The line started forming before the doors opened. By midmorning on March 21, it stretched down York Boulevard past the Portico Collection furniture reupholstery shop. The queue included a collection of neighbors, regulars and strangers all gathering to witness the end of an era in Highland Park.
Be Nice Have Fun — the shop that quietly grew from an Etsy store tied to a local pet shop to something much larger than its brightly colored brick-and-mortar walls — was throwing its own farewell party. The landlord was not renewing its lease.
Owner and local resident Destinie Escobedo called the event “Goodbye Fur Now,” a nod to the pet shop where her business first took root. Breakfast burritos from Kang’s Kuisine, free Mexican candy greeted visitors at the entrance. Inside, DJ Funky Caramelo spun Spanish music while people sipped matcha. Outside, others waited at the Saturation Room booth for photo shoots against 1990s and Y2K backdrops. By evening, the shop glowed with the particular warmth of something being both celebrated and mourned.
“I was overwhelmed with just how explosively loving and caring the community has been,” Escobedo told The LA Local. “It’s just such an amazing feeling knowing that people see the work that we’re trying to do here.”
The next morning, a sign went up in the window: “Last Day Open.”
The beginning of the end
The end came by text message. In late February, while on a health sabbatical, Escobedo reached out to her landlord about a leak. The response blindsided her. The building was in escrow, the landlord planned to sell and she needed to be out by March 31.
“Quickly after that [text], we did end up getting it in writing,” she said.
She cut her time off short and returned to York Boulevard to help her team figure out what came next.
After seven years — after the Etsy store had grown into a full shop, after the shelves had filled with stationery, greeting cards, stickers, books, clothing, toys and accessories sourced carefully from BIPOC, femme, queer and trans makers — Escobedo decided to sell down her inventory, raise what money she could and start looking for somewhere new.
She described the shop as a “Millennial Wonderland,” which undersells it. Be Nice Have Fun was also a food distribution site, a workshop space and a source of guidance during the ICE raids, and for many in a rapidly changing neighborhood, a place that still felt like theirs.
“Many people might not realize that, as a small business like ours, we are not just trying to take from the community,” Escobedo said. “We are trying to invest in the community.”
In fact, Escobedo opened Be Nice Have Fun in an effort to build something in the community her father grew up in. In 2019, Highland Park was already one of the most-discussed neighborhoods in Los Angeles for the speed of its gentrification.
The fight to stay in Highland Park
Escobedo believes Highland Park should be a case study in the double-edged promise of revitalization, where coffee shops and boutiques arrive alongside rising rents and disappearing neighbors.
According to NeighborhoodScout, the neighborhood’s median real estate price is $1,283,579 and the average rental price is currently $3,159. There is no cap on commercial rent increases here. No law requiring landlords to give small business tenants adequate notice. No requirement that a text message be followed by more than a written confirmation.
Noelle Reyes has watched this unfold for years. A longtime Highland Park resident, she owns Mi Vida, a Chicano lifestyle and apparel shop, and co-founded the NELA Small Business Network. She told The LA Local that Be Nice Have Fun’s closure is part of a pattern that plays on repeat: a landlord sells, a lease lapses, a neighborhood institution disappears.
“I definitely think what we lack is passion from landlords,” Reyes said. “They don’t understand the intricacies of their own communities.”
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez recently launched a $400,000 Small Business Grant Program in Council District 1 to provide relief to independently owned businesses facing rising costs, immigration enforcement impacts and other economic pressures.
“We need the state to step up and protect our small businesses,” Hernandez told The LA Local. “Now is the time to change state law, because that is what’s causing displacement.”
Be Nice Have Fun isn’t fully gone. Escobedo and her team are fulfilling online orders from her garage while she searches for a new space in Highland Park. She wants to stay in the neighborhood. Whether the neighborhood, as it continues to transform, still has room for her is a different question.
“Anyone who wants to know about our journey can sign up for our newsletter,” she said. “And they can also follow us on Instagram.”
