The Lounge (thrillist.com)

The theater itself is laid out with large, plush, electronically controlled recliners with a table between them.  Your waiter is only a press of a button away, service is prompt, and the cocktails are strong if a bit pricey at about $13 each.  This brings up the inevitable down side of a visit to Gold Class Cinemas: the price tag.  Two tickets ($23 each) four drinks (about $12 each) and an appetizer (average $12) will run you $106 (fortunately we had a gift certificate).  Add a meal or some dessert and you’re looking at a small car payment.  Considering that just the ticket at the Highland Theater is almost 1/6th the price on their $3 Wednesdays, you might not want to borrow against your 401k to see Shrek Forever After. Still, it’s nice to catch a movie without a family of five treating the row behind you like it’s their living room (my experience last time I visited the Highland Theater).

The Theater (reelguys.podbean.com)

I sense a few “Beyond Northeast” posts in the works.  The most time sensitive of these posts concerns the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art’s current exhibition, The Ulysses Guide to the L.A. River.  Before doing any research, I was hoping for an exhibit combining the eponymous Greek hero with one of the most underwhelming, yet influential, bodies of water I’ve ever lived near.  I would have even accepted Leopold Bloom wandering through Cypress Park, but literary allusions aside, the exhibit consumed the senses, entertained, and provoked more than a little emotion.

The Wall Street Journal wrote a nice review of the exhibition, so I don’t need to reinvent the wheel in explaining it here but suffice to say that it draws heavily on the graffiti tradition associated with the river’s acres of concrete embankments.  Piped-in urban sounds and carefully placed detritus add to the illusion of place, which evokes a slightly unsettling sensation of being in an urban landscape not intended for human habitation, but full of life and creation nonetheless.

Chaz Bojorquez, Sr. Suerte

Most provocative, and prescient considering this blog’s focus, is local artist Chaz Bojorquez’s, Mr. Lucky, a skull sporting a fur coat and fedora with his fingers crossed.  The symbol, created by Bojorquez decades ago, had become a popular gang icon in NELA, and is therefore loaded with undertones of violence and fear, yet ironically, Bojorquez originally intended the image to represent a combination of hippie culture and the Chicano movement of the 1960s.   (According to the book, The Ulysses Guide to the L.A. River)

This excellent exhibit runs through July 3rd and just might tempt you to walk home down the Arroyo Seco.

Ako Castuera, Water & Power, Oil on wood panel, 2008, 22 x 33 inches

Well, York Blvd. finally caved and has joined the “twitter revolution.”  When we’re too lazy to blog, we might still eek out 140 characters on the latest Highland Park news fit to print.  Follow us @yorkblvd for all our local thoughts, observations and witticisms.

Eagle Rock has been getting a lot of positive local publicity lately.  Maybe that explains the outrageously long lines at the Oinkster.  Los Angeles Magazine profiled it in a recent series on neighborhoods with a small town feel, dubbing it “The Indie”.

The Los Angeles Times positively reviewed Four Cafe on Colorado Blvd.  I peeked in here a few weeks ago, but the prices seemed a bit steep for soup, salad, and sandwiches.  Maybe I’m missing something…

The Los Angeles Times also reviewed No Age’s show over the weekend at the Center for the Arts Eagle Rock.

The Vendy Awards are moving their annual awards from New York to Los Angeles to pit bacon-wrapped hot dogs vs. tacos in a battle royale that promises to decide the best L.A. street food vendor.  The event will be held on May 15th, in MacArthur Park, and your $50 admission gets you all the food and alcohol you can drink between 4-7 PM.  The event has already begun garnering some buzz, but for those of you who care about the larger social issues surrounding street vending, we hope to provide you with a bit of background for the awards.

