Frogtown is named for frogs. It’s the neighborhood – also known as Elysian Valley – that tucks between Riverside Drive in Echo Park/Silver Lake area and the Los Angeles River. It’s residential and industrial, one of those margins in the city that non-participants often blink away as they drive past (in this case the 2 and 5 freeways). Though you’d have to have your eyes close these days not to notice the resurgence of green space along the river, thanks largely to the efforts of Friends of the LA River. I am writing about it at this moment because tomorrow evening there is going to be a free, self-guided tour of fourteen designers’ and artists' studios and other alternative/green ventures such as Lovecraft Biofuels that have found space in the valley of the frogs. Friday, from 7 to 10 pm, doors will be open.

Right, frogs: In the 60s, according to local lore (and fact, no doubt) there was a deluge of frogs along the banks of the river in Elysian Valley. (I once saw a similar scene in Oklahoma, during a heavy rain when hoards of toads fled a nearby river and hopped to the Holiday Inn where I had also taken refuge during a road trip.) The name Frogtown stuck.

According to Frogtown Artwalk’s website:

At some point during the 1960’s, residents of the small community of Elysian Valley stepped outside to a veritable flood of frogs blanketing the streets and yards of the neighborhood. Legend has it that the polluted water of the neighboring Los Angeles River caused a decline in the natural predators of the native red-legged frog: the herons and the crayfish. The resulting reptile explosion caused the frogs to overrun the banks of the river and to stray into the neighborhood.

This morning, walking my dog in Elysian Park, I stopped and looked way down the hill at Frogtown, which also gave its name to a street gang in the vicinity. (I once had a landlord who told me that she had belonged to the Frogtown gang when she was a kid. When she wanted to get out of the gang, they “jumped her out” by beating her up and throwing her in the river, where she nearly drowned. My former landlord is now a film editor.) Below me, in the lower foreground, was the rushing river of the freeways. I could tell the "real" river in some places by the thick growth of trees along the banks and in the middle of the river – sycamores and other common riparian species. There was the grid of small homes in Frogtown, a couple of churches, and the warehouses: Dolly Madison bakery, for one. And, though I couldn’t tell which one, the garage of my one-time mechanic, Pete, a sovereign citizen of the planet who does a good job and receives payment in PWFC: potentially worthless federal currency, which is duly noted on all receipts. There was the area where the Haywood Wakefield furniture storage and sales warehouse stood: it may be there still but the last time I visited was about ten years ago. Looking down at Elysian Valley I was able to see the back of a hawk, circling below me. It circled, or floated, upward slowly, rising to my level and then rising above me until I was looking at its belly and the underside of its wings.