Eric Brightwell is all the things you’d want in a neighbor. He’s been around for seemingly forever, he rides his bike everywhere when he’s not on the bus, he’s civically minded, he knows where the best spots are, he has great taste in movies and music, and he has the greatest obsession: drawing and painting neighborhood maps of Los Angeles.

Lo all these years, I was lucky enough to meet him at his spacious home, one of the best apartments you’ll find in Silver Lake as it’s near all the best haunts, it’s surrounded with fauna, and it’s inhabited by one of the biggest cats you’ll ever have the chance to pet with your foot.

In this episode we check all the boxes: local politics, tales of working at the original location of Amoeba, tales of working in a musty basement of porn, discussing why the Channel Islands matter, Thomas Brothers Guides, and the realization that mapmaking is subjective.