In the early 2000s a superhero could be spotted on the streets of Echo Park shoveling the accumulated dirt and mud gathered around the storm drains in our hilly neighborhood. His daughter dubbed him dream man! Soon a video was posted of his exploits cleaning up the city. Now a new generation has picked up the shovel and taken its rightful place.
Paul Bowers has been cleaning up and spraying down the blocked drains in the Elysian Heights neighborhood of Echo Park for over a decade. His team of everyday super heroes can be seen with construction grade garbage bags filled with the eroded hillside dirt that pools around schools, bus stops, homes and businesses and bocks rain water from entering the elegant sloping watershed and making its way down to Echo Park Lake. This dirt dries and becomes airborne, threatening the health of the growing children and creating a hazard for cyclists and pedestrians.
Once collected, this dirt magically changes into hazard-preventing fill to create safe walking along Echo Park Avenue. Over 10 dangerous trip and fall hazards have been filled immediately surrounding a heavily trafficked area around Echo Park Avenue and Ewing Street where Paul Bowers resides. In a one block area, there is the aforementioned Elysian Heights Arts Magnet Elementary School, the Baxter Montessori School, and the little-known Echo Park Headstart serving the low income, long-time residents of this rapidly transforming bubble.
Where once mothers with strollers, little children, and seniors had to be extra careful to not fall off the sidewalk into the eroded ditches was previously hosted, shade trees, now native fragrant flowers and native plants spring to life and hold the soil where it belongs.