Sunday afternoon, the air in Echo Park smelled like kerosene and cooking meat. The sounds of scattered house parties filled the big bowl in Elysian Heights from Kite Hill to the ridgeline on Lemoyne and beyond, to the other arroyos and canyons, I am sure. Whle the Superbowl parties were happening, some of us attended a different kind of party -- an Echo Park Historical Society author's presentation by Daniel Hurewitz, who wrote "Bohemian Los Angeles." Planned many weeks ago, the event was not intended as a test for those who are not sure whether they care more about EP history or big-spectacle sports. It was an accident. Nonetheless, the free event was sold-out, the house where it took place packed to the doorways as Hurewitz discussed the book, which centers on Echo Park and Silver Lake from the 1910s to the early 1950s.

Disclosure: I reviewed "Bohemian Los Angeles" for the LA Times books section.

It may have been a tough crowd. Probably four-fifths of the people in attendance live in either Silver Lake or Echo Park and are already fairly well-versed in local history.

Some of the guests may even be the types of activists/artists Hurewitz features in book. There were a pair of listeners in the room whose facial expressions I followed closely as they reacted to the things Hurewitz said about Communists and fellow travelers who moved from Boyle Heights to Edendale, as the neighborhood then was known. The expressions ranged from displeasure to approval and everything in between. I believe the facial expression show (stolen as it was, by me) said more about the listeners than it did Hurewitz, who is an engaging, easy speaker -- and he seemed to be aware that, in a way, he was addressing his subject.

One of the attendees, an archeaologist who now lives in Connecticut but who was raised in Elysian Heights, recalled during the open-questions that Fellowship Park Way originally was dedicated to Ralph Waldo Emerson. This was a detail I hadn't heard.

During coffee, cookies, wine time, I ran into one of my Chicken Corner sources. He had news about the demolished bungalow on Lucretia. It turns out that the bungalow once was the home of modern-architecture photographer Maynard Parker. The man who helped shaped our view of how modern houses looked in the 1940s and '50s had his own one-time home torn down by a skirt-the-law flipper.

Parker later owned two homes on Lemoyne, one of which he built out of two Sears garage kits. Now owned by set decorator Mark Johnson, the garage-kit house was part of the Echo Park Historical Society's 2006 home tour.

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This dog, Princess, is about five years old. She is described as an easy dog by animal services. She is running out of time. Her ID number is 850611/Princess.