Everyone's beginning to get a bit antsy in Los Angeles. The sun is shining, but there's still a chill in the air, and spring just can't seem to find its way here. So what are we as citizens to do when the calendar has turned its back on us? Find some place to explore, grab a bite to eat and soak up some culture.
Anyone who follows food in Los Angeles has heard of Zach Brooks. The irascible New York City transplant made a name for himself in The Big Apple with the website Midtown Lunch, scouting midtown Manhattan lunch spots that passed the crucial "under $10" test. Now that he calls Los Angeles home, the former music industry nine-to-fiver has begun chronicling great lunchtime eats from Santa Monica through Downtown on beyond on the sister site Midtown Lunch L.A..
This week, you should change everything that you think you know about food in Los Angeles. You might expect a certain price for a bowl of ramen at Daikokuya, for example, or that beer is only for afternoon or evening enjoyment. Both are wrong, but that's OK. It takes a week like this to show us the error of our ways.
After a quiet start in January, Los Angeles Art Walk livens up in February. The monthly event falls on Valentine's Day this year, so you may see couples using the self walking tour as a date night and witness the ongoing revival of downtown. If the decade old downtown renaissance was an art movement, it would be called urban romanticism.
Galleries on the self guided walking tour are free. Admission for the major museums still apply. Here is a look at the exhibitions you can find during Art Walk, and all during the month of February 2013 in downtown Los Angeles.
This is a week of opposites. On the one hand, the city is filled with delicate dinners and lovely nights of wine and chocolate, thanks to the unstoppable force of Valentine's Day. If the idea of a Hallmark Holiday filled with empty declarations of love makes you want to gag, there's a pretty strong pushback movement underfoot that you may just be interested. With the forces of good and evil, love and sweatpants, battling it out for the city's attention this week, the guaranteed winner is you.
100 years ago this November, as he stood among a crowd of tens of thousands at the edge of the San Fernando Valley, William Mulholland said a line that's gone down in the history books: "There it is--Take it." The engineer said it as crisp Sierra Nevada mountain water from more than 200 miles north flowed down the San Gabriel Mountains onto the valley floor, forever changing, or, as some would say, giving birth to the Los Angeles we know today.
You might have thought that, as with Sunday night's Super Bowl blackout, so too did your dreams of binge eating and over-drinking fade into the night. You may have even resolved on Monday morning to shape up and start living the healthy life. If that's you, it may be time to plan a few days outside of the city. Between beers in El Segundo and Sunday afternoon noodles, this just might not be your week. Then again, there are westerns to watch and a conversation between Dave Barry and Matt Groening that may be enough to keep you in town.
This week, it's all about the weekend. From plant workshops in Altadena to Cinespia screenings at The Cinefamily on Fairfax, it's going to be a great time to enjoy the events that Los Angeles has to offer. Of course, there's a little thing happening on Sunday called the Super Bowl (more on that in a moment) that certainly can't be overlooked. Start planning now, you're going to have a busy few days.
Taking over a neighborhood institution is never easy, especially a mile up Beachwood Canyon, where the lack of other dining options means the locals are sure to notice. Last year, the old Village Coffee Shop space changed ownership after several decades, and fell into the waiting arms of Patti Peck (formerly of Edendale Grill) who dubbed her new venture Beachwood Cafe. The place was long overdue for an interior reworking, and the menu of chunky chicken salad sandwiches and basic flapjacks needed an overhaul as well. For the space, Peck chose Barbara Bestor, whose previous works around Los Angeles had garnered a fair amount of attention. When it came to the food, Peck decided not to man the kitchen herself, and turned to Minh Phan (aka chef Minh) to build from scratch, while still keeping some of those comforting basics the neighbors had come to rely on.
When you live in Los Angeles, there's never any shortage of things to take in. It just so happens that this week may offer more opportunities to swallow up the tastes and culture of the city than any other in recent memory. There are free-wheeling discussions about climate change, art openings, and gratis museum tours. Oh, and if you hadn't heard, it's also Dine L.A. Restaurant Week.
