My favorite tacos in LA

Taking LA, circular style
Midnight Ridazz do group rides through LA. My bike is a POS and I'm probably not in good enough shape to hang with these guys, but Taco Tuesday meets five minutes from my house in ... two hours. So ...

Reason CCCLXXXXVI we are happy to revisit Los Angeles: the San Gabriel Valley
Real Sichuan food at Chung King.

The appeal of Los Angeles
It's simple: there are two big, exciting, diverse American cities that you can explore forever and never get bored. One has New York weather, one has LA weather. That's it.

Loving Los Angeles
I just had the spiciest meal I've ever had in this city, after five years of chasing Thai and Vietnamese delicacies. It was a pizza, at Mr. Pizza on Fairfax. They also have a silly good beer selection, with like six Samuel Smith varieties.

barcampLA 4: EmpowerThyself.com
EmpowerThyself.com is an activism engine - a social network, a community-edited site, and a game with achievement points. Contribute and learn about goals and tactics; recruit other activists; earn gold stars. Been around for a year now.

I've been wondering for a while how social network sites could be leveraged into real-world action - bingo! What an awful name though.

Man, two good talks in a row. Psyched.

barcampLA 4: personal unit tests
Taking a concept from software development and applying it to your life: test small parts of the system constantly. These tests should:

  • Be fixable within 1-2 hours after figuring out you failed the test
  • Test steps, not ends ("did I study Spanish for 20 minutes today?" not "am I fluent in seven languages?")
  • Test what, not how (don't really get this one)
  • Be as easy as possible, or you won't do it. Pencil and paper? Spreadsheet? whatever
  • Be answered every day. But you can create tests that have a time period longer than one day, e.g. "have I talked to my mother in the last seven days?" - you do it once, and then it's a freebie for the next six days

Goal is mindfulness - being aware of different areas of your life. Good areas to include are things like: health, community, relationships, work, finances ... but avoid introspection. "It's so much easier to lie to yourself about things that are just in your head ... I decided to only test things that someone else could verify if they happened to be there."

Guy (I think his name is Ted) tracks what % of tests he tracks every day, and has a goal of hitting at least 50% every day. Has gradually trended upwards over time, best day was 73%. He makes his test results public, with a changelog.

"Personal unit tests are a way to discover if you're kicking ass."

Q: "How do you know if you've covering enough areas of your life?" A: "The simple answer is you don't."

My favorite BCLA4 talk so far.

LA stuff oops late

Los Angeles writes thoughtful letters to the editor

Living in Los Angeles

BLDGBLOG: Greater Los Angeles

Finally, I'm so sick of people who don't live here recycling the same shit about Hollywood and how LA "doesn't actually exist", just because they can't submit to the fact that LA's too big and weird to figure out.
Los Angeles is where you confront the objective fact that you mean nothing; the desert, the ocean, the tectonic plates, the clear skies, the sun itself, the Hollywood Walk of Fame – even the parking lots: everything there somehow precedes you, even new construction sites, and it's bigger than you and more abstract than you and indifferent to you. You don't matter. You're free.
LA residents given to talking about life in the city talk about freedom a lot. Without a cohesive citywide identity or community structure, without a city center in any sense of the word, you don't situate your life in relation to some imagined ur-community or parental figures. You're just there. But I'd add one thing: it's true that the city as a whole cares about nothing. But there are a thousand communities, more, within the city.

Super-useful, how did I not see this before.

This is about my speed right now. Go weird LA, go.

Kyochon has the best fried chicken I've tried in Los Angeles
6th and Serrano, a couple blocks east of Western. Then go to Lollicup a few doors down for boba. Perfect. (via Jonathan Gold, of course)

Los Angeles may be visiting Big Sur this weekend

LA warehouse treasure trove of comics and collectibles
Frank and Son Collectible Show in the City of Industry. Not really my thing but I haven't gotten nearly enough exposure to the kitsch+comics+pop cult+lowbrow art side of LA.

Farmlab is not a cornfield

Farmlab has a truly ridiculous (ly good) space in downtown LA, where they art, grow food, party, and project lasers onto smoke to create green clouds.

Because we don't do enough driving in Los Angeles

Spoon at Little Radio

The picture captures it - sweaty, rocking, a little loose. Which is sorta shocking because, shit, a Spoon show? in LA? Guess we're playing summer league rules.

Really useful and loving portraits of LA neighborhoods. They just started, but they say they want to do all of them. Tons of photos, maps, recommendations on places to go, the works. You will feel less guilty about saying the word "blog" after checking them out.

Why, maybe I do want to hear embarassing stories from total strangers. Shows in LA on July 25th and August 22nd, at King King.

June 29 2007 weekend - Los Angeles is: sundrunk

Cliff jumping in Malibu

Although with the drought this year, jump at your own risk...

Los Angeles notes I

I'm dreading Eli Broad's massive downtown ego extension. Give LA a center, are you kidding? "I was fearful we would have unplanned development there that would create a mess" - something's happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Broad?

I want a bullet train to the Bay as much as anybody, and arguing that you can't invest in rail because "the voters are crying for relief from congested freeways" is the very definition of myopic, but Governator's got one good point: if you can't attract private investment (for a state-sponsored monopoly ... with a glut of capital looking for an opportunity ...) maybe time for a reality check.

Pulls from a bunch of different LA food blogs ... but no LA-specific feed?

Maybe LA: An Everpresent Gray Has Conquered the Sky And Defeated the Sun Edition

Slaving away near the sin mines
I'm now spending a few days a week working for a company in the Flynt Building. On my floor is a mysterious room.

