Los Angeles Neighborhoods: Silver Lake

Silver Lake isn’t a lake. It’s a reservoir. Located between Los Feliz and Echo Park, Silver Lake has a hipster reputation with overpriced coffee houses, indie music venues, wine bars and rival cheese shops. The flatlands of Silver Lake house millennials and working-class people while the hills are a desired celebrity location. Residents of note include Moby, Rowan Farrow, Fred Armisen, Rachel McAdams, Kiefer Sutherland, Kristen Wiig, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Beck. Locals prefer the west side of the reservoir with quiet streets and gorgeous views. The east side is more chaotic with higher levels of crime and homelessness.

Silver Lake has an impressive rock ‘n’ roll pedigree. Bands like Local Natives and Silversun Pickups are from the area. Elliott Smith lived his final years in a Silver Lake bungalow. (The Elliott Smith tribute wall remains intact outside a tanning salon on Sunset Boulevard.) X’s Exene Cervenka owned a Silver Lake thrift store called “You’ve Got Bad Taste.” Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers founded the Silver Lake Conservatory of Music on Hollywood Boulevard offering music classes for local youth.

Silver Lake played a part in movie history. In 1912, Mack Sennett built a film studio in the area. Walt Disney’s first animation studio stood at the corner of Griffith Park & Hyperion (now a Gelson’s Market). The Whole Foods on Glendale Boulevard was once a western back lot for silent film star Tom Mix. (His horse “Old Blue” is buried on the property). The stairs near Descanso Avenue & Vendome Street are where Laurel & Hardy hauled a piano to a hilltop home in the 1932 film The Music Box.

Silver Lake has numerous hidden staircases used by locals for morning exercise and street artists for tagging. One staircase leads to Barnsdall Art Park, site of the Hollyhock House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was unable to supervise the project so he delegated the work to assistant Rudolph Schindler. More examples of Schindler modernist architecture are found in Silver Lake than anywhere else in the country.

French Diarist Anaïs Nin lived her final years with husband Rupert Pole in a Silver Lake house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s grandson Eric Lloyd Wright. At the time, Nin was also married to violist Hugo Guiler who lived in New York. Nin kept her bigamy secret from both husbands until she was stricken with cancer. She died in her Silver Lake bedroom overlooking the reservoir.

One of the oddest Silver Lake denizens was Maria Rasputin, daughter of the Russian “Mad Monk” Grigori Rasputin. Maria escaped by ship to America in 1937 and moved to Silver Lake, a refuge for Russian intellectuals at the time. She made a living as a cabaret singer and lion tamer for Ringling Brothers. During a circus performance in Indiana, she was mauled by a grizzly bear. She survived and lived peacefully in a Silver Lake bungalow until her death in 1977.

Silver Lake was originally called Ivanhoe Canyon. In the early-1900s, civil engineer William Mulholland created dams throughout Los Angeles with water acquired from the Owens River Valley. Ivanhoe Canyon was flooded in 1907. The new reservoir was named after Herman Silver, an LA Water Commissioner.

Artists, actors and bohemians flocked to Silver Lake. Initially, home sales were prohibited to “any person not of the Caucasian race.” By the 1950s, Asian-Americans and Hispanics moved into the area. Silver Lake became one of the first gay-friendly neighborhoods in Los Angeles. In 1950, activist Harry Hay established the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations in America. A staircase called the Mattachine Steps on Cove Avenue was dubbed in his honor.

In 1967, police raided a Silver Lake gay bar on Hyperion Avenue called the Black Cat Tavern. This triggered the first LGBT civil rights demonstration in America. The Silver Lake gay community expanded with gay bars (“Akbar”) and gay bookstores (“Circus of Books”). The neighborhood earned the nickname the “Swish Alps.” Realtors promoted the area with the slogan “West Hollywood is Moving East.” Homophobia followed.

In 1979, two gay men were killed during a robbery outside a gay-owned restaurant. In 1980, a man yelling “Die Faggots” firebombed the Frog Pond, a restaurant frequented by gay men. In the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic savaged the Silver Lake gay community. By the 1990s, gay-friendly stores closed en masse. Gentrification followed and Silver Lake became a high-priced neighborhood for young white families.

In the 2000s, TV shows like You’re the Worst, Casual and Togetherness were set in Silver Lake. Magazines dubbed Silver Lake “the hippest place in America.” The area became too hip for its own good with competing cupcake shops, gastro pubs and craft coffee houses. Silver Lake gained a reputation for $10 lattes and attitudinal baristas. I once ordered a latte at Intelligentsia and asked the barista to “please go easy on the foam.” He replied, “I’d be doing us both a disservice if I allowed your uninformed palate to guide my talents.”

In 2021, Quentin Tarantino purchased and renovated the Vista Theater at the corner of Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard. He converted the 1923 venue into an upscale cinema and coffee klatch that exclusively screens 35mm prints. The Vista’s a block away from the original KCET Studios where films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and House on Haunted Hill were filmed. The studio was sold to the Church of Scientology in 2011.

Crime author Michael Connelly often writes about Silver Lake and neighboring Echo Park. He takes a noirish view of the area. In the book The Concrete Blonde, he wrote: The house in Silverlake was dark, its windows as empty as a dead man‘s eyes. It was an old California Craftsman with a full front porch and two dormer windows set on the long slope of the roof. But no light shone behind the glass, not even from above the doorway. Instead, the house cast a foreboding darkness about it that not even the glow from the streetlight could penetrate.

Silver Lake had a real-life gothic moment in 2018. On a busy Saturday, residents shopped at the Trader Joe’s on Hyperion Avenue. Thirty miles away in Long Beach, a 28-year-old man with mental health issues shot his grandmother and girlfriend and then fled in his grandmother’s car with his girlfriend bleeding in the back seat. LAPD was dispatched and a chase ensued. The man sped into Silver Lake before crashing his car into a telephone pole.

The man fired shots at police and ran into the Trader Joe’s. Police followed. Though the store was packed, two policemen fired eight shots. One of the bullets struck and killed a female Trader Joe’s manager. The perpetrator held customers and employees hostage for three hours before surrendering. Police officers were criticized but never charged.

Silver Lake businesses were hit hard during the pandemic. Restaurants like Cliff’s Edge, El Cochinito and Alimento were shuttered. Cafe Tropical closed after 50 years of offering Cuban fare. Ragg Mopp Vintage, which sold classic clothing to the television and film industries, closed after 22 years in business.

Silver Lake is no longer a haven for working-class Hispanics and Asians. The radical neighborhood that once stood at the forefront of gay civil rights is now a gentrified community for the moneyed class. The median home price is $1.4 million. Average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $3300 per month. Fortunately, there’s something that links Silver Lake to its hipster past. You can still find arrogant baristas hocking overpriced lattes with a shot of pomposity.