RSS
March 14, 2008
East Hollywood's Vision on Transit and Planning
Photo by Sonny I. LaVista/LAist
This week the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council released their video (shown below) on transportation within their district (map), which is a small but dense 1.5 square miles with a population of 52,000 people that includes the neighborhoods of Thai Town, Little Armenia and the unofficial Bicycle District (some call it, ugh, Hel-Mel for Heliotrope/Melrose). They say the area is a multi-modal community with transportation opions such as the 101 freeway, arterial streets, three metro red line stops, twelve Metro local lines, five Metro rapid lines and two DASH routes.
After a brief overview of the community, the video offers basic suggestions on improvements such as making areas more pedestrian friendly and using better planning principals along with beautification, neighborhood preservation, affordable housing, and sustainable green thinking. The best suggestion is turning the Bureau of Street Lighting yard at Santa Monica and Virgil into a recreation center.
| 
Since I live in "East Hollywood" I do refer to it as "HelMel" . I feel that it's pretty catchy.
Yes. These people on this Neighborhood Council are doing fantastic work. HelMel is the place to be whether you are on your Bike going to the "Kitchen" or Orange 20. The Jedi Temple is only 2 blocks from there and I can be found at any given time at Scoops, Pure Luck The College Cafe and or Orange 20. People need to support the EHNC in getting this area designated as HelMel by the city.
Another great video by the EHNC bringing NC's into the 21st century with their youth and exuberance.
Thank you, LAist for the props and also for announcing the Hollywood Coalition of Neighborhood Councils Transportation/Planning/Parking Town Hall last week, which was where this video was originally shown as each of the six Hollywood-area NC presidents shared their transportation/planning visions for their respective councils.
As for "Hel-Mel," it was coined jointly by myself and Bicycle Kitchen cook Somerset Waters during an e-mail exchange back in the fall of 2005, so we are to blame. Prior to then, he informally referred to the corner as "the public square." I can write a book about the history of that corner.
But thanks again, we really believe in making a difference in our community and having gone through a Governing Board retreat on Saturday, we re-affirmed that as a collective body. So yeah, we be rockin' da NC system, yo! :)
Elson Trinidad
President, East Hollywood Neighborhood Council
p.s. Zach -- I heard you're an NC person too?
p.p.s. Jedi of Hollywood -- WHO ARE YOU, MAN?!?!