THE FAIRFAX DISTRICT

The Fairfax District is a small Midtown neighborhood with a long history as one of Los Angeles' primary centers of Jewish culture. The boundaries, like many Los Angeles neighborhoods, aren't universally agreed upon but I place them as Melrose Ave on the north, N La Brea Ave on the east, W 3rd St to the south and N Fairfax on the west.
 

To vote for other Los Angeles neighborhoods to be the subject of future blog entries, vote here. To vote for Los Angeles County communities, vote here. To vote for Orange County communities and neighborhoods, vote here.

 

Pendersleigh & Sons' Official Map of the Fairfax District

THE VERDUGOS

 

The Verdugos region of LA County lies between the San Gabriel Mountains, the Verdugo Mountains (or Verdugo Hills) and the San Rafael Hills. The residents mostly live in the Crescenta Valley and the less-developed ranges that surround it. It includes the communities of (parts of) Glendale, La Cañada-Flintridge, La Crescenta-Montrose, La Tuna Canyon, (parts of) Pasadena, Sunland and Tujunga. It's surrounded by the San Fernando Valley to the west, the San Gabriel Valley to the east, Northeast LA to the south, the Mideast Side to the southwest and the Angeles Forest to the north. The inhabitants of the region are approximately 50% white, 23% Latino, 13% Asian and 8% black.

THE EASTSIDE

People are weird about Los Angeles' Eastside. On the one hand you've got people throwing up "w" signs yelling "west-siyeeeed!" On the other, you've got people from Midtown to Silver Lake and Echo Park claiming (pretending?) Eastside… All this points to the fact that "The Eastside" means different things to different groups and individuals. To many black Angelenos, the traditional division between the Eastside and Westside is the 110 freeway (which is why gangs like the East Side Compton Crips represent the east side). To many, possibly most Latinos, the LA River is the dividing line between the east and west sides (which is why a Latino gang like West Side Silver Lake 13 represents the west side). To many newer Angelenos and white (and maybe Asian) people, the east side begins much further west (remember "East Side Mondays" in Westlake's (keyword: west) Wilshire Royale?) None of the definitions are inherently more correct than the other but when people talk about The Eastside, let's get it straight -- they're talking about the region east of the LA River that includes Boyle Heights, East Los, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno… and the smaller neighborhoods within them.
 

THE HARBOR


The Harbor is the region of Los Angeles County centered around San Pedro Bay. It is the site of both the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, which together form the fifth-busiest port facility in the world (behind the ports of Shanghai ( 上海), Singapore, Hong Kong (香港), and Shenzhen (深圳) -- all in Asia). It was originally a shallow mudflat known to the indigenous Tongva as the Bay of Smokes. It was dredged in modern times to an average depth of ten to twenty meters. Natural islands in the Harbor included Terminal Island, Mormon Island and Dead Man's Island. The latter was removed, the second was connected to the mainland and the first is a highly augmented mudflat. There are four artificial islands built around oil rigs; Freeman, Grissom, White and Chaffee Islands. If one figure can be credited with the Harbor's transformation, it's Delaware-born Phineas Banning.

 

As regular (and probably irregular) readers of Eric's Blog know, I'm a bit of a Southern California wonk and a big part of my focus is writing about the culture, character and history of the many diverse communities of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Although so far there have been around 800 votes from readers, I thought it would be fun (and hopefully entertaining) to focus on the regions and provide a brief summary of the districts within with the hope of encouraging informed voting. In this entry I'd like to focus on the Mideast Side.