In August 2009 Sean Basinski of the Street Vendor Project in New York City contacted us hoping to scout Los Angeles’ street food scene for the awards.  (At the time, his group was also considering Philadelphia.)  In my more narcissistic moments, I like to think he came to us because we’re experts, but the sensible truth is simply that we have a website and speak English.  Sean eventually made it out to Los Angeles in August and spent a few days meeting with some of the groups that have dedicated themselves to the larger social issues surrounding street food, the Loncheros Association for one.  When we were finally able to meet up with Sean, he was excited about our city’s vibrant street food scene.  Since everyone had to be at work the next morning, we took him to a few local spots as an introduction: Tacos La Estrella on York, and to the Figueroa Street Marketplace for some esquites. (He declined the cologne and DVDs.)  Sean struck us as altruistic and dedicated to improving the plight of street vendors; He simply needed a bit of a primer on the Mexican street food that didn’t seem to be familiar to his New York palate.  We sold him hard on L.A., and eight months later, here we are.

True $50 seems like a steep price to pay for admission to a three hour food fair, but consider the fiasco that ensued at the L.A. Street Food Fest: $5 admission resulted in thousands of people waiting in line who were denied admission, long lines for the vendors inside the festival, and a shortage of the more popular dishes.  Tickets to the Vendys are limited,  include food and drink, and are tax deductible.  Also, if you’re so inclined, the festival will coincide with the end of Contesting the Streets, an academic conference on street vending hosted by the UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty.  I for one am looking forward to Queering el Barrio: Latina Immigrant Street Vendors Navigate and Perform Queer and Gendered Identities in Los Angeles.  It just has a catchy title.

First, our local Northeast paper wrote what appeared to be a well-intentioned bucolic description of a neighborhood walk.  Just like the old Highlights Magazine covers, see if you can spot something incongruous:

Now I am in full view of the Eagle Rock.  She looks down over treetops.  I wonder will the trees soon block her from view?  I stop and look here, then there, all along the way to the post office and see everything, and everything is in bloom, everything is shining.  Even the homeless people near McDonald’s look shiny and new.  Legs aching, I wait for the Dash bus to bring me back home.  That was a good walk.

Now onto something that I can more effectively apply logic to, the travel website Wikitravel.org needs a geography lesson from the bloggers over at LAEastside.  Not only do they commit the cardinal sin in their entry on Los Angeles in defining the Eastside as “north of downtown and east of Hollywood”, but for some unknown reason, they locate Highland Park and Eagle Rock in East L.A.  Now, mistakenly placing Hollywood and Highland as the center of Los Angeles  has been debated ad-nauseum on the internet, and to be fair, at least Wikitravel didn’t place us “east of East L.A.”.  What bothers me is the warning to travellers that East L.A., which includes Eagle Rock and Highland Park, is “dangerous regardless of time of day and should be avoided altogether when walking if possible“.  I don’t for a moment delude myself into thinking that brochures for Northeast Los Angeles will begin disappearing from the shelves of travel agents in Buffalo, but one of the reasons we founded this website was to accurately craft an image of our neighborhood for friends who joked about bringing their passports to drive east of the 5.

Therefore, I’d like to see a concerted effort on all of our parts to correct the Wikitravel article.  Correctly defining Los Angeles’ Eastside isn’t my prerogative, but the article should at least properly define East L.A. and avoid characterizing it as somewhere to avoid at all costs.  I hope to see you on their discussion page.

1.  We’ve harped on this before, but Highland Park has its own cornerstone of Poblano cuisine near the corner of Avenue 50 and Monte Vista inside Eibis Restaurant.  The cemitas are good, but the tacos arabes will make for a unique appetizer and a history lesson on 19th Century Mexican immigration.

Taco Arabe

2.  Just 15 minutes away (on a weekend), El Mercado de Los Angeles in East L.A. carries more Mexican merchandise than you can shake a cesta at.  Specifically, the second floor boasts two shops that sell a variety of regional moles.  I prefer the mole oaxaceña, but since we’re celebrating the Battle of Puebla, we’ll go with the mole poblano.  The mole is sold as a concentrated paste that goes a long way.  Stir chicken broth in over a medium heat, and pour over chicken for a rich main course.  Again, there is a Mexican history lecture that can accompany this course if you like being the wisenheimer of the party.

