Los Angeles still has...

some purdy nifty eye candy. Sometimes I miss that gritty city (specifically for the grit but mostly for our friends). Today, tomorrow or this weekend, maybe you can grab yourself a camera of sorts and walk around yer fair city. We would love to see what you see.

gifts under paper garlands

Olvera Street and El Pueblo de los Angeles

Still looking for gifts in Los Angeles? Just a few walkable blocks from Chinatown is Olvera Street, the crowded market of El Pueblo de los Angeles.

This pedestrian street crowded with shops, restaurants, and merchant stalls loaded with wild bursts of color and hung with paper (and plastic) garlands is all that Los Angeles has of its old town center. It may be touristy and pricier that finding this stuff in Mexico but we still love it.

The festivals for Dia de los Muertos get crazy crowded and all the kids get their faces painted with a skull's grimace.

There's never a shortage of Luchador masks in every design imaginable.

The shops overflow with colorful stuff from inexpensive trinkets to elaborately embroidered dresses. From December 16th to the 24th Olvera Street hosts Las Posadas, with processions beginning in the evening at the Avila Adobe and piñata bashings for the kids. Details and directions can be found at the links above. Don't miss Olvera Street. Even if you aren't looking to shop, the colors and swirls of people will give you a holiday kick in the pants.

gifts under red lanterns

11/21 Chinatown, Los Angeles

If you live in the Los Angeles area and are still on the hunt for gifts, don't forget about Chinatown. During a short visit to LA just before Thanksgiving and in need of a few more little-somethings we took a turn under the red lanterns.The range of possible gifts in the tightly packed shops include the cheesy/fun and the special/expensive. Take the time to visit the markets that at first glance appears to offer only food items. Often these markets have the best unusual gifts hiding in the back.If you see this Lady Fish Paste sign turn around and go up the escalator past the mirrored wall. This will take you to a swell market filled with some marvelous ceramics and a wall of glass apothecary jars full of the most pricey loose teas I have ever witnessed.It was a bright cold morning but the clouds put up a good backdrop for the lanterns and the wild ornate buildings.

If you are unfamiliar with Chinatown in Los Angeles the main drag is along N. Broadway and N. Hill Street just a bit Northeast of downtown. If you are driving South on the 110 freeway take the Hill Street exit. It will drop you right into the thick of it. Finding free parking can be a bear on any day of the week but there are many lots that typically charge $5 or less for the day. Even better, skip the parking and take the Gold Line train to the Chinatown stop. It's a short walk to the shops. And by the way, Phillipe's is in the same neighborhood in case you haven't tried their horseradish mustard.If you don't make it for holiday shopping, don't fret, you can still make the 112th Annual Golden Dragon Parade for Chinese New Year on February 5th, 2011.

**If you are up for some bipedal adventuring, historic Olvera Street can be traveled to on foot in a little less than ten minutes. Stay tuned for an a-go-go take on the pueblo. If you can, make plans to visit next week in time for Las Posadas

