I've settled the Los Angeles East Side-West Side Boundary Debate For Good
It's messy and it doesn't make sense
Est. Read Time: 5 minutes. Read Time brought to you once again by the Ashburton Energy + Hair Logistics Group, in association with the Bradley Hills Bureau of Corrections + Housing.
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SHOWS:
Secret Show Mid City. Weds March 20th
Glazer’s After Party @ Comedy Store Belly Room (LA). March 28th.
Bergamot Comedy Festival (LA). Tuesday April 2nd + Thursday April 4th
Comedy Loft (DC). May 28th. featuring for the great Sam Salem.
You live someplace you want me to perform?? Let me know, I’ll be there tomorrow, I never overpromise!
Hello Sternal Journalists and happy Oscar Sunday to all who celebrate!
I’ll include some Oscar-themed recs below (a couple of which are repeats—if you’ve already watched and want an unrecycled rec, hit me up).
But today (tonight!) I’m addressing another issue, inspired by a conversation I had on the dancefloor of classically Eastside LA bar Zebulon last night. Zebulon, if you are from out of town or not in the Zebulon demo for whatever reason, is an extremely “eastside” bar.
It is in a place called Frogtown, which is so eastside that it is further east than “silverlakeechopark” which is a general area and more vitally an idea. While there have always been neighborhoods and a whole country that exist east of Silver Lake and Echo Park, there was a time (10-12 years ago) when for a certain type of person (well off enough transplant entertainment wannabes like myself) you would never be able to embody the idea of “eastside” more than “silverlakeechopark.” Frogtown changed all that.
ANYWAY, if you can tell at all by this descent into madness, people of a certain type (people like me) get quite particular about the placement of the boundary of the East Side and West Side of Los Angeles. And that, dear reader is exactly what my dance floor Zebulon conversation was about.
Because, in chatting with a friend of a friend, something disparaging was said about West Siders. I mentioned that I had lived on the West Side, but currently lived much closer to “center” than East or West.
They asked where I live. I said Fairfax Village (which is basically West Hollywood and/or The Grove) and they screamed “What?! That is SO West side!”
This, dear reader, is an extremely normal conversation in LA. I’ve had it on and off for almost 13 years.
It is also an extremely flawed conversation. Because, MOST GENEROUSLY, everyone who lives deep on the West Side believes the West side ends at the 405 (major highway and major pain) and everyone who lives deep on the East Side believes that the East Side ends somewhere in the middle of Hollywood.
But this leaves just a little under ten miles of extremely and literally Central Los Angeles that both sides are sloughing off onto the other.
This is silly and dumb because the “side” identities of Los Angeles are actually very defined and people love the side they're on because they love the vibe they get to embody as a result. I.e. people who embody these “side-entities” (there, I found the portmanteau) seem to want to distance themselves from the other side as much as they can and I’m just hear to say that having the West Side closer to you does not make you less East Side and having the East Side closer to you does not make you more West Side.
So anyway, I’ve mathematically determined the borders of True East Side Side and True West Side and most notably True Central, and I propose that we just accept these and/or argue about them into oblivion.
Determining True West
This was pretty easy. The true westernmost point of the City of Los Angeles is West Hills in the Valley, as you can sort of see here:
But the Valley is its own thing. Everyone who argues about this sort of stuff honestly counts the Valley out entirely as its own separate thing. That is unfair and it is also relevant to this unfair conversation.
As you can see, there’s a little Topango cutout that arguably could also be the Westernmost point, but I disagree with that as well because its mostly park, which is great but additionally its own different thing a la The Valley.
SO INSTEAD. I have decided that the Westernmost point of the City of Los Angeles, as far as people who argue about the side-ism boundaries are concerned, is the Getty Villa. This is not the thing that says “The Getty” in the map above. Instead, it is this:
Wasn’t able to keep the boundaries and the pin because I’m not good at Google Maps, but you get the idea. If you don’t live in LA, I can just tell you that this is the deepest into the west side of LA that a West Side person would reasonably consider you West. Beyond that would be Malibu or the Valley.
