Which Guey, L.A.

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While walking in Echo Park today, I discovered this little free fold-out map & shopping guide….

If I had only discovered this amazing map sooner, I would have learned that indeed,

  • West Hollywood is the center of Los Angeles.
  • Echo Park & Chinatown are the Eastside.
  • There appears to be no known life east of downtown and even the freeways east of downtown seem to fade away to nowhere.

I guess this 1888 map naming and showing East Los Angeles as being east of the L.A. River was all in someone’s far fetched imagination.

(Click to enlarge)

This entry was posted in Analysis, Eastside, history, Pendejadas, Personal, Photos, Rant, Uncategorized by AlDesmadre. Bookmark the permalink.

About AlDesmadre

Al Guerrero, Artist/Humorist. Los Angeles, CA. Born in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and raised in East Los Angeles from the age of two, Al Guerrero grew up just steps from the famous Chicano strip, Whittier Boulevard. His youth experiences include witnessing and participating in the 1970 Chicano Power demonstrations, cruising cars on Whittier Boulevard, and graduating from Garfield High School. After dropping out of UCLA (with honors), he drew upon his lifelong passion for art and cartooning and pursued a career in graphic arts. During this period, he traveled overseas and found artistic inspiration from the masterworks he discovered within the European Art Museums. His career blossomed when he was eventually hired by the Walt Disney Company in 1995, where he worked as a creative artist for a number of years. Although the artistic work was rewarding, he eventually grew weary & disillusioned with the bureaucracy of the entertainment business, and left to work briefly in the educational field. His credits include producing a feature film with actor, Conrad Brooks of Ed Wood fame, founding and performing with the Punk Rock group “The Psychocats” at numerous L.A. & Hollywood venues during the 1990’s, and in 1999 he founded and created a hell-bent puppet cabaret show aptly named: “The Puppets from Hell”. As a long time active member of the Los Angeles Cacophony Society, Al “Quaeda”, as he was known, was involved in countless Cacophony Society pranks and events throughout the city. He also produced the “Incredibly Strange Cinema” cult film series as well as themed events such as the now infamous “Pornothon Movie Nights” and the satirical “Mexican Night: Noche De Tequila & Putas” shows at local nightclub venues. Throughout his art career, he has exhibited his canvas paintings at various local galleries, and has also written & illustrated numerous comic strips and Graphic Novel stories. Today, he lives in Silver Lake, California and works as a freelance artist and writer with numerous multi-media projects under his belt and in the works. His personal hobbies include collecting vintage toys and comic books, cinema history and Los Angeles City history. Contact: alguerrero@earthlink.net Al Guerrero P.O. Box 29697 Los Angeles, CA 90029-0697 www.alguerrero.com Myspace.com/thepuppetsfromhell

31 thoughts on “Which Guey, L.A.”

  4. Wow! So I guess, if downtown is merely the eastern frontier of the city, Boyle Heights must be the boonies! No wonder I’ve been having such a hard time finding a roommate…

  5. I saw this crappy rag a week ago in Los Feliz.

    I think I vomited a little bit in my mouth.

    Seriously, sheer cluelessness.

  8. Those things are free right? I suggest LA Eastside readers round ’em up for a big bonfire – make them useful for something.

  9. If West Hollywood is the center of LA, then it looks like Culver City is in the heart of South-Cental LA.

  11. OH THEY’RE FREE? HELL YEAH then, we need to scoop them all up and use them in a ritual ceremony at echo park lake to burn a hipster in effigy.

    or for real.

    whatever.

  12. I got one at BRIGHT SPOT coffee shop in EP, but they’re in most “hip” shops & eateries. The inside appears to be a bunch of paid ads of local businesses, a bigger map, listings for local places MAPHAWK has deemed worthy of mention, and an astounding Q&A with a Los Feliz res named Jessie Mann.
    Check out their site at http://www.maphawk.com, they have a form for ordering maps too.
    here’s a copy of their featured interview…..
    http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll128/psychoworks13/maphawkqa.jpg

    I like the “Hipster Effigy Burn” idea, let’s do it- We’ll have our own “Burning Man” festival!