mo' betta mummies

California Science Center and Mummies of the World

In August we had a visit to Los Angeles, our old stomping grounds, and took in Mummies of the World, a temporary special exhibit at the California Science Center. We were joined by the sister a-go-go and the nephew a-go-go. For hours, directions, and admission info do check on the links above but here's a few tips gleaned from our visit...
The web site is unfortunately being vague about the closing date for the show. They say it ends in the Fall some time. Yes, but WHEN? If you want to see the show while it's in Los Angeles be sure to check and double check the web site to be certain that the exhibit is still running. As of today, I can't seem to find a closing date anywhere. Admission to the California Science Center is normally free, but this is a special show so the tickets are a little pricey. The standard adult admission is $21.50 (if you buy them online). mrs. a-go-go did some internet digging and found a special coupon offer that let us buy adult tickets at the box office for $16. Sorry I don't have a link for that coupon, it was a limited time thing and seems to have dried up. Next is parking. It is possible to find parking in the neighborhood around Exposition Park but your time is likely to be limited to a few hours. The parking lot for the museums is normally $8 per car but the fee is sometimes more if there is a big event. If you use the museum lot beware that the entrance to the parking garage is a hard right immediately passed the parking attendant. If you miss it you have to circle the park again to get back.
Shew! OK, on to the exhibit. Sorry, photography is not allowed in the show, so I'm a bit short on images here. We went on a Friday morning near opening time and the crowd was not too bad. With the exhibit nearing the end of its run things could be heating up and the crowds thicker, particularly on the weekends. There were a few waits to get close to some cases but not enough to get frustrating. The collection of mummies and the wealth of didactic material for the show is marvelous and there was a reasonable amount of space around most of the displays, but the display heights are not designed with kids in mind. If you go with the young'uns be ready to do some lifting so they can get a better look. The show begins with a collection of mummified animals. This provided a good illustration of a key point of the show, that there are natural mummies and then there are the standard mummies that we all think of right away, all those carefully prepared bodies wrapped in linen and some housed in an ornate sarcophagus. The mummified animals provided a good illustration of how common mummification is without the intervention of human handiwork. These naturally mummified animals all died in conditions where their bodies dried quickly enough to thwart the decay of skin and some fleshy bits. There was a house cat that had dried up in a drafty crawl space under a house, and a hyena that had dried on the savanna after being partly scavenged by big critters. These examples were all missing their hair and most of the internal bits had been consumed by the usual rabble of small scavenging critters, but the skins were generally intact and wizened. The leathery dry and hairless skins were shrunken and stretched over the ribs and pelvic bones, and the faces were all contorted into startled grimaces.

So these are natural mummies, I get it, lets move on to the Egyptian stuff. I wanna see some golden masks, and dried up bandages!... Ah, not so fast. There is actually very little of that sort of thing in this show, and if it is what you are after you will be disappointed. There is one Egyptian mummy of a wealthy individual complete with a decorated sarcophagus and bandage wrapped body with crossed arms, but the bulk of the show is not focused on this sort of thing. At the beginning of the Egyptian section there was another collection of mummified animals, these having been purposely mummified by the Egyptians to serve as companions to the people mummies. There were lots of cats, a cayman, and a snake among the menagerie all wrapped up in lumpy bundles and a few that had been decorated to look like the animal in life. These gave a good counterpoint to the naturally mummified animals that we had just seen driving home the difference between a natural mummy and one that had been prepared carefully for burial.

The rest of the show is divided by the parts of the world where the mummies were found, and most of these examples are actually classified as natural mummies, even when they were purposefully buried. For example, one of the collections is a group of Europeans who were interred in a crypt that just happened to be cold and drafty enough to thoroughly preserve the bodies. I suppose that in most cases the bodies would decay to little more than bones with the help of rats, maggots, and bacteria but with all the water sucked out of 'em right away they became these unintended oddities with weird toothy grins. This is the sort of thing that I can see leading to legends of the undead and vampires. Apparently some of these natural mummies became tourist attractions for a while in their European crypts.

There were natural mummies from South America, who may have intentionally been buried high in the Andes where people knew they would dry out, but they are still considered natural, and bog bodies with black tanned leather skins and spongy rubbery black bones. There were fantastic interactive digital displays that exhibited three dimensional imaging of selected mummy's interior. There were late Hellenistic Egyptian mummies that had been entirely stripped of their bandages. And more....

All in all a good show, and worth the trouble, but I am glad we found the discounted tickets.
Later, we did some mummy making of our own with the nephew a-go-go.

The California Science Center has a whole lotta stuff to offer beyond their temporary shows like Mummies of the World. In the last year a large new wing of permanent exhibits was opened and admission to all of this part of the museum is free.
This new wing is mostly filled with the Ecosystems galleries. These are divided into zones including the Rot Room (HA! I have one of those at home.) and the big aquarium tank pictured above. After our date with the mummies we didn't have time to explore all the new stuff so we will be back for more soon.
If you're in LA and have a day to spend watching jellyfish swim and making sequins shimmer don't miss the Science Center. It'll keep you busy all day even without the mess of mummies.

