{"id":1739,"date":"2013-07-19T11:32:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T18:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1739"},"modified":"2013-07-19T11:32:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T18:32:38","slug":"before-next-season-starts-read-a-few-essays-from-my-forthcoming-book-on-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1739","title":{"rendered":"Before next season starts, read a few essays from my forthcoming book on Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Notebook\u00a0on\u00a0Cities\u00a0and Culture<\/em>‘s fourth season begins in just over two weeks, on\u00a0Thursday, August 1st<\/strong>, with a series of in-depth conversations conducted right here with the cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene in\u00a0LosAngeles. Until then, why not consider tiding yourself over with a few essays from my forthcoming book,\u00a0A\u00a0Los\u00a0Angeles\u00a0Primer: Mastering the Stateless City<\/strong><\/em>? The good folks at KCET Departures (a\u00a0Los\u00a0Angeles-centric site operated by the big public television station in these parts) have been running\u00a0an essay from it each week<\/a>\u00a0for months now, each based in a different part of the city, and thus each one examining a different realm of its world-in-microcosm.<\/p>\n

“One can technically live an entire\u00a0Koreatown<\/a>\u00a0life in only Korean or Spanish – or indeed, only English – within these almost three square miles, but it would by no means count as a\u00a0full one.”<\/p>\n

“Say what you will about their limited reach;\u00a0the Red and Purple Lines<\/a>\u00a0surely must rank among the cleanest, most comfortable, least urine-smelling systems in America. You may lose twenty minutes waiting on platforms, but you’ll have taken a subway \u2014 in\u00a0Los Angeles!”<\/p>\n

\"\"“The place to stock up on canned green tea, buy a genuine futon, burn an hour at the arcade, eat a heaping plateful of Hayashi rice, or gaze upon the finest men’s style magazines:\u00a0Little\u00a0Tokyo<\/a>\u00a0remains all these, but does it, strictly speaking, remain Japanese?”<\/p>\n

“The freeways<\/a>\u00a0fascinate in the same way the crueler university social experiments of the sixties fascinate: they show us something about ourselves, though not necessarily something we want to see.”<\/p>\n

“Built around one of the few traditionally strollable ‘cute streets’\u00a0Los\u00a0Angeles\u00a0has to offer,\u00a0Larchmont Village<\/a>\u00a0has undergone an intriguing, if subtle, process of cultural fragmentation since the era of the Three Stooges and Raymond Chandler.”<\/p>\n

“An object of fascination for the writers of ‘When Harry Met Sally’ to ‘The Simpsons’, restaurant critics to Yelpers, Ethiopian cuisine has its\u00a0Los\u00a0Angeles\u00a0center on a single block of Fairfax Avenue. We can easily visit\u00a0Little\u00a0Ethiopia<\/a>\u00a0for a satisfying meal, but how, then, to assure ourselves of our ability to engage with a\u00a0culture\u00a0beyond paying for its food?”<\/p>\n

\"\"“Neither urban nor suburban,\u00a0Silver Lake<\/a>, with its namesake reservoir and surfeit of fascinating houses, has become a space for style, wellness, and artisanal retail. But should we fear a rising monoculture?”<\/p>\n

“Tourist guidebooks may direct Los\u00a0Angeles’ visitors from abroad to the Walk of Fame, but just two miles east on Hollywood Boulevard, they’ll find a much more fruitful cultural experience \u2014 certainly a spicier one \u2014 in\u00a0Thai\u00a0Town<\/a>, a neighborhood with less David O. Selznick and more Apichatpong Weerasethakul.”<\/p>\n

You can read about these places and more at\u00a0KCET Departures’\u00a0A\u00a0Los\u00a0Angeles Primer<\/em><\/a>\u00a0page, which posts a new essay each\u00a0Tuesday. Naturally, I welcome any and all suggestions and pieces of feedback savvy readers such as yourselves may have to offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Notebook\u00a0on\u00a0Cities\u00a0and Culture‘s fourth season begins in just over two weeks, on\u00a0Thursday, August 1st, with a series of in-depth conversations conducted right here with the cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene in\u00a0LosAngeles. Until then, why not consider tiding yourself over with a few essays from my forthcoming book,\u00a0A\u00a0Los\u00a0Angeles\u00a0Primer: Mastering the Stateless City? The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-los-angeles-primer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1745,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}