If you are bored with the conversation in Los Angeles, you can always bring up the hardy perennial: where does West LA begin?
There’s the silly line from “White Men Can’t Jump” about white boys east of La Brea. They have to be kidding. But that’s one idea.
There’s the question about Mid-City. What is it? I’m within walking distance of Koreatown. But it seems to be a tossaway term that nobody who actually lives in the area actually adheres to. To quote one person on the LA Times website: “Mid-City is what they call the leftovers of Melrose and K-town.”
That’s hardly inspiring.
There’s South-LA, which most would argue begins south of the 10 freeway–I think. Some very nice neighborhoods there, including Jefferson Park and University Park.
I have lived in four places in LA: the last one for a week.
1. Palms.
2. West Hollywood.
3. Downtown
4. West Adams.
Now, many people argue my new location is not West Adams, but other people do. It’s covered by the West Adams Historical Association.
Other people say it’s east Culver City.
Hmmmm.
However, one thing is clear: it is, on average so far, about 9 degrees cooler here than it was downtown.
I write this at my kitchen table, without shoes, wearing a t-shirt, and I’m thinking about going to get a sweatshirt.
Culver City isn’t just a vague nickname but an actual municipality and your house is about two miles east of the boundary. Kind of reminds me of when I saw an apartment listing for “mid-Wilshire” that was actually MacArthur Park.
Of course it’s easy for me to look down on the hoi polloi from my lofty vantage point or “Faircrest Heights” (or perhaps we should call it “east Rancho Park” or “south West Hollywood.”)
I *know* that Culver City is a real deal municipality–I hadn’t realized you were such a booster! I have a brilliant PhD student writing a dissertation on it, as a matter of a fact.
I’m just saying that’s what people keep telling me.
And see, here we get into a question: I wouldn’t be bothered by calling MacArthur Park mid-Wilshire. It would certainly be on the one end of mid-Wilshire. But you’d think MacArthur Park would be enough of a landmark that it would mark its own area.
I can see why Culver would make a good planning dissertation what with the pretty aggressive development. Good luck to your student.
On the other thing, Wilshire runs for 16 miles and MacArthur Park is less than a mile from one end of it so calling MacArthur Park “mid-Wilshire” requires a pretty expansive definition of “mid.” I always assumed that dubious neighborhood labeling was a combination of salience and desirability (or conversely, solving the problems of obscurity and/or stigma). Since everybody knows where MacArthur Park the only reason to call it “mid-Wilshire” is that some realtor wanted to conjure images of LACMA rather than MS 13.
In Jersey realtors call everything east of the Delaware “Princeton” for similar reasons.