East Los Angeles, CA

East Los Angeles is run by Los Angeles County rather than any city, and it is a separate community from the City of Los Angeles even though the name and the freeways make the line easy to miss. Most of the place is flats. Small bungalows and stucco houses, many with Spanish details, crowd a tight street grid, and newer apartment buildings are filling in along the main boulevards. City Terrace, on the hills at the north end, is the exception, with curving streets and long views west toward the downtown towers. For green space, people head to Belvedere Park, with a small lake near the Pomona Freeway and a larger park across Cesar Chavez Avenue that has pools and a skate park. Food is the reason many visitors come. Tamales Liliana's on Cesar Chavez Avenue has been a family operation for years, bakeries and taco stands line every commercial street, and across the Monterey Park line, Cook's Tortas bakes its bread daily for tortas like the bacalao. Coffee shops have grown up along 1st Street and near City Terrace. Whittier Boulevard is the main shopping street, with Atlantic and Cesar Chavez close behind, and big supermarkets share those streets with corner markets. The Metro E Line runs through the middle of East Los Angeles to downtown, and East Los Angeles College, home of the Vincent Price Art Museum, sits right at the edge in Monterey Park. The daily cost is space. Lots are small and houses sit close together, so yards are tight and parking on most blocks is a nightly hunt. Life here runs on the boulevards and the train, and many errands, meals and trips downtown happen without ever getting in a car.