Enchiladas with Mole Poblano

3.  Our gift to you is the only English recipe on the internet for the Poblano menjul, a central Mexican version of the Mint Julep:

Place six mint leaves and one tablespoon sugar in an old fashioned glass.  (Instead of sugar, a simple syrup should also work nicely.)  Fill glass with crushed ice.  In a shaker, mix two ounces of Amontillado, two ounces dark rum, a few drops of creme de menthe, and a few drops of Angostura bitters.  Shake thoroughly and pour into glass.

Menjul and Michilada

The local angle is pretty thin, but since we’ve been known to whip out our cameras and snap a few food photos from time to time, we though we could justify tweaking the Times for their recent mimicry of the Gray Lady’s article on the explosion of food photography.

On 4/6 the NYT ran an article titled, First Camera, Then Fork, which investigated the growing neurosis of people who have to photograph their meals.  The article is an interesting exploration of what motivates people to photograph so much of what they eat.  When I first read this, I wanted to roll my eyes at the moron photographing his grilled cheese sandwich, but realized I’ve certainly been guilty of this from time to time.

Today, The LA Times ran an eerily similar story titled, Dinner Is the Theater as Food Paparazzi Converge.  The mere fact that two newspapers are covering the same fad wouldn’t be worth mentioning were the articles not so similar.  For example, from the 4/6 NYT story:

Indeed, the number of pictures tagged “food” on the photo-sharing Web site Flickr has increased tenfold to more than six million in the last two years, according to Tara Kirchner, the company’s marketing director.  One of the largest and most active Flickr groups, called “I Ate This,” includes more than 300,000 photos that have been contributed by more than 19,000 members.

From today’s LA Times:

Flickr, the photo-sharing website, has seen the number of pictures tagged as “food” jump from about half a million in 2008 to more than 6 million today, according to company officials.  In the group “I Ate This” on Flickr’s site, nearly 20,000 people have uploaded more than 307,000 images of their latest meals, from a 7-Eleven hot dog smeared with mustard to the butter dish at the Michelin three-star restaurant French Laundry in Yountville, Calif.

Both articles make mention of camera companies capitalizing on the trend by adding settings for food photographs, but more disturbing is that both articles use the same out-of-town source for an anecdote:

From The NYT,

Joe Catterson, the general manager of Alinea restaurant in Chicago, said that, increasingly, people can’t [resist the urge to photograph their food].  ”One guy arrived with the wrong lens or something on his camera and left his wife sitting at the table for an hour while he went home to get it,” he said.

From the LAT,

Chef Gran Achatz allows only non-flash photography in his tony Chicago restaurant, Alinea.  He, like many chefs, finds himself torn between being flattered by the public’s enthusiasm and aggravated over the effect the picture-taking is having on the restaurant’s operations.

They’ve paid for the meal, so they think they can do whatever they want with it,” he said.

Los Angeles deserves better than two-week-old recycled pop-culture stories.  The Times’ editors owe us a mea culpa on this one.

The Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council’s annual election will be taking place next Thursday, April 29th at the Highland Park Recreation Center, 6150 Piedmont Avenue.  Janet Dodson, who is running for one of the eight At-Large Director positions, has asked us to spread the word about the election as well as her Nueva Vida slate of candidates. Ms. Dodson describes the group thusly:

This slate includes community veteranos, the as-yet-unjaded, business owners, and residents. We all share the understanding that only by organizing, does any community develop the political power needed to get attention from the City. We are all ready to work hard together to make sure Highland Park is not ignored, especially as we begin to face the coming financial cuts.

We have plans to be sleek and efficient, and we especially want to invite everybody, and groups, and organizations to come to the Neighborhood Council to tell us their plans and needs. We see ourselves as conduits to Huizar and Reyes.

Highland Park has begun to wake up. We have been under-represented for too long.

You can find their voter guide, but to make up your own mind, stop by the candidate forum this Thursday at 6:30 PM at the Franklin High cafeteria.  To read candidate statements, determine if you’re eligible to vote, and find out more about the election, check out the election website.

