LAist: Shepard Fairey on his TIME Magazine Cover

a35mmlife

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:43:24 -0800

omg. this conversation just. will. not. die. argh! its all semantics. East LA and being an "Eastsider" are two different things. It's like being religiously Jewish and identifying as Jewish by culture... there is no correct answer to the question... it just is... I'm an Eastsider... deal with it. Your map can't confine my identify.

weston deboer

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:47:09 -0800

no, your the bestest

Melissa Moore

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:48:48 -0800

Congrats to the Faireys! So awesome. And Weston, you're the best. :)

jrb

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:02:22 -0800

A big congrats to Shepard Fairey as well as enormous kudos for using his art and talent to raise over $600K for the Obama campaign. If anyone deserves a good windfall out of all this it's him. He did all this in a very selfless way.

polaroidgirl

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:56:39 -0800

Interesting... Galaxiekat and I were writing at the time. Similar yet different! Oh, and, Shepard Fairey is still awesome after all these years.

polaroidgirl

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:51:17 -0800

It is all relative. Folks who live west of the 405 think of La Cienega as the cut off! I think it is fair to say that the Eastside starts to kinda happen in East Hollywood... we are talking abut the eastside of the city not what's east of the city. Santa Monica is def westside but it's not even part of the city of LA, right? The bottom line is that eastside/westside actually has nothing to do with the location of downtown LA (anymore - it did back when Eastern& Western Avenues were the borders - when UCLA opened it was way out in the boonies surrounded by fields). Although there's action downtown now it's not a proper city center the way there is one in NY, for example. Which, of course, has to do with the role of the automobile and freeways in the development of the growth of the city... wait, I told myself I wasn't going to comment on this!!! :)

galaxiekat

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:47:13 -0800

so, going through east la is a street called, 'eastern'. it's like the cousin that western (and westsiders) never knew they had. so this leads us to degrees of 'eastside-ness' and 'westside-ness'. west la is the parts of la west of western (santa monica is not west la, because it's not la), and east la is the parts of la east of eastern. the stuff in the middle is central la (south central is the stuff south of central). eastside and westside is east or west of the river.

ezfinn

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:12:33 -0800

"Western used to be the most western edge of LA when the street was named. Just food for thought." Doesn't this confirm that everything considered eastside is really westside? Wouldn't common sense be that east of downtown would be eastside and west of downtown westside?

weston deboer

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:53:00 -0800

oh and congratulations shep!

weston deboer

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:46:41 -0800

"I'll add this in for now. Western used to be the most western edge of LA when the street was named. Just food for thought." That is very interesting.

Ali Miller

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:39:15 -0800

People in my office don't think there's an LA west of La Brea. /FAIL

Zach Behrens

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:12:12 -0800

Yes, this is a very sticky debate. I'll add this in for now. Western used to be the most western edge of LA when the street was named. Just food for thought.

Johnny

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:03:00 -0800

I think where the "westside" "eastside" started from was the nightlife mentality. Hollywood was the central hub therefore Santa Monica was the "westside" and anything else east of Hollywood was "eastside", hence the mistake of Echo Park and Eagle Rock being east, cause who the hell would want to be seen in downtown or Echo Park. (sarcastic) Now that for the past few years it is cool to hang out in Echo Park, Eagle Rock, Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Downtown I'm sure the geographical directions will shift eventually. That's my experience anyways. It's all relative to me since I'm just east of ELA so everything is west for me at that point.

atwatervillagenewbie

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:42:35 -0800

Don't forget NELA, or Northeast LA, a legit community organization that includes, according to www.nelalive.net, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Mount Washington, Glassell Park, Sycamore Grove, Garvanza, Montecito Heights, Cypress Park, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, Monterey Hills, and Hermon. Everything but Atwater Village, now that I look at it.

greatgatsby2

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:37:44 -0800

Marshall, the mapping of Eastside vs. Westside is a raging debate (LAist covered it about a year ago, LA Weekly covered it about two years ago). Just because you define it with confidence doesn't mean you're the one who gets to decide. Echo Park is considered Eastside by many natives and plenty of journalists. Eastside is not the same as East LA, which I absolutely agree doesn't include Echo Park. I do like your apples, though.

weston deboer

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:35:30 -0800

But I don't understand still, you see more of the "too small, ironic trucker hat and drinking too much Pabst" on the westside than you do on the eastside. Is eagle rock part of the east side? At Water? Dena?

Marshall

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:13:07 -0800

No problem. The Eastside is East of Downtown and the LA River. The Westside is West of Downtown. It's totally not hard, unless your mind has been permanently blown by the crushing pressure cause by wearing a too small, ironic trucker hat and drinking too much Pabst.

weston deboer

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:30:04 -0800

can someone give me a map explaining where eastside and westside end?

Marshall

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:00:39 -0800

Not to hurt anyone's feelings, but there's nothing Eastside about Shepard Fairey or Echo Park. They're both on the Westside.