Ask any Angeleno (or don't and just wait for them to internet-comment) and they will tell you there is definitely and clearly an absolute definition for what makes up the Eastside of Los Angeles. Then they will give you a slightly or wildly different definition than the one you heard from the last Angeleno you asked. The Silver Lake Neighborhood Council kicked up dust again recently when they voted to make it (non-bindingly) illegal to call Silver Lake the Eastside. The perennial debate centers around the definition for the neighborhoods west of Downtown but east of the central city (Echo Park, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Atwater Village; aka the Hipster 'Hoods), and all sides have a point: "The Eastside" has historically designated Latino neighborhoods (Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, East LA) and using it to designate wealthy white neighborhoods feels like linguistic gentrification; on the other hand, the most vocal Eastside prescriptivists have a nativist tone that implies people who weren't born in Los Angeles aren't real Angelenos or allowed a say in what they call their own neighborhoods; and on the third hand, this all does feel kind of silly.
Anyway, the LA Times took the matter to the people with a tool for crowd-sourcing map boundaries—the results, from 240 people as of this blog post, are predictably erratic but focused around the neighborhoods directly east of Downtown, then to a lesser extent on Northeast LA, and, to a slightly lesser extent than that, the Eastishside neighborhoods. So that settles nothing. But God bless the asshole who says the Eastside stretches from San Bernardino County to the 405.
· L.A.'s Eastside: Where do you draw the line? [LAT]
· BREAKING: Silver Lake Votes to Renounce the Eastside! [Curbed LA]
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