Echo Park holds a no-lotus festival

A mid-summer festival is underway this weekend in Echo Park, but don’t even think of calling it the annual Echo Park Lotus Festival.

The city’s landmark lotus bed is dead, and the Asian community group that since 1972 held a summer celebration around the blooms couldn’t raise enough money to put on the event.

When the neighborhood’s chamber of commerce stepped in to put on a festival in its place, Lotus Inc., the nonprofit behind the original festival, refused  to allow the chamber to use Echo Park Lotus Festival name, by which it has been known for years. 

Saturday, at the event  called the Echo Park Community Festival, indy rock music blared on loudspeakers, and ducks and turtles idly swam in the murky lake devoid of its once-teeming lotus blossoms and the dragon boat racing that had become a staple of the festival.

“It’s a little less of a celebration,” said Vanessa Garcia, 27, noting that this year’s festival was missing its theme celebrating Asian culture. “It was like a treat that came around once a year.”

Maxime Ung and his 10-year-old son, Nicky, were sitting on the edge of the lake Saturday, staring into the dark waters as plastic bottles, dead lotus stems, and duck feathers bobbed up and down.
Without the lotus blossoms and the Asian theme, Ung said, the festival feels decidedly different.
“It looks sad this year,” he said.

The rights to the festival’s name caused a bit of a stir earlier this month, when local photographer Martin Cox created T-shirts and mugs bearing a photo of the lotuses in full bloom and the words “Echo Park Lotus.”

When he sent out an e-mail to friends telling them he was selling the merchandise in time for the lotus festival, he received a sternly worded e-mail back from a city official saying it was illegal for him to use the festival’s name.

“It’s illegal to sell any lotus items depicting the festival and Echo Park,” Jane Kolb, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks, said Friday.

Cox, a 20-year resident of Echo Park, said he thought of the T-shirts as a way to “conceptually” bring back the beloved blossoms to this year’s festival.

The lotus flowers that once filled the park’s northwestern corner and towered as tall as 5 feet began dying  about four years ago, puzzling residents and city officials.

A city report last year listed a number of possible causes, including poor water quality, accumulation of chemicals, unauthorized raiding of the edible tubers, pests, disease and a 20-year lapse in refurbishing the beds.

But because a $60 million renovation of the park scheduled to begin next year, Kolb said, the city is delaying the planting of a new bed of lotuses.

--Victoria Kim in Echo Park

Comments

[Sirene]

When I drove by this afternoon, the festival looked very poorly attended - there were even parking spots on Glendale Blvd along the edge of the park - and more booths than festival-goers. As a long-time resident of Echo Park, this is sad, sad, sad. We had something very special in the lotuses and now, it is gone.

[Jules]

Possibly the demise of the lotus flowers has something to do with the City workers digging up the lotus corms early last year!

Didn't anyone else see this? I noticed them removing the plants over a two-day period last year, but thought maybe they were just removing the tops. Then in the summer, when nothing grew, it was clear they were gone. It's possible removing the plants had something to do with trying to improve the water quality, but the City needs to fess up about this. The lotus flowers were beautiful.

[DRE DAWG]

Why didn't the city give the money they spent on their poorly attended event to the Asian Community Group??? I hate city council members who think they can swoop in and take what belongs to the community. There is great pride when community members organize events for themselves.

Good job not letting them use the word Lotus in their event's name! Next year will be good, don't let this set back end the community tradition completely.