Need to buy beer in Los Angeles? A lot of it?

Theater in Los Angeles, imagine that.

Talks about killradio, "a Los Angeles collective of activists and DJs devoted to non-commercial radio and independent media", and cool stuff to do in LA, including a Joshua Tree sculpture environment.

LA Dec 23: Downtown Art Deco Tour and Union Station Walking Tour

LA Christmas double feature: Bullitt and Dirty Harry

Yellow loading zones are in effect from 7 to 6 only, and not on Sundays, and green loading zones are 8 to 6 only, not on Sundays, but white loading zones are 24/7. And don't fuck with red or blue ever.

Good categories list for browsing. Oo and they link to chowhound threads!

LA apts: Rentslicer
LA rental prices by neighborhood + individual listings, overlaid on Google Maps. Neat.

"Mountain and loft parties, puppet shows synced to garage music, bake-offs at 180 beats per minute, late night bike tours, costume balls, instant beach art, movies in unusual places, unlicensed parades, outlaw slip and slides, extravagant variety shows, benefits for the non existent and random games of dodgeball."

I'm skeptical of the butterfly and the philosophy (if I wanted a car-free city I wouldn't have moved to LA, kids) but what the hell.

A PDF to print out and keep on the coffee table to stimulate thought and the occassional ill-advised venture into the unknown.

"Whether you're interested in space aliens, Sound Baths, or local history of the strange kind, the Integratron is a can't-miss Morongo Basin landmark." - Hi-Desert Star, January 11, 2006

overheard in a Los Angeles coffehouse
"Well I figure if I fool around with him long enough he'll take my headshots for free..."

train over highwayTaking the train through southern California is a strange, foreign luxury, like having a sommelier pour your drinks at a football game. Most of the trip has been through densely populated areas, so the driver's been leaning on the horn (or the conductor's been hanging on it, or whatever) most of the way. The train tracks don't skirt the cities - it's a constant level of sprawl and we're just cutting through it. Mostly, though, it's the novelty of public transportation that makes an impression - you've given up some of your God-given auto-driving freedoms to sit on this train, and in exchange you get to sit and relax for a bit.

USC April 2006 - "Microfinance and Beyond" conference
Hosted by the business school. Mohammed Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, is one of the speakers.

The Great Taco Hunt
Tracking down every little frickin taco truck roaming the streets of LA. Insanity.

Gallery nineteen eighty eight
The archetypal LA hipster art gallery.

LA Eats with Maps
Ning clone of Citysearch. But it's interesting now because it's populated solely with restaurants people cared enough about to add to the database.

ArthurBall Feb 25-26 LA
Music festival, outside in Echo Park, featuring Joanna Newsome plus lots of bands I've never heard of. Also films. Also a "vibrational healing chamber".

Compression
Last friday of every month at King King. Tech-house, electro, techno, goodstuff.

Sour Harvest
"Your one-stop reference source for all the latest happenings in the LA art underground."

Los Angeles Shortcuts - A-1 Courier - Messenger Service Los Angeles
The stuff that I'm qualified to judge is right on. This is my best post ever. Yes, better than Leisure Town.

Holy shit, Crenshaw to Rossmore.

Los Angeles real-time traffic info
Hollywood surface streets
LA freeways

Tim Burton's garage sale
Near LA, March 11-13.

This is 50mm Los Angeles, L.A.'s original Graffiti Art website.

edit: seems like that's dead, but the Instagram account is active as of 2023.

US Treasury Auctions in LA
US Marshals List of Sellers (federal seizures)
Supposedly the savings here are not that great, and you wouldn't be able to have a mechanic check the car out first.

A bunch of people on MeFi try to convince me not to be an idiot

I had a donut from some random sketchy place in LA last night. They also served cheesesteaks and cafeteria-style Chinese food. It was great, as good as any Krispy Kreme I've ever had.

So I'm just saying, they're out there.

LAist
Thank God. Defamer sucks so hard.



I just don't know. It has a discussion panel and it's sponsored by the city - bad signs.

machine project
Cool-sounding LA art gallery.

Tony Pierce
Lives in Los Angeles.

eatLA
Restaurants, bars, stories.

sixspace
LA gallery.

pics from Big Sur will go here
really, it's gonna happen

Ok, so it took a while ...

kozyndan
"kozyndan are Los Angeles based mad scientists ... the couple also moonlights as freelance illustrators."

places i want to eat at in LA
La Oaxaquena map

reviews with pics

Luke Ford
Who the fuck...
update: ...is this prick? Today's post: "I'm scared of black people because I'm Jewish."

california is burning
The satellite pic I've been wanting to see.

freeway blogger
"Someone is blogging the highways of Southern California..."

the route (revised)
La Punta to Quebec to El Contento to Alcyona to Vine to Argyle to Hollywood to Fairfax to Sunset to Barrington to San Vicente to 4th to Wilshire.

un-city
I'm having some aesthetic problems with Los Angeles. Where are the moderns? I know, believe me I know, Los Angeles is Not New York, but people came out here, I thought, to build something new. So they threw off their shackles, went west, watered the desert, and created...kitsch? Some of my favorites -- Neutra, Wright -- did their stuff out here, but the kids have forgotten about them.

local hikes
Hikes near Los Angeles.

Supply and Demand for Electricity in California
Graphs usage vs capacity in almost realtime.

l.a. delivery services
why cook la (mon-fri)
la to go

Blogging.LA
Cool pic.

beyond baroque
Will avoid the poetry slams, but some of this might be fun. Do they serve drinks?

This is Lukas Bergstrom's weblog. You can also find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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