Every now and then there is a special word that weaves in and out of our thoughts, like a string of pearls, rises in conversation, insinuates. Today's word is Gateways -- and it came into my life Sunday when we crossed from closed water to open near Long Beach. On Monday, I write a post mentioning the breakwater in Long Beach, and imagine a new kind of gateway -- one that would lead into north Echo Park from Sunset.* No sooner do I commit that thought to blog than the following morning I go to Chango with my 10-year-old cousin, Lydia, and my daughter, Madeleine. While the girls eat cheese sandwiches, I browse Coagula and see that The Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park has advertised. CCSEP seeks submissions of designs for five gateways to Elysian Park. And now I remember a conversation I had a few days ago with my friend Jim Schneeweis about the Gateways residential mental health facility on Lake Shore in Echo Park. Every now and then Gateways tries to buy one of the bungalows on Lobdell Place where Jim lives; but the neighbors raise their pitchforks, and the Gateways beast goes back into its cave behind the great high walls.

In any case, Tuesday. At Chango, I find the scene much as I left it last time I was there about a month ago. Across the room, Nikki Monninger of the Silversun Pickups chats with Kime Buzzelli, artist and proprietor of Show Pony boutique, a few doors down on Echo Park Ave. Monninger has shed the rollerskates she always seemed to be wearing last year. I just checked the Silversun Pickups MySpace space and found that the band has more than 57,000 friends, in addition to her pals at Chango. THAT is a lot of friends.

Further browsing in Coagula and I learn that photographer Gary Leonard has placed his own advertisement. Postcard prints for a small sum, delivered directly from the artist. I heard something recently about a portion of Leonard's archives being destroyed in a flood at his Elysian Heights home. The nightmare thought of that kind of occurrence breaks through the sunny morning at Chango for a moment, as laptops all around click away. They are between exhibitions in the coffee shop, and the walls are bare.

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Make way for Goslings: My friend Martin Cox updates us with this report of Canada geese high-stepping at Echo Park Lake.


Photo: Goslings, April 2, 2007
By Martin Cox

* Correction: In Monday's Whale post I wrote that the closest we get to whales in Echo Park is the blimps that swim overhead during Dodger games. BUT I had forgotten that a week or two ago Machine Project planned an event -- which I had hoped to witness if only for a minute or two but ended up missing -- in which they blared recorded whale calls from speakers at the gallery. A new kind of music for Alvarado traffic.

Machine's email promotion for the whale event:

Dear Friends, Friday night we will have three 2007 Escalades parked in front of Machine blasting whale songs. And other stuff. Saturday, we have a concert in the secret gallery that can be listened to on speaker phone.