Opinion: East Los is East and Silver Lake ... Isn’t

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The battle is joined -- by the poets!

In my column a little while ago, I took up arms against ‘’neighborhood creep,’’ and the tendency of certain trendy new parts of LA [are you listening, Silver Lake?] to rebrand themselves as the Eastside, to lay claim to some edgy hipness that the name ‘’Eastside’’ conveys.

Ni modo. There already is an Eastside, with history and hangouts of its own, thank you. I was tickled to find out that some Eastside poets, inspired by my column and their own sentiments on the matter, have organized what they call ‘’a passionate and poignant response’’ to this virtual land grab. They’re staging ‘’Where You From?’’ on Thursday evening, May 7, at Eastside Luv, a bona fide Eastside wine bar [none of your West Sunset-adjacent joints] near Mariachi Plaza. Among the poets scheduled to read is one who goes by the splendid name of Ruben Funkahuatl Guevara.

‘’In this part of town,’’ the invitation challenges, ‘’you don’t get away with something like this without having to answer, where you from?’’