HELP! I need an article about Los Feliz(Los Angeles)?

Question

Anyone knows where i can find info about Los Feliz(except wikipedia) ,like (articles,essays,news) ex cetera.

Answer 1

BY DAWN MacKEEN

“you know that old deli on the corner of Vermont and Kingswell?" said my father as he burst through the front door in his trademark tan golfer hat. "Well, the sign still reads 'Los Feliz European Deli,' but the store is gone. In its place is something called Si-ni-ster," he said slowly, stressing each syllable, lowering his voice and scrunching up his face. "There are people with purple mohawks, metallic clothing and tattoos."

For nearly 30 years, my parents have been living in the same house, shopping at the same grocery store, walking down the same streets. They have seen neighbors come and go, businesses prosper and fail. But in our neighborhood, a small community next door to Hollywood, things always remained more or less status quo. The transition of our local supermarket, Food King, to Smith's Food King was big news.

But this latest wave of change, which brought with it the Sinister Store, has come crashing down onto the shores of our Southern California community, sending disdainful shudders through the families, senior citizens and even 20-somethings like me. Most of the old family-owned businesses in Los Feliz, passed down from generation to generation, are gone, and the storefronts are unrecognizable. Window shopping on Vermont Avenue (one of the main streets) used to offer an eclectic array of dusty gold rings, $5 acid-wash miniskirts and mugs with canned slogans like "World's #1 Dad."

Now dotting the same street is a clothing store owned by one of the Beastie Boys, where I can buy the latest fashions from Japan, a secondhand store with green vinyl jackets and a bookstore with how-to books on skull piercing.

"The people who go to these stores have unusual tastes; they like clothes that you can't find at J.C. Penney," my mom says, dressed in her striped button-down shirt, over-the-knee blue skirt and stock black sandals. This is a pivotal reason for them being abnormal, she thinks. And so the banter between my mom and dad continues -- why here, why now, why us.

You only need to look west to find the answer. Slowly, businesses have left the Westside and streets like Melrose Avenue, which was once a bastion for those with alternative tastes and lifestyles. The Gap, Starbucks and other chains have settled in, sending the smaller, renegade stores east to hide out in Los Feliz and its adjacent neighborhoods, Silverlake and Echo Park. Los Feliz has changed so drastically in recent years that Vogue magazine recently gave it a new identity, the "SoHo" of L.A.

Geographically, most of Los Angeles lies south of the Santa Monica Mountains, which run from Los Feliz at their eastern edge all the way west to Santa Monica, which borders the Pacific Ocean. Los Feliz is 45 minutes inland, where it tends to be warmer and under a thicker layer of smog than most of L.A.

On clear days (which don't occur too often) you can even get a glimpse of the ocean from Los Feliz, if you climb up the mountain into Griffith Park, a 4,000-acre, semi-parched, semi-green oasis of oak trees, shrubs, wild sage and manzanita. The view doesn't last very long; the winds make sure of that, carrying the grime back within moments.

Los Feliz starts from atop this mountain, where the Griffith Park Observatory casts a watchful eye, then spills south to the trash-laden, ultra-commercialized Hollywood Boulevard. Slightly west of Los Feliz is Hollywood, where the hillside is engraved with those famous nine white letters -- H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D -- visible from almost anywhere you stand in our little neighborhood.

For as long as I can remember, Los Feliz has been a mixture of elegance and struggle, of old money, no money and cars. It was a unique brew of 1920s Spanish-style homes with red tile roofs and multimillion-dollar estates in the hills, and thick pancake-stuccoed apartment buildings where the hill flattens out; an ethnically and economically diverse area, with rings of people speaking Tagalog, Armenian and Spanish drifting through the air.

The end of Los Feliz as we knew it started at the intersection of Los Feliz Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue, where a long-time community restaurant called Michael's graced the corner for years, with its faithful regulars and Sunday brunch specials. A small Italian restaurant chain took over, knocked down the wallpaper-coated walls, opened up the darkened rooms with windows and placed patio furniture outside.

It's no longer easy to see that Michael's was the place where they supposedly filmed the outside of Arnold's in "Happy Days." Large salads lightly doused in vinaigrettes replaced Michael's plates of soupy green peas, wrinkled-up baked potatoes and slabs of beef. Soon after the renovation, Angelenos started coming to our neighborhood to sip iced teas with a hint of passion peach mixed in, don sunglasses and sit in the sun.

The changing face of the neighborhood is most notably seen at the local coffee shop, the "House of Pies." Similar to Mel's Diner in the old television series "Alice," the old-timers in the neighborhood, including my parents, still come here for a cup of joe. You can see their white hair peeking over the vinyl booths, next to an assorted new crowd wearing sunglasses to hide their bloodshot eyes.

"Jim-my," my mom's squeaky voice reverberates through the room. "Do you know what's now showing at the Los Feliz Theater? 'Female Perversions,'" she says, emphasizing the last word. "What kind of people are now going to come into the neighborhood? I'll tell you -- rapists, sadomasochistics and weirdos."

The real people who have moved to Los Feliz within the last five years have not necessarily been the weirdos my parents picture; they have been mostly young actors and artists, initially attracted by its tranquillity. Anthony Kiedis and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers were the first to lose themselves in the neighborhood. But in the last year or so, more people have flooded the coffeehouses, bars and apartment buildings because it has become hip to live or at least lounge in Los Feliz. The newest high-profile neighbors include Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sandra Bullock and Madonna, who recently forsook her sprawling Hollywood mansion for a modest $2.9 million home in the Los Feliz hills.

The independent film "Swingers" paints a pretty accurate picture of the average new denizen, of his/her struggling finances, fascination with the film industry and tendency to be white. The movie, set in Los Feliz, captures the neighborhood's new culture of flashiness and fast-lingo.

The director filmed inside the Dresden Room on Vermont Avenue and used the real aging duo, Marty and Elaine, you can find crooning away inside the dimly lit, heavily packed lounge on almost any night. Nearby is the Derby, of Hollywood-in-the-1940s fame (when it was the Brown Derby), which was used as the backdrop for the far-flung swing dancing turns and twists featured in the film. When the Derby reopened in the same building that once housed Michael's, it attracted an assorted crowd of sharply pressed suits from the Zoot Suit era and tall bouffants laced with enough hair spray to ignite the dance floor.

Details magazine recently mapped out my neighborhood with a two-page spread on the sites, sounds and shops of Los Feliz and Silverlake. They called it "East of Eden: An illustrated guide to ... the other side of Hollywood" and listed, with numbered icons, the top 27 places to go. It's a little unsettling when your familiar old neighborhood becomes the epicenter of hipness.

But times -- and trends -- move on. "The Christmas berries and wreaths are gone and the skulls are in!" my mom said during the last holidays. One of the places iconed in the Details article, Mondo Video, had a deformed, not-so-merry-looking statuette of Santa Claus, two skulls and a grayish creature with plant leaves as hair adorning its window display.

My father shrugs at the outlandish displays. "Although I was initially appalled at everything, I am getting used to my new neighbors. Maybe I'll do something with that little strip of hair I have left, dye it a new color or something. My white hair is getting boring anyway," he says with a laugh, patting down his thin hair. "And if you can't beat them, join them. I always did want to be young again."

Dawn MacKeen is an assistant editor at Salon

Answer 2

How about

http://www.lfia.com/newsletters.html

That's a link to the Los Feliz Improvement Association. Their newsletters contain articles about happenings in the community, local news and issues of concern.