Jill Murray
The neighborhood in LA that Cecil calls “home” has another name, and that name is Silverlake.
Normally when I’m in a new city, I like to find out how it works at an infrastructural level– subways, traffic, sanitation– and how these details impact or reflect back on the people who live there.
I’ve already discussed the whole car thing, and there was no sewer museum to be found on this trip, but I did manage to get in some good wandering with my camera, capturing some of the finer details that make Silverlake Silverlake.
First up, a human being:
This is the Walking Man of Silverlake, and this is what he does: he walks. All day. Every day. Sometimes he reads the newspaper while walking. That is all.
Intelligentsia Coffee is in the neighborhood. I was sooooper excited because it’s legendary to me from the research I’ve been doing for my fourth book, and from a single cup of Black Cat espresso I drank once at Fresh in Toronto. Getting to actually go to actual Intelligentsia was as close to a meaningful spiritual experience as I’m willing to get this year, and yes, I brought back souvenirs.
Apparently this sign, once necessary, hasn’t applied to anything practical since gentrification overtook cruising as a key neighborhood phenomenon.
This is definitely going to find its way onto my bathroom wall. Actually, come to think of it, maybe both signs should. Along with this one from NYC, that’s already there.
Stuff was in bloom. Birds were tweety.
These anything-but-Christmas lights were the cleanest, least rusty I’ve ever seen.
As long as we’re in car country…
When I was 14, this would have been my dream car.
For scale:
The neighborhood teems with Cecil-sized cacti.
In parting, here is a view of the Hollywood sign, from Silverlake.
And see that domed building to the right of it? That’s the Mount Wilson Observatory in Griffith Park. We’ll go there tomorrow. Oh, I’m so excited…
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