Though Eagle Rock is no stranger to the silver screen, this recent Sundance favorite caught me by surprise.

Spike Jonze, who’s best known these days for Where the Wild Things Are (though I could never forget his Weezer/Happy Days video), just released a robot love story called “I’m Here.”  It’s a surreal, yet remarkably poignant, tale of robots living among people in Los Angeles, and largely shot around our neck of the woods.

What’s not surprising?  Eagle Rock is full of hipster-robots (zing!).

When you have 30 minutes, check it out at imheremovie.com, though you’re supposed to be over 21 (it’s sponsored by Absolut) and you might have to wait for the next “screening.”

I’m not sure why the he borrowed from the Blackhawk Down soundtrack, but filmmaker Evan Mather’s short film, Eagle Rock (Los Angeles) California, has made the final 8 in Los Angeles Magazine’s Get L.A. film competition.  I just wish he had chosen any taco truck other than the “Korean taco truck that visits every Tuesday night”.  Misplaced hype notwithstanding, it’s a nice piece from a man who clearly loves the neighborhood.  Enjoy.

Franklin High is moving up again.  For a school once associated more with gang fights than of academics, just about everybody was surprised when a group of nine students just took home the trophy for the LAUSD Academic Decathlon. It’s a tough competition that consists of speeches, essays, tests and interviews on a variety of difficult subjects.  The Franklin High team mastered them all and is now heading to state.

Perhaps winning the Academic Decathlon is actually fitting for the school that graduated the man who would eventually become God to millions of nerds around the world, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (yes, really). And of course there are many other success stories from Franklin High in the past, including graduates Sheriff Lee Baca and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo.

You can read the full story on the LA Times.

Casa Bianca’s Sausage-and-Eggplant Pizza

First off, this is a California interpretation of thin-crust Southside Chicago bar pizza, so if you didn’t grow up rooting for the White Sox, back off: It doesn’t resemble the pizza from Taconelli’s or any place named Ray’s because it’s not supposed to, and it’s cut into diamonds instead of slices because that’s the way it’s done. Secondly, you don’t like canned mushrooms? Don’t order it with mushrooms. You’re offended by the idea of pineapple? Don’t order the Hawaiian. The pasta isn’t al dente? Go to one of those fancy places where the valet charge alone is more than the cost of feeding a family here. But if you’re in the mood for dense, crunchy, chewy, half-burnt, family-cooked pizza with fried eggplant and homemade sausage, nothing even comes close. Casa Bianca, 1650 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock. (323) 256-9617.

Huarache de Cabeza

A huarache, the definitive unit of Mexico City street food, is a flattish, concave trough of masa shaped like a size-12 sandal, pan-fried or deep-fried, then smeared with beans, sprinkled with meat and layered with lettuce, grated cheese and cream. Part of the fun is eating the thing — a huarache is too brawny to attack with a flimsy plastic fork, and you will either burn your fingers or wait for your lunch to cool into corn-flavored cement. Emily Post provides no guidelines for eating a huarache. You can have a huarache topped with almost anything, from the black corn fungus called huitlacoche to standard-issue steak, but I like it best with cabeza — rich, gelatinous meat pulled from a cow’s head and cooked down into an ultraconcentrated essence of beef. El Huarache Azteca #1, 5225 York Blvd., Highland Park. (323) 478-9572.

El Atacor #11’s Potato Tacos

You will encounter many schools of thought when it comes to these tacos, some of which call for coarsely mashed spuds, others for herbs, and still others for a wallop of chorizo. But all pale before El Atacor #11’s tacos de papa: thin corn tortillas folded around gooey spoonfuls of puree and fried to an indelicate, shattering crunch. The barely seasoned potatoes ooze out of the tacos with the deliberate grace of molten lava. The glorious stink of hot grease and toasted corn subsumes any subtle, earthy hint of potato, and guacamole-drenched tacos de papasevaporate so quickly from the table that you understand why they come 10 to an order. El Atacor #11, 2622 N. Figueroa St., L.A. (323) 441-8477.

