Glassell Park Los Angeles: Northeast Hills and Brewery Arts

Glassell Park sits on the hillside between Eagle Rock and Cypress Park in Northeast Los Angeles, a neighbourhood that has been finding its cultural footing over the past decade as artists and creative professionals sought affordable alternatives to the increasingly expensive Silver Lake and Echo Park enclaves further west. The neighbourhood's hillside topography — steep streets rising from the Pasadena Freeway corridor to ridge-top views of the San Gabriel Mountains and the downtown skyline — gives it a landscape character that rewards exploration on foot in a part of the city otherwise dominated by the car.

The Brewery Arts Complex, technically located on the Glassell Park-Lincoln Heights border, is the largest artist live-work community in the world — a former Pabst Blue Ribbon and later Anheuser-Busch brewery converted into 300 studio and live-work spaces housing artists, designers and filmmakers who chose the Northeast LA industrial corridor for its combination of space, affordability and community. The complex's twice-yearly Art Walk opens studios to the public for weekend events that provide a rare opportunity to encounter working artists in their actual production environments rather than in the curated environment of a gallery. The Brewery's community character — maintained through artist-controlled governance and below-market leases — is an increasingly unusual model in a city where artist live-work districts invariably transition toward market-rate development.

The restaurant culture developing along San Fernando Road and the surrounding streets reflects Glassell Park's demographic evolution without displacing the established Mexican and Central American commercial fabric that has served the neighbourhood for decades. The El Huarache Azteca on York Boulevard, the pan dulce bakeries on San Fernando Road and the neighbourhood's taco stands represent a food culture of deep community roots, while the newer coffee bars and natural wine restaurants that have opened in converted industrial buildings speak to the neighbourhood's evolving constituency. Glassell Park is Northeast LA at its most interesting — a neighbourhood in active negotiation between its history and its future.