Silver Lake When the Reservoir Catches the Light

Silver Lake sits between Los Feliz and Echo Park on LA's east side, and it is the neighborhood where the city's creative class goes to pretend it doesn't live in a car city. The reservoir at its center — a fenced oval of blue water surrounded by a walking path and modernist hillside homes — is the neighborhood's compass, and circling it on foot at golden hour is the closest LA gets to a communal evening ritual.

Sqirl on Virgil Avenue is the breakfast that launched a thousand Instagram accounts — the ricotta toast with seasonal jam is as good as the hype suggests, and the line is part of the experience because the people in it are all wearing sunglasses that cost more than your flight and pretending they don't notice each other. Intelligentsia on Sunset does coffee with the seriousness of a wine bar, and the Sunset Junction strip between Sanborn and Griffith Park Boulevard is where the neighborhood's personality concentrates — vintage shops, taco stands, and the Silver Lake Picture Show mural on the wall of the storage facility that turns industrial concrete into a celebration of old Hollywood.

The hillside streets above the reservoir are where the architecture gets interesting — Neutra, Schindler, and their mid-century descendants built houses here that use glass and cantilever to argue that a house should be a frame for a view, not a wall against it. The views are the San Gabriel Mountains to the north and the downtown skyline to the south, and from the right angle they share the frame in a way that makes LA look like the only city in the world built between a mountain range and an idea.

Insider tip: Walk the reservoir path at sunset (the 2.2-mile loop is flat and paved) and then continue down the hill to Sunset Beer Company on Sunset Boulevard for a bottle-shop beer on the patio. The sun will be gone, the neon will be waking up, and Silver Lake will be doing what it does best: looking effortless while trying very hard.