Good Girl Dinette’s Chicken Pot Pie

I have occasionally posited the existence of universal comfort food, dishes that would convey warmth and love and abundance as well to an Inuit as it would to a Jain, in Canada as well as in Kyrgyzstan. Then I start daydreaming about fermented mare’s milk, and the afternoon goes downhill from there. But if you were going to compile such a roster, you could do worse than to include Good Girl Dinette’s chicken potpie, a classically transcultural dish of yellow Vietnamese curry, peas and carrots and everything, baked under a dense, buttery biscuit crust. Good Girl Dinette, 110 N. Avenue 56, Highland Park. (323) 257-8980.

Eibis Restaurant’s Arabes:  I wrote a pretty sophomoric post a few months ago about hunting down an Arabes truck in East LA, comparing it to Ahab’s White Whale from Moby Dick.  The irony of course is that I drive within two blocks of Eibis Restaurant , which specializes in Poblano food, every day.  As a prerequisite for writing a food post I have to sprinkle a little knowledge on the dish at hand:  Allegedly, Arabes  trace their origins to Lebanese immigrants to central Mexico who brought spices from their homelands and applied them to pork, instead of the beef and lamb that was more common in Lebanon.  (For two other examples of successful Lebanese-Mexican fusion, see Salma Hayek, and Carlos Slim.)  At Eibis, the pork is roasted on a veritcal spit on the street (so as to maximize the exposure to exhaust emissions), filled with some salsa, and rolled into pan arabe, essentially a slightly thick flour tortilla, that has been warmed in corn oil.  One word of warning: I don’t think anyone at this restaurant speaks English beyond “hello”.  If you don’t speak Spanish, bring a friend, or prepare a script in advance.

Every nation has the government it deserves - Joseph de Maistre

Maybe we Angelenos deserve to be lorded over by bar exam flunkees who couldn’t govern their way out of a wet paper bag.  We vote them into office time and again either because they stamp the right party affiliation next to their name or because their skin is the right color.  These fools can’t find budget fat to trim in a city where rookie firefighters average $80,000-$100,000 a year, but they have managed to symbolically ban bad words,  build a rail network that ignores the worst traffic congestion in the nation, and criminalize taco trucks. (Actually, I suppose they failed at even that.)  The latest example of bureaucratic stupidity is in our neighborhood’s public parking.  No, not the quadrupling of parking rates, but instead the closure of lots at midnight.  Specifically, the lot on Lincoln between avenues 50 and 51.  A new sign now threatens to tow those parked after midnight.  This wouldn’t seem to be a problem until you consider the nascent night-life at Johnny’s and The York, where some people like to drink even after their coachman has transformed back into a mouse.  I guess we’ll all have to pay for the valet at Marty’s if we want to stay out past our bedtime now…

More proof that you're smarter than your elected representative...

]]> http://yorkblvd.com/2010/02/22/parking-politics/feed/ http://yorkblvd.com/2010/02/17/tonight-710-tunnel-technical-study-community-meeting/ http://yorkblvd.com/2010/02/17/tonight-710-tunnel-technical-study-community-meeting/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:08:51 +0000 YORK BLVD. http://yorkblvd.com/?p=1159

There will be a community meeting TONIGHT to give information on the recent geotechnical study on tunneling through Highland Park. From David Baird at the HHPNC Land Use Committee:

The SR-710 Tunnel Technical Study Team has recently completed the DRAFT Geotechnical Summary Report. The report has found that tunneling is feasible in Zone 2 (Highland Park) from a geotechnical standpoint. This Community meeting is scheduled to share the outcome of field exploration work conducted as part of the Study. A presentation on information contained in the DRAFT REPORT will summarize the geology, faulting, seismicity, material properties, hazardous materials and groundwater conditions within Zone 2.

Highland Park Residents, We demand you presence at this meeting in protest of tunneling under our community.

When:
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 6:00-8:00 PM

Where:
Ramona Hall
4580 N. Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA