Eastside Fantasia

Turns out the Jesus of Echo Park didn't come as the white flyers said. At least the whole ordeal got some press. Ben Ehrenreich tells the tale in the LA Weekly. Crazy lady Olga spent $2,000 plastering the area for months, telling locals to meet Jesus in Echo Park. That's a lot of money for photocopies. Did she dispatch day laborers? Regardless, she was depicted more gently than the ironic-mustached hipsters who showed up to gawk:

The hipsters arrayed themselves in a semicircle around her and asked questions with polite, tittering condescension.Olga answered eagerly. Jesus had been talking to her since she was 7, she said. If the birds had come, she was supposed to feed them.

“How much birdseed did you bring?” asked a baseball-capped young fop with an ironic mustache.

Is nothing sacred? But then, are the hipsters not allowed to show up and have self-aware, meta experiences in the Park? Is that wrong? And the overstated hipster hating dished by Ehrenreich makes me wonder whether or not he was dealing with his own inner turmoil over issues of regional kitsch, and the depiction thereof, when he decided to report this event.