...is the name of the marketing site for the Angeles Group, which wants to sell you a life in Echo Park, Curbed LA reported Tuesday. As Curbed noted, the site is a work in progress, as are the condo developments the Angeles Group is...adding to the neighborhood. Click the "Directions" button to receive the following: "We'd love to have you. And we look forward to meeting you. Come see us." Under "locale": a laconic "coming soon." Under "plans": again, laconic, "coming soon."

BUT, under "lifestyle," we find:

Like the many lotus leaves in its small lake, Echo Park is blossoming into one of the most dynamic places to live in Los Angeles.

Well, seems they haven't been to the lake this season. The lotus have been killed. At last counting, there was no more than one lotus leaf in the lake. And even that one may have been eaten by feral red-eared slider turtles.

Photo by Martin Cox (c) 2008

Okay, moving on.

Not unlike the Silver Lake neighborhood, Echo Park has been attracting the creative, underground, independent, and iconoclastic elements of society. And it makes sense. This eclectic neighborhood, located northwest of downtown and to the east of Silver Lake, was the original center of the film industry in Los Angeles, before the studios moved to Hollywood just before World War I.

Perhaps we should, just for balance, add a graf about the exceedingly bitter neighbohood council elections that were held last week and which won't be officially decided for two or three weeks to come. How two slates went head to head, one of them ("Unity") mostly Latino/middle-lower middle class, and the other ("Tireless") mostly white/middle-upper middle class, in a contest that underscores serious class/race/political divisions in the neighborhood. Unofficially, it's clear the "Unity" party has taken all of the positions that were up for grabs. There's bad feeling on both sides, in the air, online, in conversation at Delilah Bakery, where volunteers for both sides hang out. Accusations of malfeasance, breach of ethics, election irregularities, name calling. In fact, some of the acrimony concerns perceived relationships between candidates and developers, such as the Angeles Group.

Perhaps this is what the Angeles Group means by "dynamic." Because it's been sad and disappointing, but never boring.