(The now-destroyed Aaron Donovan mural on the side of Chango in Echo Park)
Curbed reader Deven left a comment about Echo Park in the Glendale Boulevard development post, after someone mentioned Chicken Corner. "I have a question: What is "Chicken Corner?" he wrote. "Sounds frightening..."
Wanting to help Deven with his fear of chickens and corners, we asked Jenny Burman, who writes the excellent blog Chicken Corner, about the name, which is the unofficial term for the corner of Delta Avenue and Echo Park Avenue (right across from the Magic Gas Station). Her answer after the jump.
"Some people say it was called Chicken Corner because the open acreage across from what is now Chango coffeehouse had chickens, not uncommon for Echo Park, but maybe there were a lot of them there.
For most people I know, the name Chicken Corner arose because of an Aaron Donovan mural on the Delta Ave. side of the Del Mor apartment building -- the mural featured chickens of various moods and in various states of dress (some of which suggested cock fighting). The mural is gone, knocked out to make room for a window at Chango, though some of the mural pieces are on display inside the coffeehouse. When it was destroyed many people in the neighborhood rushed to the corner to grab pieces to keep.
Sometime around 2001 or 2002 Ojala gallery, now closed, sold "Chicken Corner" T-shirts. That's where the name Chicken Corner came from. I chose it for the name of my Echo Park blog because it sits at a social/political/arts nerve center of the neighborhood, and because I loved Aaron's mural. And here's a link to the post where I explained what Chicken Corner was, when I started the blog way back in 2006."