A Swipe at Silver Lake

I was surprised to see Anne Beatts’ Silver Lake gift-giving guide include “Campus Queen” lunch boxes for “certain denizens” of the “Swish Alps” (“Boutique Bopping,” Nov. 26). Some gift! While I doubt that Beatts is personally prejudiced, her comments unintentionally reflect lingering social acceptance of artificial stereotypes long unacceptable in public discourse among other groups. Would The Times have been so cavalier about the Crenshaw or Fairfax districts?

Yet there is also irony in her comments: While older members of Silver Lake’s gay community remember the term well, today Silver Lake is on the cutting edge of social life in America. Its businesses, markets and clubs are mixed, straight and gay, in a healthy environment far beyond the ghettos of the past. There are, to be sure, some who still consider their hilltop homes the “Swish Alps,” but then my grandmother called refrigerators “iceboxes” and bus drivers “motormen.” Neither existed in my lifetime.

JIM WILKE

Los Angeles