  13. On the other hand, if we don’t want hipsters coming into the real Eastside, if we don’t want Robeks to kick out Velardes, or Chipotle to compete with King Taco, let them NOT know about us. Keep those non bathing, sunburnt, butt crack showing pendejos over there.

    We need to re-think this battle.

    This can work in our favor gente.

    que se chingan!

  14. Al,
    Thanks for posting that “interview”, aka a roundup of advertisers. That was just an egregious abuse of the term, especially since she was “born and raised in Los Angeles”, something tells me she’s probably from the OC, but that’s just a hunch. She may be a purveyor of cool, but she’s still a nitwit when it comes to reading maps.
    Fuera!

  16. For the record, I want to state that my beef with all this is the callous, self-important & arrogant attitude of those with the nerve to appropriate the name Eastside for their own trendy agenda while ignoring the fact that the true Eastside is east of the River.
    IN NO WAY does this beef imply that I wish INCLUSION of the true Eastside into this stupid new agenda. Don’t give us our own MAPHAWK, and I don’t care if they never YELP our Eastside restaurants. We’ve had our own thing happening forever and the rest of the city is always welcome to come visit & enjoy it, but we don’t need the Validation and Recognition of some hip slumming Westsiders to tell us that were a Cool and Legitimate destination. I don’t presume to say I speak for all True Eastsiders, but I know I speak for many.
    c/s

  17. Here’s a note I sent to MapHag

    I can’t believe you would do a MapHawk version of the “Eastside” by appropriating the name “Eastside” and then ommitting the real Eastside, which is East of the L.A River in case you didn’t know, namely East Los Angeles. But then again your johnny-come-lately arrogant hipster colonizing Apartheid attitude is nothing new. Get a life, predators.

  18. The eastside is somewhat well-Yelped. At least the SGV and some of the Northeast, El Sereno, and East LA are. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s locals reviewing locals. We’re a lot tougher to impress, too.

    @Amorcito LOL

  19. personally, i love exclusionary jack moves like this. i work down in the miracle mile and shit like this offers choice opportunities to up my “one mad messkin” rep amongst the quasi-cool there — “dude, don’t call silverlake the eastside around jimmy. he goes fuggin’ ballistic….”

    seriously now, this shit has been going on since they moved in next door more than a century and a half ago. did you really expect anything different from ’em now?

  20. Amorcito- That’s a good one!:)

    alienation- I agree, I don’t mind Yelp per se either. I wanted to imply that ELA’s treasures shouldn’t need a guide. People should come and experience and discover
    freely. Getting to know the real Eastside for yourself without prejudice, it would benefit everybody, and also help expose and weaken those who would invent a faux “eastside” as the narrow minded twits that they are. I also don’t advocate isolationism.

    jimmy tumors (that’s a disgusting name by the way, nothing personal) You make a good point. A few years ago when I decided to take on the fight against all these disrespectful to L.A. interlopers, identity thieves, hipsters, gentrifiers, evil developers and the like, I knew that I was not going to hope to shrink their numbers or change their ways, all I hoped to accomplish as much as I can, is to let them know that:
    “WE’RE ON TO THEM”………….

  21. La Cucaracha
    La Cucaracha
    Ya no puede caminar
    Porque le falta
    Porque no tiene
    MapHag hispters
    Pa’ burlar

    But the last word could easily be substituted by:
    “cuerear” “frustrar” “pisar” “patear” “pugnar” “retar” ‘zumbar” or the alltime non-plus-ultra of duo-syllabic -ar verbos, “cagar”

  24. Aren’t we being a little sensitive?

    Not to mention, this is all relative. I tell my relatives in the Inland Empire that they’re the crazy ones, all the way out there. But things are just the same, just a little bit hotter.

  25. al,

    the name is a leftover from the last punk band i was in, not coincidentally named the tumors. disgusting? maybe, but it does have a certain zing to it, not to mention a plethora of potential multiple meanings…..

  26. Hey Jimmy, I like the name (Tumors), regardless of the disgusting nature. In fact, as a gesture of comraderie, for the rest of the week I want to be known as:
    “Al Huevos Inchados”

  30. cool, I didn’t know this burning man discussion was still going on! you guys better keep me in the loop.

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