Cook's Tortas, yum!

We sold what we could at Saturday's yard sale and are madly packing up what is left. After spending the morning stuffing boxes we thought we'd knock one item off our list of places in Los Angeles that we have never managed to visit. So, for lunch we took time off to try out Cook's Tortas in Montery Park.

I am so glad we did. Cook's Tortas is a delight. I had the #61, or Zacatecas, and it is the first torta that has measured up to my very first torta years ago at a long gone stand, Tortas Pancho. My first torta there was just about the bestest, juciest, roasted green pepper zingiest, fresh avocado and tomato chompiest, toasted on the greasy grill crunchiest sandwich ever. My memory of that torta is probably blown out by it being the first revelation of what chorizo could do but I have to say that the torta I sampled at Cook's today gave that tasty memory a run for the money. At Cook's the bread was tasty-chewy with a nice toasted crunch, the chorizo seco was tangy and sloppy with red juice, and the avocado and pico de gallo added up to a big messy delight that had to be scooped with a fork from the wrapper. What tortas are on offer each day changes so if you go you may not see the Zacatecas on the board, but there were many other combinations (including a few vegetarian options) that gave me a Pavlovian rush just reading the menu. mrs' a-go-go had the Mohito. We sampled each other's and her's was good but it didn't have the out-of-control charm of the Zacatecas. The tortas come with a small side and we chose the caprese and the potato salad, both were nice counters to the tortas. To wash it down we had two flavors of aguas frescas, delightful lightly sugared fruity drinks mixed up daily.

I can't recommend Cook's Tortas enough and it is now high on our list of things we'll miss in LA. We'll have to go for another taste on our first return visit after the Big Trip. Until then, if you're in LA, I hope you'll go try out these super-bomb sandwiches. [Ced if you're reading this, get crackin'. You have alot of good food to get out and try.]

trying to cram it all in

it was my birthday yesterday and when asked what i wanted to do, i simply couldn't decide. we're leaving in two months. two months! and we're not just leaving on our trip, we're leaving los angeles. like mr. a-go-go said, l.a. has got some good eats and fun places to visit.

is it sad to admit that celebrations are all about food? and when you have such great choices around you, how do you choose? i feel like i need to cram them all in before we leave. you know, not just go once but go two or three times. so when i was asked i had to think. and think. and think.

would we hit the valley and get french fries at Dagla's?

or should we roam around India Sweets & Spices and get cheap veggie curries?

and i know we just had banh mi but stacey had never had banh mi and i really do love that chocolate dipped strawberry at Fosselman's.

oh wait, what about Blue Hen? they have such delicious food. organic, locally grown and all that jazz plus their turmeric fries are pretty tasty.

which made me think of pho but mr. a-go-go wouldn't be accompanying me and i feel bad getting pho without him.

switching back to sandwiches i thought maybe we should go to Porto's for cheese rolls and cubanos. Porto's also makes excellent coffee but it is so close i think i'll pick something up there next week. potato balls anyone?

i just couldn't decide so i opted to play outside of the city. sort of. instead of Dagla's or Blue hen or Ba Le, i decided we should go thrift shopping in Covina. at the magic thrift. where i scored a technicolor afghan, a handful of doilies and a bag of porcelain bunny heads (thank you stacey!).

and for lunch, since we were driving through Pasadena and i had a craving for pie, we parked ourselves at Pie 'N Burger and enjoyed a classic that rivals In N' Out any day. oh soooo good.

for dinner it was thai food ordered from a local place not a favorite but worked out fine (note to local place, you need to update your prices on your website). when you're happy with thai iced tea, sate and kang ka ree it's pretty easy to find adequate thai.

seriously l.a., i am going to miss your culinary options. big time. oh and i just remembered, why didn't i think of macarons? i've always wanted to try Paulette. phew! it's a good thing they do mail order.