ECHO AND ECHOLALA
Hipster gentrification through chaos on the Eastside Sunset Strip
By Cole Coonce
It's a chilly evening on a dank, foreboding, third-world-ish stretch of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, a couple of miles east of where Bukowski shat and where drunk immigrants stumble out of putrid transvestite bars and beat the ceviche out of each other before pissing and puking on the semiotic stars that salute dead entertainers nobody can remember. ("Hey, man ... who the hell is Ralph Guldahl?")
Nearby, police and news helicopters vertical-takeoff from the roof of the Citibank née Bank of California building and tut-tut-tut through a pre-postapocalyptic neighborhood wasteland of what the LAPD defines as the Rampart District. The searchlights sweep through backyards and underlit streets, and the entire community of Echo Park feels like a war zone in an occupied territory - albeit one with minimal police protection on the streets after the police chief and Internal Affairs told the detectives of the Rampart Division that they, ummm, could not form their own gang, nor could they shoot the rival Crips, VCRS, 18th Street, and Los Crazys, and to cool it with the tattoos, syndicate-style hits, and drug dealing after raiding the inventory lockers.
This was back in December 2001, when a quartet of local hipster capitalists - flush from the $ucce$$ of creating the indie-rock nightclub Spaceland in neighboring Silver Lake (a venture so thriving it was responsible for mandating Silver Lake Boulevard's ever-popular sticker parking) - ignored the basic tenets of gentrification and common sense and opened the doors to a new nightclub in the squalid shadow of the Citibank helipad. They christened it with a half-eponymous moniker, Echo.
With true hipster indifference to the basic tenets of marketing, this quartet neglected to put up a sign that told any potential patron who or what the joint actually was. Nobody bothered to change the one from the previous owners. It read, "Nayarit." Uh, huh.
Business sign or no business sign, the Echo was in business just the same.
According to booker/co-owner Liz Garo, "The first show was the hip-hop group Anti Pop Consortium, and the doors were still being hung on the women's restroom when we started letting people in. Three-quarters of the set through, the electricity blew, and APC finished a cappella. The night set the tone for the Echo - to function successfully through chaos."
But to function through chaos, the Echo had to triumph over fear and ignorance. At that time, the Los Angeles Times had recently run a cover story in its Sunday Calendar section about Beck and Silver Lake and how it was ground zero to a new renaissance and how local residents Beck, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Elliott Smith were a force fecund enough to rival the Medicis in Florence, or something. All of which was a little hard to stomach for the residents of the Eastside of L.A., and the legacy of that article was that it just began to make Silver Lake a little less affordable, and probably hastened the movement of musicians and DJs in a southeasterly direction down the street to Echo Park.
Still, no arbiter of culture or commerce thought Echo Park was doodley-squat. And that was part of the challenge, Garo says.
"The original goal of Echo was to be the No. 1 dance club on the Eastside - which really wasn't much of a feat, because there weren't any others," she remembers. "At the time that Echo opened, Echo Park was about as far east as anyone could imagine. The only known landmark to the music industry was Dodger Stadium. The stories of the mostly Latino neighborhood was, 'You can't go there at night.' But people did, and people do. By 2002, Silver Lake seemed 'over' for those who had been there, and moving a little further east seemed like the logical step for struggling artists, students, musicians, designers, etc. You could still live in Echo Park cheaply, and with that comes a certain nobility of struggle."
But even Garo is aware that not all the chaos was internal and a function of malfunctioning circuit breakers or half-finished carpentry. Another variable in the chaos was the neighborhood itself.
"It was like the wild frontier," she admits.
The chaos in Echo Park has calmed down since that crazed day with no bathroom doors, and the Echo itself has been a calming influence.
I remember living in Echo Park in mid to late 1990s. I remember the cacophony. I remember the chorus of sundry car alarms that would whoop, ping, whoo-whoo-whoo, and bleat for a half-hour at a time. I remember the lunatic fringe of the LAPD Rampart Division. I remember the gunshots. I remember wondering whether the gunshots were sourced from the LAPD or the VCRs or the Los Crazys or any combination of the three. I remember the fistfights with the drunk, out-of-work stuntmen with broken legs, who swung with crutches and refused to turn down Jimmy Buffett at three in the fucking morning.
I remember washing dishes and looking out my kitchen window into the dusk at the intersection of Sunset and Alvarado and hearing the cadence of a semiautomatic weapon - "bang ... bang ... bang ... bang ..." - and not missing a beat while drying coffee cups, and thinking to myself, "Well, at least it wasn't a car alarm."
Yes. I remember the chaos. But an algorithm of cultural and socioeconomic tranquility is that if money begins changing hands - assuming the transactions are not drug deals - then neighborhoods become a lot more livable. I.e., the rising tide of commerce floats all boats. I maintain Echo is that very vessel ... Ms. Garo agrees:
"[Echo co-owner] Mitchell [Frank], who started Spaceland when no one would go into Silver Lake, knew there would be a natural migration to Echo Park," she says. "The Echo was purchased from the family who no longer wanted to run what was, in its heyday, a premier supper club and Guatemalan dancehall."
At first the club seemed to stand alone, she says, "But quickly on the neighborhood map was Sea Level Records and the revived Short Stop bar. Down the street, Little Joy's gained in popularity when some locals started DJing old country & western records and everyone found out you could smoke inside." Soon people were also hanging out at the lounge at Taix restaurant, the bakery Masa, and the diner Brite Spot, which are all nearby on the eastside Sunset Strip and serve as a loose support system for one another. "Brite Spot extended their business hours because of the late-nighters from the Echo," says Garo. "Taix is a regular watering hole for the staff of Echo, Sea Level Records sells tickets for shows at the Echo - it's a mutual appreciation society where commerce is gladly exchanged."
But, apparently, the commerce is part of the profile. For once, a rock 'n' roll club is not only not contributing to the delinquency of minors ... it is proactive in its attempts to coexist with the local authorities who reform those same juveniles.
"It has been a learning curve," Garo says, "working with the El Centro Community Youth Center, listening to their concerns, and Echo doing their part. We have a no-flyer-ing policy because there were complaints about flyers that promoted our monthly 'Ass & Titties Detroit Booty House' club." The Echo also cleans the streets each morning to sweep away cigarette butts and trash, makes sure that lines for shows don't block the doors of El Centro's counseling office, and attends monthly meetings with El Centro to "make sure each one is being a good neighbor," she adds. "It took lots of meetings and communicating to get to that point."
The Echo considers the surrounding businesses when making decisions. It won't book hardcore hip-hop or punk, after one neighboring shop complained about the clientele. A popular weekly club night, although profitable, was canceled due to problems with underage kids drinking in the parking lot. "On the other hand," she says, "the Echo won't [rent out the space] for USC sorority parties, basically because we think it's lame."
Beyond such matters of taste, the Echo is engaged in out-and-out philanthropy and humanitarian gestures. It is helping, for example, to produce a benefit for the Edendale Library on Sunday, May 7. "We also host the bimonthly Omni Fest, which features one-act plays and short films," she says.
Which is all well and good ... but she shouldn't tell the Calendar section of the L.A. Times. On the night I went to interview Garo at the Echo, I had to drive around the block twice before finding a parking spot.
Published: 02/23/2006
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