-style sandwiches.

GET YOUR FREAK ON

For 39 years and counting, miscellaneous bands and good-natured crowds have patronized Mr. T’s Bowl, a sweetly seedy dive with a bartender named Manny who likes to kiss hands. The former bowling alley gets reanimated for special occasions. Vets admitted free.

- frozen pizza dough at Italian Bakery & Deli on Colorado

- milk shakes at Pete’s Burgers

- ordering a slice of pizza at Brownstone, carrying it over to Colorado Wine Co. and ordering a glass of red wine

- ^ no corkage at various local restaurants with a Co Wine Co bottle of wine.

- housewares at Big Lots (so convenient)

- free cup of joe when you buy a bag of coffee beans at Swork

- $10. haircuts at local barbershops

- Margaritas at Villa Sombrero

- Fried chicken at Larkin’s

- Wide streets and avenues (unusual for LA)

- Our own Tommy’s for that 2 a.m. gut bomb

- Trees, trees and more trees!

- EAGLE ROCK MUSIC FESTIVAL!

- The bars on York Blvd: Johnny’s, the York, and yes even Marty’s

- Pretty much everything on Colorado Blvd in Eagle Rock

- And for parents some of the coolest baby clothes is sold on Eagle Rock Blvd: Swanky Blanky, Rockin’ Baby, & Twerps

and here are a few additions:

latin american/italian food at italiano’s (and the murals in there)

parking lot tamale vendors

cupcakes and sunday brunch at auntie ems

tuesday farmer’s mkt

the way the whole neighborhood just hangs out on hot summer nights

the pool table at johnny’s

how anything goes at mr. t’s bowl

the mor york studio