Elysian Park

Elysian Park is home to Dodgers Stadium. Not being a baseball fan, I have only been here once—way back in the 80’s for a daytime Depeche Mode concert (Pet Shop Boys opened up for them). It’s a huge stadium that seems like it would be well-suited to a sporting event, especially, a baseball game. It is not, unfortunately, a very good stadium acoustically. Depeche Mode didn’t carry particularly well in that venue. Not to mention the fact that they strike me as the kind of band that is best suited for the nighttime.

Other than the stadium, the vast majority of this neighborhood is made up of the parking lot for the stadium and the park and reservoir that give the neighborhood its name. In fact, like Griffith Park, Elysian Park would just be a park if it were not for the crescent swath of this neighborhood that extends over the Golden State Freeway to the east, to the border of Glassell.

This stretch is mostly made up of nicely kept smaller homes, like small mission style homes and tiny Ranch homes, much like Atwater Village to the north. The residents here are largely immigrants from China and Mexico, and the neighborhood is largely working class.

The parks could be nice. During the day there are a fair number of the young families from nearby Glassell (a hotspot for young families) bringing their kids out to the play area. There are also jogging trails in some portions of the park that are well used and even some good equestrian trails. Unfortunately, the scene is quite different at nighttime, as anyone who has ventured along the less well-trodden trails will tell you. These areas of the park are dirty, filled with beer bottles, general garbage and used condoms and wrappers. Apparently the park is used as a motel by gay males. (A year or two ago there was a big news story about the return of 1970’s style cruising going on in the parks.) Another community that enjoys the park as well are homeless people. They set up camp there, have little fires to warm themselves and often leave their sets of garbage as well.

This neighborhood is generally considered to be fairly dangerous. Often ranked as one of the top ten most crime ridden in terms of property crime and having a pretty bad rating due to the number of assaults reported from this area relative to the meager population. There have not been any murders in this neighborhood in four years and though I would definitely not feel safe taking a hike by myself in the park here, there have not been any rapes reported in the last six months (all I could find statistics for).

That said, I think it has a ways to go before I would have a midnight picnic here. Then again, I can’t think of too many big parks where I would feel completely safe out at night.