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Ritzy Travel Mag Slums It With Visit to Echo Park
Ah, the possibilities of EP are waiting before you... View from Alvarado South toward Sunset (Photo by www.bridges-of-los-angeles-county via the LAist Featured Photos pool)
Luxury travel publication Conde Nast Traveler has boldly gone where thousands of Angelenos go everyday. Because, like, they live there. It's L.A.'s "alt-cultural and vegetarian epicenter" Echo Park. Lest you fear the ritzy travel mag is misleading its readers, they warn in the headline, for this trip, you're gonna "hold the glitz." Oh, but Echo Park is still a really great place to visit!
Echo Park is many things, including "right out of a Raymond Chandler novel." Do its "Latino working-class" residents get that reference? No matter. You're going to call it "EP" because you are, as CNT suggests, one of "the truly trendy." You heard it (t)here first: Cool people call Echo Park EP. Who knew? Oh, and EP is rife with stuff we love and love to mock, too: "tatted hipsters, musicians, geek-chic writers and artists, and vegans and vegetarians galore."
Ready to go on a really hardcore urban adventure? Okay! Let's go!
CNT will tell you EP is a 10 minute drive from DTLA and 30 from Beverly Hills. Why would you be coming from anywhere else? Or not be in a car? I mean, really! "Jeeves, take me to EP! Oh, you don't know what that is? Silly me. For you, I'll say: Echo Park!" Once you arrive, get ready to seriously infuse the local economy with your cash. Kthx! Just do not stray from Sunset Blvd.
Though we mock heavily, CNT does have a pretty kickass Echo Park (yeah, the EP thing isn't really sitting well) experience mapped out for visitors. Hell, it's a pretty kickass Echo park experience for us locals too: A stop at the Tacos Ariza truck, wine at CitySip and beer at Mohawk Bend, and lots and lots and lots of vegan/veggie food (Sage, Elf, and of course Mohawk Bend). There's music galore, with the recorded stuff at Origami Vinyl and the live stuff at the Echo and Echoplex. There are boutiques to hit up, and you can rent a Super 8 at the Echo Park Film Center and make an old school movie about your slummin' slammin' day in EP.
Too bad you didn't get to stroll around Echo Park Lake, or go on a staircase walk, or even take a drive on one of the steepest streets in L.A., or check out some of the area's historic and architecturally compelling buildings. You can leave that stuff to the locals, or those "Lonely Planet" types.
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