Like the rest of Los Angeles, much of Echo Park is slowly disappearing behind hedges and high walls, which makes the open doors of the Echo Park home tour all the more inviting. This Sunday, the Echo Park Historical Society is holding its fourth-annual home tour, from 11 to 4. Yes, that’s eleven a.m., though you could get a pretty good Echo Park tour on the sun-down side of the clock, too. The focus this year is the “Bohemian Havens of Elysian Heights.” (Disclaimer: I am a board member of the Echo Park Historical Society, and as a docent I may be the person telling you to get your paws off the pottery and please enjoy the lovely cantilevered ceiling.) It’s a self-guided tour, and for myself it’s a pleasure to see hundreds of people walking the sidewalks of the steep hills, maps in hand. It breaks the stillness of the “secluded canyons” featured on the tour, it makes them festive.

According to EPHS:

The remote and rustic atmosphere made these hills made them popular with those seeking seclusion, including free thinking members of the Semi Tropic Spiritualists Assoc., whose midnight dances, seances and readings by “spirit mediums” attracted large crowds as well as ire of neighbors and city officials. Elysian Heights was also home to a great many artists and creative individuals who contributed to the neighborhood's bohemian reputation.

Among the sponsors of the home tour is the Brite Spot diner, which was featured in a New York Times Style magazine roundup of Los Angeles breakfast spots (no pun intended) this Sunday. You may have seen Kevin Roderick's take on the article on LA Observed this week. Tatiana von Furstenberg, daughter of Diane and Egon, and lead singer of the band Playdate as well as many other things, including her crediting as writer, “Tanner Hall,” says: “There’s only one place to go out for a real breakfast in L.A. in my opinion, and it’s the Brite Spot in Echo Park.”

Ms. von Furstenberg mentions the eggs benedict. What T mag did not give her space to describe was the people: on a typical morning there you might see a couple of clerics in collar, collaring one of the breakfast specials; Eric Garcetti; staffers for Xavier Becerra, who has an office in the building next door; a hipster or ten, including filmmaker Morgan Neville, whose office is across the street; any number of workers in jeans; a pilot from the heli-pad at the building next door; and all the rest of us. I have not seen a place in Los Angeles where a greater variety of people come together so comfortably. The owner is an actor/comedian, and he works the register. Last Thursday they were playing Cuban music (Ibrahim Ferrer, I think) and Indie rock. The food IS good, and in true diner fashion you carry away the smell of grease in your garments.