Received a pool of responses to the paddle* boat fiasco. Among the emails, Martin Cox wrote:

With the leafless lotus, the threat of a giant parking garage from the same church that cut down the row of mature trees along Park Ave, the loss of affordable housing, the almost invisible green bridge which used to be joyfully red, and now no pedal boats, Echo Park is under siege! I can feel a petition coming on... we should call it "Wreck and parks."

Joe D'Augustine:

Start a petition to save the paddle boats! Echo Park Lake needs to be open to the public! That's where Jack Nicholson took photos of Hollis Mulwray in Chinatown! Start the campaign now!

Chicken Corner couldn't agree more. Water rights for pedal boats!

*Mitch O'Farrell of CD-13 spoke for Eric Garcetti when he said:

The CM [Eric Garcetti] is against shutting down the service. So far we have arranged for it to be open during the Lotus Festival and are working with RAP [Rec and Parks] on keeping the program "afloat" at the least, on weekends. Operations have always been partly subsidized so funding is an issue in the current budget deficit - but worth it to the CM to keep going, especially during summertime.

Metroblogger Will campbell attended an Echo Park Advisory meeting on the matter last night.

Meantime, Chango coffeehouse gets an honorable mention in Tu Cuidad mag's Best of Latino LA issue, June/July.

And Echo Park, California links to a site that shares thoughts by the photographer Gary Leonard, an Echo Park resident.

*Not peddle, not pedal! Not petal...not prattle! (If you happened to catch the misspellings -- now corrected -- in yesterday's Chicken Corner. Oh, Merriam-Webster's 11th Edition, where were you?)