Westlake

This area is definitely not to be confused with Westlake Village to the far west of the San Fernando Valley. In fact, you might say that this is the exact opposite of that area. Whereas Westlake Village is filled with the rich and the affluent, Westlake near Downtown LA is poor; where the Village is filled with home owners who have, in many cases, paid off their homes, 19 of 20 residents of Westlake are renters; where as the average age in Westlake Village is close to 40, Westlake is much younger, averaging 27. So it is definitely a study in contrasts.

Those familiar with the much maligned song, MacArthur Park, will be interested to know that this is also the neighborhood that is home to the park that gave inspiration to that song. For those of you have forgotten the lyrics, here’s the part you must know about:

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again

Ahh! Wonderful aren’t they? No wonder so many artists have chosen to cover it. It is always good to put cakes in songs, makes them sweeter. Like when Sting rewrote the ending of his famous Police song, “Every Step you Take,” and ended with “Every cake you bake/Every leg you break.” But I digress.

Unfortunately Westlake, and the MacArthur Park area (which was once known as the Champs-Elysees of Los Angeles) have taken a turn for the worse. There have been 50 murders in this neighborhood in the last four years. That’s 12.5 per year. In the last six months there have been 6 murders, so they are right on pace to meet their sad average. In the past six months, there have also been two dozen reported rapes, and hundreds of assaults, and just in the last week there have been warnings about spikes in violence in this neighborhood. Even if we take into account the large population of this neighborhood—120,000, making it as big as Pasadena, though all crammed together—we still have to consider 50 murders as an extreme number.

The neighborhood is basically still a gang epicenter. Several of these gangs use the suffix, “Locos” at the end of their location name, as their gang name. So, for example one of the granddaddies of the modern gangs was known as the Macarthur Street Locos.

If that hasn’t scared you away yet, then you should also consider that the local public schools—outside of the magnets—simply aren’t cutting it in this area. Belmont High, for example, misses Federal and state assessments on the order of 20 every year with virtually no sign of progress.

That said, I have met Westlake residents who say that this whole view of the area as dangerous is overblown—that it is perfectly fine place to live and that they have not had any problems. Some even say that it is the fault of police and clanking down on them too strongly. I am more than a little dubious of these claims, especially since they will follow this up by talking about prostitutes they saw near their homes or how the sound of gunfire woke them in the night. Sometimes we just don’t want to admit what is obvious to everyone else.

Given all these problems, no one in their right mind would want to live in this neighborhood. Put simply, you would have to be a “loco” to want to live in this neighborhood.