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.