Determining True East
This one is a little more complicated because it’s in the middle of a fairly populated area between the neighborhood El Sereno and the (separate from Los Angeles) city of Alhambra, but there’s also a pretty clear Easternmost point, and that is the corner of Huntington Dr. and Kendall Ave.
Just inside the border, there is an Italian restaurant called “Charlie’s Trio” that boasts 4.5 stars and 1,193 reviews. I will be visiting. Also curious about that “Antigua Bread.” Is it really just bread???
Methodology
Using Google Maps, I determined that the Getty Villa’s longitude is about 118’33’53.9W and Huntington/Kendall’s longitude is 118’09’19W. The different between them is 000’24’34.9 and if you divide that by 3 and trisect the length of the city (from the Getty Villa to the easternmost point), you get clear checkpoints. I will now present them to you:
The Easternmost Point of the West Side
Mathematically, it is the longitude of 118’25’42.3. Visually, it’s here:
Put a vertical line up and down from that pin and you have the border between the West Side and Central. I don't want to hear any more about West Hollywood being the East Side from you all. That pin is it Wilshire and Beverly Glen and that is FAIR. You Westsiders were seriously claiming that “WEST”wood was the East Side. That’s Crazy
The Westernmost Point of the East Side
Add another third and mathematically, you will find the longitude to be… 118’17’30.6. Visually, WOAH it lines up almost exactly with Vermont Ave.":
This is very clear cut and I have nothing else to add.
Conclusion
The city actually divides up mathematically pretty much how it does culturally. We transplants just like to pretend there is not some middle ground unclaimed and/or melding the two Sides. That is silly and weird and I think because saying “Central” is less exciting that claiming one of the Sides.
This is why I’m proposing Middle Side. I live in the Middle Side. I live being a Middle Side Angeleno. The Middle Side is a valid Side.
Caveats
The place in the middle has a lot of transplants. The outer areas, especially as you move East, have a lot of people who grew up and whose parents and families grew up in LA. Some old school Angelenos from east of Downtown believe that anything East of Downtown is the Westside. This would be at least a few miles from our determined border and also exclude famously Eastside places like Echo Park and Silver Lake. I defer to them and would not fight them on that, especially because it creates a scenario where people I know who live in Echo Park would have to admit they are West Siders in order to retain moral high ground. Buuut I also think transplants are always gonna argue and its worth having these boundaries additionally.
Anyway, done with the whining!
Recommendations
Nai Nai & Wai Po. Short Film. This short film available on Disney+ spends sixteen minutes detailing the friendship of the filmmaker’s maternal and paternal grandmothers. It was nominated for the Oscar tonight and, while it lost out to also excellent The Last Repair Shop, it’s a very heartwarming and joyous little movie.
One Day. Television Show. Last week I recommended this when I still had two episodes left. I still recommend it and feel like I lived two whole lives watching it.
The Wedding Ringer. Podcast. This has been on podcast lists of note for a while and I finally gave it a shot. It’s a fun scam whodunit that is (in my opinion) disadvantageously misnamed because the whole first episode has nothing to do with weddings and everything to do with someone starting a fake online media company. In some ways, every online media company is pretty fake to begin with so there’s something extra crazy about this scheme.
The Cretin Hop. Song. Some friends and I accidentally found ourselves at a Ramones dance night at a bar (the aforementioned Zeb) last night. The words “CRETIN HOP” were blasted across a wall in lights and we were all like “what the hell is that?” and a guy in a leather jacket who could have been 22 or 45 approached us and encouraged us to dance harder and then kids of forces us to go to the stage, and I was like “is he a cretin?” Finally, I Googled it and saw that it is a Ramones song. I recommend the song more than I recommend going to a bar full of people who intentionally attended a Ramones night.
Alrighty! Much Love!
Julian!
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