Los Angeles has a subway. This surprises almost as many visitors as it does natives. First moving here, I only considered apartments within walking distance of a station. Even then, I sensed this criterion, all-important elsewhere, has historically meant little to Los Angeles apartment-hunters. Despite taking four or five journeys underground every week, I understand, […]
West Hollywood came into official being on November 29, 1984, 25 days after I did. But which of us wears our years with greater dignity? I strain to look timeless, but timelessness, improperly cultivated, slides easily into blandness; West Hollywood can rest assured, at least, that it runs little risk of that. A mixture […]
“So they put chapulines in their kimchi?” a friend in Mexico City asked about my neighborhood. I do hold out hope that eateries in Koreatown, the district of Los Angeles it makes the most (and the least obvious) sense for me to live in, will one day offer its fermented cabbage topped by roasted […]
Each Tuesday, KCET Departures, a site about Los Angeles run by the city’s well-known public television station, will run essays adapted from my book-in-progress A Los Angeles Primer. The debut features Dennis Hopper, David Hemmings, and the reasons I got here in the first place: No two people have ever lived in exactly the same […]
“Los Angeles does not get the attention it deserves — it gets attention, but it’s the attention that Sodom and Gomorrah have received, primarily a reflection of other people’s bad consciences.” Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies “Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like — Six Suburbs in […]