La Park T-Shirts

Barcelona city Spain parc guell architecture

Echo Park is a neighborhood in Mideast Los Angeles (MELA) named after a park built around Echo Park Lake. I explored in 2010 for my series, "California Fool's Gold." https://ericbrightwell.com/2010/02/22/california-fools-gold-exploring-echo-park/

Point Fermin Park, San Pedro, CA. Original photograph.

Fan art appreciation design for the movie Baseketball

I drew this map for a ramble along a relatively short stretch of San Fernando Road in 2013. It appeared in my series, "Urban Rambles." https://ericbrightwell.com/2013/05/16/from-confluence-to-atwater-exploring-along-san-fernando-road-block-by-block-land-of-sunshine-kcet/

Santa Monica Pier. Original photograph.

Echo Park

A topo map of Griffith Park, Los Angeles

The Mideast Side -- also known as "Mideast Los Angeles" and "MELA" -- is a region of Central Los Angeles (i.e. Hollywood, Downtown, Midtown, and the Mideast). It's the region of Los Angeles in which I live. I wrote a primer in 2011 and painted this version of the map, the third, a couple of years later. https://ericbrightwell.com/2011/03/16/california-fools-gold-a-mideast-side-primer/

Garvanza is a neighborhood in Northeast Los Angeles. It was this third community to be annexed by Los Angeles, following Sycamore Grove and Highland Park. I explored it, with a dog named Dooley, for my series, "California Fool's Gold," in 2014. https://ericbrightwell.com/2014/01/16/garbanzo-ramble-exploring-the-garvanza-neighborhood/

I painted this map of Elysian Heights for a show I called "Taste of the Mideast Side" in which I exhibited maps of various neighborhoods in the Mideast Los Angeles region. The gray cat in the compass rose is "Room 8" -- an internet celebrity cat who was world-famous before there was an internet.

Make like a tree and get out of here, and go out and buy this!

California Castle

Hotel Inglaterra, Havana, Cuba The Hotel Inglaterra, Havana, Cuba Is the oldest hotel in the city, founded in 1875, declared Nacional Monument in 1981 and located in the center of the city, in front of the Central Park and near to interesting places in Old Havana. The architecture, history, location, and the presence of the cuban culture are the principal atractions of this charming hotel. It was considered one of the most famous hotels in Cuba and the world, attracting the atention of many important personalities such us: Sara Bernhart, Enrico Carusso, Ana Pavlova, Imperio Argentina, Gabriela Mistral, Jose Marti Perez, Antonio Maceo among others . Traditional cuban music bands, piano players during breakfast, concerts by the Band of ...

Downtown view from Echo Park, Los Angeles photo edit from 2019