Singular Magazine is running a four-part series I wrote on ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The second stop is Koreatown, where high-tech billboards and dense high rises collide with soothing tea houses (my favorite is Hwa Sun Ji Tea & Coffee) and mineral spas specializing in ancient healing arts. The timing of this piece is [...]
June 28th, 2010
From kimchi to karaoke in Koreatown
June 21st, 2010
Travel the globe without leaving Los Angeles
You’re in a place where exotic smells waft from sidewalk cafes. All around you, signs are scrawled in foreign scripts and people speak in unfamiliar languages. Food-market bins are crammed with piquant spices and unusual produce. Colorful curios line the shelves of neighborhood boutiques. Surely, you’re very far from home. Or, you’ve just stumbled into [...]
October 28th, 2009
La Cienega: LA’s Restaurant Row
As a teenager growing up in Orange County, I knew how to get to two and only two places in L.A.: the Third Street Promenade and La Cienega Boulevard. On the rare occasions that my friends and I escaped the ‘burbs, these were the two places we journeyed to in order to — in our [...]