SLHC Interview with Eric Brightwell, Silver Lake entrepreneur and cartographer.

~ Eric Brightwell

I was interviewed, as suggested by the title (not mine) by the Silver Lake History Collective. Have a watch, if you’ve got fifty minutes to spare (or 25, if you increase the playback speed).

Support Eric Brightwell on Patreon

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, essayist, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking paid writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in generating advertorials, cranking out clickbait, or laboring away in a listicle mill “for exposure.”
Brightwell has written for Angels Walk LA, Amoeblog, Boom: A Journal of California, diaCRITICS, Hidden Los Angeles, and KCET Departures. His art has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft Contemporary, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, the book Sidewalking, Skid Row Housing Trust, and the 1650 Gallery.
Brightwell has been featured as subject and/or guest in The Los Angeles Times, VICE, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, CurbedLA, Office Hours Live, Spectrum News, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, Notebook on Cities and Culture, KCRW‘s Which Way, LA?, at Emerson College, and the University of Southern California.
Brightwell is currently writing a book about Los Angeles.

You can follow him on Ameba, Duolingo, Facebook, Goodreads, iNaturalist, Instagram, Mastodon, Medium, Mubi, the StoryGraph, and Twitter.
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Published by Eric Brightwell

Eric Brightwell is an essayist, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener. He lives in Los Angeles, not because he was born here, but because he chose to... for all of the things for which its famous: its verticality, its mass transit, its diversity, its schools, its liminal spaces, its architecture, its wildlife, its museums, its night markets, its cinemas, its theaters, its enclaves, its restaurants, its bars, its libraries, &c

2 thoughts on “SLHC Interview with Eric Brightwell, Silver Lake entrepreneur and cartographer.”

  1. I just found out about you, read the most recent post on Torrance, and so glad I watched this interview next. I really appreciate your perspective on LA and how you approach your profession: you’re just feeling your way as you go, engaging with what excites you, and making time and space for it. I’m the same way with what I’m doing now, having started woodworking classes during a pandemic-caused furlough from my job at Disneyland- I thought I was learning a skill I’d always wanted for a hobby, but maybe stumbled into some kind of career change? Just learning everything I can that excites me there and trying prioritize time and space for it. I love maps (especially hand drawn ones), history, buildings and houses, and especially learning and researching all those things locally to fully explore and get an authentic feel for a place through time, and I so appreciate that you’re just not only DOING that, but successfully sharing it with all of us who want to follow along.

    I totally agree about Orange County, by the way, thanks for saying it! I’ve lived in City of Orange since I started at Chapman in 2006. North OC is very convenient to San Gabriel Valley, Long Beach, and really any part of LA up to Downtown. I go to my woodworking classes at Cerritos College, certain doctors at the Kaiser in Downey instead of Irvine, and like to fly out of LGB as much as SNA. A college boyfriend went to Whittier College and felt very close, and that was before so much work got done on the 5. My LA friends act like it’s a pain or impossible to come south, but thousands of people work in Anaheim at Disneyland and commute, it’s really only rough from the far sides LA county, way out in the IE, or San Diego county (remember, it was built there intentionally because Anaheim is the most centrally convenient to the populated areas of all SoCal!). When I was growing up in a small rural NorCal town, we drove 30 mins (30 miles) one way for dance class, and twice as far as that for the mall, the good movie theaters, or Costco.

    The oldest historic parts of OC are worth exploring and tell a lot of stories of So Cal history, including for POC: the well-preserved old town by the tracks at San Juan Capistrano, Crystal Cove State Beach’s unique seaside colony, and much more. The midcentury history is so excellent as well. Where I grew up was about half white (western European heritage), half Mexican and other Central American Latinx heritage, so it was limited. I didn’t experience much diversity until college, and So Cal’s diversity all around makes it such a great place to live, including in Orange County. My parents bought a 1919 bungalow in the historic core of Santa Ana in 2020, and learning the history of the house, the neighborhood, the city, and exploring it the last few years has been awesome. I have always enjoyed exploring what Santa Ana has to offer, but I had a similar experience to you when I started college of locals telling me “oh, I don’t go there” or “it’s not safe” for Santa Ana, Anaheim (“Anacrime” is the “joke”), and of course plenty of places in LA county. Well, I always felt that “safe” is relative, it’s more about perception than reality, and rules about where to go have more to do with that person making the rule than the place itself. (And I agree, the first time I drove through Boyle Heights, thanks to a weird Waze route, I was like WHAT IS THIS PLACE? It looked amazing.) I like to make up my own mind about what a place has to offer me, and how I feel when I am there. In the “new” house in Santa Ana, I got a nice big roll of brown drawing paper and my brother and I traced a street map of the central area around the house, including several of the nearest neighborhoods. It always gets complements!

    I look forward to following along with what you are doing, now that I’ve found you!

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