A decade ago, if you were a writer, artist or musician based in Los Angeles County who had finally saved enough of a nest egg to consider buying a home, one appealing area that might have still seemed affordable would have been Altadena.
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In 2015 the median price for a detached single-family home in Altadena’s 91001 zip code was about US$500,000.
In the increasingly elite Silver Lake, around 13km (eight miles) southwest, similar digs would have cost about US$1.4 million. Continuing on that line, in West Hollywood the number was more like US$1.9 million, and you could forget about Santa Monica and neighbouring Pacific Palisades nearer the coast.
But Altadena had a magnetic draw. There was something about the untamed, inventive spirit of the place, and the generous creative community.
An intangible energy drifted in the air, like it does in places that become counter-culture touchstones.
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No highway ran through its foothill neighbourhoods, and in freeway-dependent LA that made the place feel like a bit of a secret.