Eagle Rock after the bust, per NYT

Writing for the front of today's Thursday Styles section in the New York Times, Scott Timberg says that Eagle Rock's much talked-about invasion by young creatives is crashing along with the recession. He predicts a return to the Eagle Rock of old.

For long-time residents, the return to pre-boom rents may be a blessing. But it also poses a rattling question of identity: What happens to bourgeois bohemia when the bourgeois part drops out?

Over the last five to six years, Eagle Rock became the glamour girl of Northeast Los Angeles, a crescent where the asphalt jungle meets the foothills. The neighborhood of 35,000 or so has attracted screenwriters and composers, Web designers and animators, who labor on their laptops in cafes, discuss film projects at Friday night wine tastings, and let their children play with the handmade wooden toys in a Scandinavian-style coffee shop, Swork.

It is easy to sniff at such urban affectations. But the downturn endangers more than precious shops; residents worry that as stores close, the fabric of a bohemian utopia — with its Jane Jacobs mix of commerce and public spiritedness — will also unravel.

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The new residents brought prosperity and, the locals say, a little arrogance as well. “They sounded the trumpets and announced a vision of something like Silver Lake or Los Feliz,” said Bob de Velasco, who runs Commercial Printing Network, a copy shop. “But it’s not going to happen. Eagle Rock wasn’t meant to have that. Eagle Rock is an old-fashioned, atmospheric town.”

Indeed, in this downturn, Mr. de Velasco’s printing shop doesn’t seem to be hurting, nor is Tritch Hardware. The shops at risk are the ones playing the Decembrists in a continuous loop.

“Some of them tried niche things,” Mr. Tritch said, with no gloat in his voice. “That didn’t work out.”

Eagle Rock, says Timberg, "will probably return to being a neighborhood whose best qualities are well-preserved homes, old-school pizza and a really good hardware store."