June 26, 2007

What/Where Are the 'Five Borroughs' of LA?

THE BLOG OVER AT Silver Lake Gallery Alliance keeps using this phrase, the Five Borroughs.

Never mind that "Borroughs" is usually spelled "Boroughs." And never mind that New York City established its own Five Boroughs in 1898. I'm just trying to figure out what/where in the world are the Five Borroughs/Boroughs of Los Angeles?

For the first four - based on how artsy Silver Lakers tend to see the world - I guessed Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Echo Park and Atwater Village. The fifth slot goes, according to SLGA's MySpace page, to the "Upper North East."

What the hell is that, Glendale? Montrose? San Fernando? Sylmar?

I'm all about coming up with new ways to divide the city, but why exclude the rest of LA's art scene? And why the consistent misspelling? Ugh.

SLGA's blog is good for sporadic event postings. Might not be the place for neighborhood taxonomy.

4 comments:

Miles said...

I've heard Boroughs used several times in the recent past -- I think most notably when the city charter was being redone and when the Valley was trying to secede.

The bottom line is that the city council is small compared to other major cities. New York City has something like 50 councilmembers -- so, people here feel disenfranchised and underrepresented, which they are.

And, the County Board of Supervisors is even worse. See multiple Steve Lopez columns.

All that said, if I was going to divide up the city into major regions (not that anybody really asked me), I'd do thusly:

West Valley
East Valley
Eastside (East LA, Downtown, Northeast LA)
South LA
Mid City
Westside

Anyway, we don't need another level of government, we just need a better more representative government...in my humble opinion.

Will Campbell said...

The five Burroughs of L.A? Easy:

1) Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and Tarzana
2) John Burroughs, noted naturalist of whom an LA middle school and Burbank high school is named
3) Don Burroughs, Los Angeles Rams defensive back
4) Harold Burroughs Rhodes, father of the electric piano
5) William S. Burroughs, who lived in Venice in the 1950s.

AVN said...

Edgar, John, Don, Harold and William are going to be quite sore when they find out how many "openings" are planned for them.

CitizenRobots said...

If there are Boroughs here in LA, then where is New Jersey, and who is Tony Soprano?