Photo: 2/17/07 by Martin Cox, who, in Martin's words, "is at this very moment coining the term 'echographer,' one who photographs Echo Park."

At last, a red-tile roof for the Echo Park Lake Boathouse! The boathouse is part of the Echo Park Lake Tour, March 24, offered by the Echo Park Historical Society.

Echographer Martin Cox has a show at The Lost Studio Gallery on La Brea. The show runs concurrently with "Moonlight," a Harold Pinter play in the theater adjacent to the gallery.

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Sunday, in response to my Valentine's Day Massacre post, I received the following email, quoted here in its entirety, from a traffic officer who also happens to be an Echo Park resident. He/she says the Department of Parking Enforcement did not have a quota.

I live in Echo Park and also work as a Traffic Officer in the Valley office of Parking Enforcement. CIVILIAN TRAFFIC OFFICER'S AUTHORITY FOR IMPOUNDS 22651 V.C. O---- Expired registration in excess of 6 months and one day. The letter "O" would have to be written in the box for authority to impound on the impound forms if the vehicles were impounded for expired registration. If you haven't registered your vehicle 6 months after the due date you should not be driving it on the street. There is not and never has been a quota in the Department of Parking Enforcement for tickets or impounds.

He or she did not say whether they had been ticketed on Valentine's Day.

In a perhaps unrelated coincidence yesterday morning, Sunday, I leashed my dog, Rosie. When I got outside my house there was a Department of Parking Enforcement ticket-mobile idling at the curb in front of my house. I stopped with my dog and waited to see what they would do. Was anyone getting a ticket? Nothing happened. I waited. A case of misguided vigilance? On my part? On theirs?

Then the car did a u-turn and came back toward me. The driver, a pleasant-looking young man, stopped at my driveway and asked me if I was walking my dog.

"Yes," I said, "I am walking my dog," though, technically, we were standing in front of my house, not walking. My dog agreed.

The ticket officer was obviously trying to be sociable and I felt sympathy for him, for all of the animosity he must endure, the stares, the anger, the mockery in neighborhood blogs. Ticket officers fall into the class of public servant who often are considered public enemies when they perform their duties. Crazy-making, no doubt.

I asked this officer if he knew anything about a sweep in the environs. He said he didn't. He said he received calls about my street. It looked like he wasn't ticketing anyone, so I said, "well, take care" and walked away. At which he smiled nicely and rolled away a few yards down the street where he ticketed my friends and neighbors for parking facing the wrong direction in front of their house. So much for being nice. Though, to be fair, my friends were in violation, even if I would have liked to see them get away with it.

Later, at a barbecue with neighbors/friends the issue of tickets came up. I expressed my personal displeasure of the ticketing sweep (at people's homes!) in the neighborhood and was surprised to find several friends in disagreement. One said she was tired of the lawlessness in Echo Park -- perhaps she was thinking also of the brand new "sweep" by taggers this weekend, who sprayed gang tags on garage doors, walls, even a discarded bedroom dresser. Another friend, the very same who received his ticket for parking backward, also was satisfied with the Department of Parking Enforcement's attention to the area.