A guide to Boyle Heights, Los Angeles: What to do, see and eat

Every neighborhood in Los Angeles brings its own unique culture to the city, but perhaps none as proudly as Boyle Heights. Ask any local to define it and they’ll say it’s the real Eastside — and that it has an identity that’s separate from neighboring East L.A.

Get to know Los Angeles through the places that bring it to life. From restaurants to shops to outdoor spaces, here’s what to discover now.

A stone’s throw from downtown, Boyle Heights was the gateway for many different ethnic and religious groups to Los Angeles before World War II. With its lack of racially restrictive housing covenants, the neighborhood was considered the Ellis Island of the West Coast, and has been home to Mexicans, Jews, Japanese, Russians, African Americans and more.

The remnants of this unique melting pot can still be seen across the neighborhood, from the Japanese Hospital to the Breed Street Shul and the Evergreen Cemetery, one of the oldest in Los Angeles. Today, Boyle Heights has one of the highest concentrations of Latino residents in the city — mostly of Mexican descent. Landmarks like the kiosk at Mariachi Plaza and El Mercadito are cultural symbols of this Latino enclave.

Through the decades, it remains a working-class community, evident in the hustle and bustle of 8 a.m. traffic on its major thoroughfare, Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, known to longtime locals as La Brooklyn. Here, mothers pushing strollers rush their kids to school while street vendors wrap around corners selling tamales and fresh fruit. Go west along the iconic avenue and you’ll walk past long-standing panaderias, pharmacies and discount stores sandwiched among newer kids on the block like Latinx With Plants, Other Books and Re/Arte, spaces that are connecting with younger generations. Travel east and follow the tantalizing scents of the many taco stands tucked on side streets or the carnitas from Los Cinco Puntos, named after the five-pointed intersection where Boyle Heights ends and East L.A. begins. For new neighborhood favorites, try Milpa Grille or Brooklyn Avenue Pizza before catching an intimate concert at the historic Paramount.

But Boyle Heights isn’t just great food and cultural landmarks. The community has a rich history of political and social activism, depicted on walls as colorful murals inspired by the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and ’70s. More recently, the push against gentrification and displacement has garnered national media attention and inspired TV series like “Gentefied” and “Vida.”

While Boyle Heights has not seen the same level of gentrification as nearby Highland Park, business owners and residents alike continue to be priced out of the neighborhood. But people are stepping up. One example: the First Street Corridor. After the Metro Gold Line expansion in 2009, new businesses and mixed-use housing developments sprang up. But entrepreneurs with ties to the community as well as nonprofits stepped in to help preserve the area’s cultural makeup and respond to residents’ needs.

Now along the First Street Corridor, vibrant art spaces, bars and restaurants are mixed in with shuttered storefronts. On weekdays you can find mariachi musicians grabbing a bite at La Santa Cecilia between booking gigs. Come the weekend, crowds of millennials and Gen Zers crawl up and down the thoroughfare hopping from artisan shopping and poetry readings at Espacio 1839, to noisy Dodger fans at Distrito Catorce and drinks and DJs at Eastside Luv. Art lovers can stop in for birria at Don Boni or vegan pozole at Un Solo Sol before catching a play at Casa 0101 Theater down the road.

Farther east, the oldest Japanese restaurant in the city has stood the test of time. Otomisan has survived demographic shifts and gentrification, with little changes to its original menu and interior decor but with a loyal clientele. It’s evidence that wherever you venture in Boyle Heights, you are never too far from a neighborhood favorite or a relic of a more diverse past.