Opinion: You can’t handle the <i>awesomeness</i> of Glendale
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One of the more annoying aspects of living outside L.A.’s municipal boundaries is listening to the ‘on safari’-like descriptions of folks who visit from their hip enclaves in Silver Lake, Los Feliz and the like. Echo Park blogger Jenny Burman typifies such talk with her post about a recent visit she paid to the Volkswagen dealership in Glendale, which happens to be my hometown:
So this morning, I’m on Brand Blvd. Glendale, which as the crow flies is close to my house in Echo Park. But as the crow dreams, it’s far. For one thing, it’s in a valley (whereas Echo Park is hills), and even the quality of light is different. It’s so much brighter, with old-fashioned palm trees, or no trees on the street, and the light, like the ground, is somewhat flat in comparison to the dappled, foggy light of the hills. Ethnically, it’s majority Armenian, of course, whereas EP is Latino, Chinese-American, Filipino and white, mostly. Brand Blvd., if you’ve never seen it, is aptly named. It’s the longest string of car dealerships I’ve ever seen: the Embassy Row of automakers in Los Angeles. It’s sleepy looking.
Sounds like a rock-solid description of the Jewel City’s Brand Boulevard — from 40 years ago (minus the observation about a majority-Armenian population). Read how Burman gets Glendale wrong after the jump.
To anyone who’s driven or walked Brand’s three miles, it’s obvious that Burman didn’t explore much beyond the fast-food restaurants and car dealerships that populate the stretch south of the Glendale Galleria. There, Brand is as Burman describes — a largely sterile, car-business oriented sliver of Glendale that also happens to generate substantial tax revenue for the city. Indeed, starting a few blocks south of galleria, the street is known as the ‘Brand Boulevard of Cars.’
North of the galleria, you’ll find a reality far different than Burman describes — a perfectly walkable mix of decades-old storefronts; Argentinian, Japanese, Chinese, Armenian and a few chain restaurants; the landmark Alex Theatre, built in 1925; high-rise office towers; and, at the northern tip of Brand, Spanish-style apartment buildings and homes that are older than my grandparents. Other notable spots include Porto’s bakery — which sees customers line up onto the sidewalks most mornings and weekends — and Damon’s Steakhouse, a kitschy, tiki-themed restaurant that opened when FDR was president and makes a knockout Mai Tai.
Most annoyingly, Burman uses a tired stereotype — that Glendale is ‘majority Armenian, of course,’ and not much else — and holds it up to the apparently superior diversity of Echo Park. For starters, Glendale ain’t majority-Armenian, though Armenians do make up about 40% of the city’s population. As for Asians and Latinos, Glendale’s got ‘em too, and in no small numbers: 16% of the city’s residents are Asian, and almost 20% are Latino. In my zip code alone, 91205, nearly one-third of the population is Latino. Overall, more than half — yes, half — of the city’s roughly 200,000 residents were born outside the U.S.
As for Burman, I’d be happy to take her on a walk further north on Brand — and introduce to a stretch of Glendale far less sleepy than the car dealership and coffee shop she visited.