Loma Vista Place - Passage
Echo Park and Silver Lake are full of streets that begin or end with stairs, public stairs, stairs built and maintained by the city. There are houses on these stairs with street addresses just as if they were on street where cars could go - but they can't. However not all of these stairways are concrete with stormwater swails on the side. Some are made of wood and some are just dirt pathes. Many cannot even been seen from a automobile accessable road, they are hidden behind scrubs or bend around houses. Loma Vista is the one that is the least accessible to car, has the most stairs of all different types, and is one of the least know. It begins on a ridge in Echo Park just off of Lake Shore and between some wooden fences. The entrance is actually hidden by some plants. The "street" is just a wooden plank stairway. All along the side are plants, some there intentionally others not, and more wooden fences. Then there is a landing and gate and Loma Vista rights to the west and then back to the north. Now it is nothing but dirt, hard packed after many decades of traffic nothing more than that. Above are trees holding back most of the sky, only letting the bits that fit between the leaves. The street then widens out to a concrete stairway and the wooden fences fall away to allow the front porches and flower plots into view. The stairs themselves are not really very wide, hardly room for two to pass but there is a wide apron of concrete on each side which is not too steep to step out over. Small houses built line the a great-grand parent ago with the Craftsman Magazine designs. At the base of the stairs there are two railroad ties planted firming in the concrete to prevent even the most deterined automobile from taking the chase up the stairs. For just a few feet where Loma Vista brushes by Allesandro car a lucky car get a chance to park. On the otherside of the freeway Loma Vista climbs another ridge. The stairs are a bit steeper and reach further. The middle of the Loma Vista if often divided by planters which gush with shrubs and flowers. On an Autumn afternoon a cat can warm himself on the concrete. There is no obvious pattern to stairs, some parts have hand rails and some do not, some have gutters some do not, some are over grown with trees and others well pruned. At the top, between the little houses, you peak out at Glendale or Hollywood but it does take some effort. It is much more likely that you never guess where you if you did not already know. Off ot one side is a tiny dirt trail leading the adventurous to a parallel set of stair going up from Fair Oak View. It is much more than most would expect and would never find.
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