Will new WB webisode series 'Rockville, CA' officially ruin Echo Park forever?

If you've ever made the Logan's Run of bars, clubs and cafes on Sunset Boulevard between Alvarado Street and Elysian Park Avenue, and thought it would make for a fine television show, you are hereby deemed hopeless and should be exiled to Brentwood. However, you also are prescient. Such a show is about to become the fictional "The Hills" of Echo Park (don't act like you're somehow above it, you be-moustached kids), and good lord, do they have their ducks in a row on guest appearances.

If there's one thing that young, monied aspirant artists and musicians need, it's to have their own cultural signifiers repeated back to them through dramatic media, so Pop & Hiss would like to welcome the WB's new Web series "Rockville, CA," its creator Josh Schwartz ("The O.C.," "Gossip Girl") and music supervisor du jour Alexandra Patsavas with a round of $2.50 Barragan's margaritas.

"Rockville" is a chronicle of the life and times of twentysomethings working in the music industry (apparently the last remaining ones with jobs!) and their exploits in Echo Park. It's set for a 20-episode run with each running about four minutes.

There's no news on a debut date yet, but the new "90210" has already been tipping towards this terrain, and OK, we're not ashamed to say that "Rockville" will be appointment viewing for the entirety of Pop & Hiss, if only to flatter ourselves into thinking that waiting in line at Tacos Ariza at 3 a.m. somehow constitutes a compelling narrative arc.

The show will reportedly have guest-concert appearances by the likes of Lykke Li, the Kooks and other shaggy fellas of the moment. From the looks of the show's blog, they're shooting on-location at the Echoplex, and if "Gossip Girl's" penchant for fourth-wall breaking holds true here, we can probably expect to see a doe-eyed publicist touting a write-up in the L.A. Record and this guy in the background of every live music scene.

What's more, one episode is based on a guest script from Toph Eggers. Yes, that Toph Eggers. Which leads us to speculate: Holy moly, does Toph Eggers live in Echo Park now? And would he not be the most hypothetical lady-killer in hipster history?

Either way, there's a long and sordid history of people trying this exact same show and it not working out, so we'll leave the viability verdict as wait and see. However, hyper-local webisode series on New York and Chicago scenes have found traction, and if anyone can make vomiting free Gold Room peanuts and tequila seem like an epic storyline, we admit, it is Schwartz and Patsavas.

-- August Brown

Photo: "Gossip Girl." Credit: Patrick Harbron / CW

Comments

[djpinklady]

what i want to know is, who is going to play me?

[robert dean]

ugh

[Charlie Hoarse]

wow. lame. thanks to all the hipsters who killed the good times in Echo Park. this is exactly why i left EP 2 years ago. i moved there in the late 90's when the gunfire was rampant and left when all the hipsters over took barrigans and chango. i hear the Gold Room has been snatched from the original locals too. im not suprised that EP is being used as the backdrop to this garbage. where was the OC creator when the 'real soul' existed in EP? oh yeah, shooting silver spooned kids from the OC.

[echoparkave.com]

OMG!

[S]

Should be noted that one of the producers is Zev Borow, closely tied to Mcsweeneys and Dave Eggers....so no huge suprise Toph is writing for it?

Also, with The Real World Brooklyn I don't find this surprising nor do I think it will ruin Echo Park. Red Hook, who was beginning to be gentrified before the show, hasn't continued that gentrification process even with the show.