Friday, April 9, 2010

Sigh'ns Of Life In Echo, uh Elysian Park

The Militant was driving back to the compound late Tuesday night and spotted these fancy new electronic gateway signs on Sunset Boulevard, that proudly display the community name of "Echo Park." Like similar signs in Downtown, it's meant to relay traffic conditions, road closures, and possibly community announcements or even maybe the occasional Tweet.

Only problem are their locations: One is located on Sunset and Everett St.; the other is located at Sunset and Sutherland St. Doesn't that technically make the signs heralding the entrances to Elysian Park? Looks like some messed up geography there. That's what you get when you have transplants make decisions!

Echo Park, as you may or may not know, is the community just northwest of Downtown Los Angeles that is oft-mistakenly identified as "The Eastside," mostly by the transplanted hipsters that have kind of taken over the place in the past decade. Of course, they do have a lovely eponymous park, which will once again host the Lotus Festival this July.

The Militant saw the signs yet again today on his way to the Stadium to pick up his Opening Day tickets, and was thusly inspired to write this here post. He thought about bringing this up with the local neighborhood council, but the geographical issue is apparently meaningless to them.

The Militant only hopes this is only phase one of the electronic Twitter sign project and that at least two more will pop up further west on Sunset, between Sutherland and a few yards east of Coronado. Otherwise, Epic Geographical Fail!

3 comments:

philpalm said...

What a great idea, have tweets put up signage messages. They will have to have a filter to filter out hoaxsters who post false messages though.

cp007 said...

Echo Park is the neighborhood, and Elysian Park is a destination within the neighborhood.(the park shares it boundaries with Solano Canyon,). Prior to the 101 freeway construction you could walk to Echo Park Library on Temple Street. Although we have some odd geographical divides Echo Park basically runs from about Rosemont and Sunset, to about Beaudry. Riverside Dr to Elysian Park, back to Sunset creates another boundary.
Echo Park Deep Pool is on Colton Street. Anyway, Echo PArks boundaries are a bit "off the map" but more expansive than the downtown "Historic District".

cp

Anonymous said...

These signs are a giant waste of money. Are they supposed to alert of of Dodger traffic? There is probably less than 1/2 mile between the two signs, and by the time you see the signs, you're already stuck in the traffic and have nowhere to go. At the very least they could have spread them out a little farther. Other than Dodger traffic, I can't really imagine that Echo Park regularly has anything going on that merits the need for these expensive signs. Good job Los Angeles. We have enough financial problems and now you needlessly waste more of the cities dollars.