Quick notes on a very lively weekend up and down Echo Park Avenue, with uncoordinated parties and barbecues celebrating shop openings and continuations and music.

First, Saturday morning, Delilah celebrates the sweetness of life -- and the vitality of its business -- with a bluegrass/roots performance on the sidewalk in front of shop. I hope they had a chance to play "Chicken in a Bucket," which is divine.

Saturday 2 p.m., there was the official grand opening of the bike shop at Echo Park Avenue and Duane. They had tents and barbecue on the sidewalk, a good crowd.

Then, Saturday night, while celebrating a friend's birthday on the hill just east of Chicken Corner proper, we heard strains of "Suzy Q' and other guitar-age classics coming from downslope. A little discussion about where exactly it came from. One person thought maybe it was the slip-'n'-slide hipsters (some hipsters who fairly recently have moved into a house on EP Ave., next to a new gallery, which used to be a tiny garments warehouse; the hipsters recently were reported to have a slip-n'-slide running on their front patch of grass). The show turned out to be at Magic Gas gas station. One cover band was there, and another good crowd. It looked mostly Latino. Later, a new band showed up. Celebrating the tiny drop in fuel prices?

9 p.m., and the bike shop party is still going.

Meanwhile, back at Chicken Corner, Saturday night, the police are continuing the practice of nailing young people of color. I heard a report of a young Latino boy, age 16, and his girlfriend being pulled over for having an air-freshener dangling from the rear-view window of the girlfriend's mother's car. He was handcuffed and held for a long time; his girlfriend was crying. He got lots of attention. Many, many questions. Several witnesses, too. We'll call him the Air-Freshener bandit.

Later Sat. night some neighbors are chatting about the imminent grand opening of the new coffeehouse, The Fix, at Baxter and EP Ave. They're wondering if it'll be a mixed-hipster crowd, like Chango, downhill, or whether it will be moms, dads, and strollers. Tiny irony (?) in the fact that it's former rock chicks and fellers who are placing themselves in the latter category.

Sunday morning, we walk down to the The Fix. As does the whole of middle-class somewhat boho-professional Elysian Heights. Every table has a dog or a baby/child or both. the dogs outnumber the babies. My dog loved the place. The outdoor tables area is enclosed, so when she got loose it was no big deal. My daughter liked the place because there was room to run around and play. The food was higher end than other coffee houses in the neighborhood, all of it, I think, prepared somewhere else -- and all of what I tried was excellent. The new owner's mom was there, greeting. Old conversations continued neighbors/friends in a new place, which represents the face of the newly gentrified Echo Park. But no one talked about this. At my table we talked Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, fleas, flea-repellent, raising chickens, and public school.

On the internet through the day Saturday and a bit on Sunday there's something of a comment party about the neighborhood council and the Lady of the Lake, whose address is Echo Park Avenue at the lake, across from Bird Island. But more on that particular festival to come.