You’ll see that “TPP” is a one-stop shop for all your urban travel needs, from researching a trip start to finish to creating an itinerary tool sharable with friends. The TPP team has personally visited all the choicest spots, from restaurants and hotels to spas and shops, in the hottest destinations around the globe. And they never take compensation for covering a venue on the site, which means you’ll get the most honest, unbiased travel information for the world’s most exciting cities.

The first stop? London. While the site will ultimately encompass guides to global hotspots from Los Angeles to Beijing, it’s being tested with all of the London content. That said, please excuse any bugs you encounter while the site’s in this testing phase. The team would love to hear what you think, so click the “Contact Us” link on the site (or simply email us at info@thepurplepassport.com) to send questions, comments, and feedback.

As you peruse the London picks, be sure to try out the site’s super handy dandy “Passport” function. Once you sign up as a user, you can save your favorite picks in your own customized Passport. From there, you can print the lot of them, email them to friends, or use the ultra-convenient mapping tool to plot your sightseeing excursion or night on the town.

On behalf of the whole team, I welcome you to The Purple Passport community and hope you’ll pass the word to fellow travel enthusiasts. Get ready to put your stamp on the world!

Since the Chocolate Bar and Root Down moved on, Gabah has never been the same.  It had gone downhill in recent years (in other words, it had become more pop/glam/mainstream), and I suppose its demise was inevitable.  Still, there’s no other spot  that has even come close to the sense of community and the roster of hip hop/soul/rare groove/dancehall DJs I encountered during Gabah’s best years.  I’ve never been one for the Hollywood scene, and Gabah was comfortably off the Hollywood radar–a rare combination of a diverse, hip-but-not-hipster crowd and a sexy yet low-key vibe. The place was real.

In honor of its parting, I’m pulling up one from the vaults: a piece I wrote about the Chocolate Bar at Gabah in 2001.

So, a hearty goodbye to Gabah, and a big thanks for the piece of myself it gave me.

Subscribe to the blog to get a taste of some truly fresh travel writing, glean travel tips, and follow my dispatches from Los Angeles and beyond!  So why purple?  Visit The Diary to find out!

Singular Magazine is running a four-part series I wrote on these transportive ethnic enclaves in Los Angeles.  First stop:  Little Ethiopia.

For the past several summers, I’ve taught a month-long summer writing “camp” for adults through the Los Angeles Writing Project at Cal State LA. We meet twice a week for 2 1/2 hours and immerse ourselves in the craft of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and memoir. The course is like a “toolbox” of writing techniques that can be applied to any genre: evoking a strong sense of place, describing people and characters vividly, crafting convincing dialogue, and understanding narrative structure. The course is open to anyone but is especially recommended for teachers of all levels looking to incorporate creative writing curricula into their classrooms and earn continuing education units. For more information about the Summer Creative Writing Intensive, visit the LAWP website.