From the Read and Weep Dept. Check out Michael McKinley's moment of malarial disconnect on the Eastsider L.A. blog (quoting from Frontiers), where he claims credit for Silver Lake's coincidentally going yupscale during the years of the McKinley-helmed Sunset Junction Street Fair:

“When we first started, it was $200,000 houses with broken windows and empty businesses. And now I think because of us, there are $1 million houses, upscale businesses and an upscale yuppy-type crowd.”

I'd often wondered why Silver Lake had lost its funky charm to become a BMW parking lot and, reading McKinley's thoughts on the matter, realize that must be it exactly! Forget the overheated economy of the Clinton years, the national housing boom and the historic eastward push of young corporate climbers from suddenly overpriced Hollywood and Los Feliz.  It was the tilt-a-whirl and those guys in leather chaps that brought about the Silver Lake Wirtschaftswunder!

McKinley, inexplicably, did not also take credit for the similar gentrification of Echo Park or the swingerization of Atwater Village and Eagle Rock.

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