Silver Lake Reservoir Los Angeles: Indie Culture and Eastside Living

The Silver Lake Reservoir and its surrounding neighbourhood represent the intellectual and artistic heart of the Los Angeles Eastside — a cluster of small hills, canyon streets and the reservoir's two linked bodies of water that have attracted musicians, writers, architects, filmmakers and chefs who find in this part of the city the proximity to downtown's energy combined with the residential scale and community character that makes long-term urban life sustaining. The reservoir walk — a 2.2-mile circuit around the fenced perimeter that passes through neighbourhood-scale parks and offers views of the Hollywood Hills, downtown skyline and the Silver Lake hills — is among the finest daily walks available in any American city.

The Silver Lake music scene is among the most significant in American indie rock history — the neighbourhood was home to Beck, Guided by Voices recordings, the Silver Lake Lounge and the Spaceland (now the Teragram Ballroom) that launched the careers of dozens of bands in the 1990s and 2000s. The neighbourhood retains a music culture of small venues, independent record shops including Vacation Vinyl and Origami Vinyl, and the recording studios that have made Silver Lake a destination for musicians who want access to LA's production infrastructure without the industry transactionalism of Hollywood. The Intelligentsia Coffee on Sunset Boulevard, one of the original specialty coffee bars in Los Angeles, sustains the neighbourhood's caffeine-dependent creative class.

The restaurant and bar scene concentrated along Sunset Boulevard, Hyperion Avenue and Rowena Avenue represents one of Los Angeles's most consistently interesting dining precincts — a concentration of wine bars, natural wine shops, small chef-driven restaurants and the occasional legendary taco stand that reflects the neighbourhood's food-educated, culturally curious population. Sqirl, the breakfast restaurant that became internationally famous for its ricotta toast and seasonal jam combinations, and the surrounding cluster of restaurants that followed its success have established the Silver Lake-Los Feliz corridor as a destination that draws food media attention from across the world while remaining resolutely neighbourhood-scaled in its ambitions.