Hyperkult

This is my town.

I moved to Los Angeles believing it to be the veneered, cliché-ridden city portrayed by many a reality show: an alienating urban sprawl bathed in sunshine’s constant glow by day and the near-blinding glare of Sunset Boulevard’s LED lights by night; overrun by opportunists, It-Girls and Boys in the making; and justly spoken of with contempt by my Northern Californian counterparts. In short, I moved there expecting to hate it.

Surprisingly, the opposite proved true. I fell completely, disgustingly in love with the city, which transcended every stereotype unfairly slapped onto it and gave me a lovely life during my two-and-a-half year living stint. If you are looking for a culturally and morally vacuous Los Angeles it is easy enough to find, but you would be doing yourself a great disservice by believing that L.A. begins at X Hollywood hotspot and ends at Toast. Not that there’s anything wrong with eating at Toast. (See below.)

My departure from L.A. was the impetus for me writing this guide to some of the city’s best restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, a list that is by no means exhaustive. The city is wont to rapid and trend-driven turnaround, where a restaurant may be anointed “Must Eat/See-and-be-Seen At” one moment then unceremoniously fall off the radar once something newer and trendier opens. (Remember Dolce? No? It’s probably better that way.) This may not be the definitive L.A. handbook, but “this is my town” and these are some of my favorite things about it.

Click here for the full guide

Dawn breaking over Bon Iver

Last weekend went by in a dreamlike blur. Somehow, a friend and I managed to stumble from Disneyland on Friday to a birthday party at The London West Hollywood on Saturday night to Bon Iver’s once-in-a-lifetime sunrise show at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, emerging with mildly scathed circadian rhythms and ravenous appetites. Luckily Joan’s on Third covered us on the hunger front, along with a couple other Bon Iver concertgoers with yellow wristbands matching ours. I vaguely remember an exchange with a fellow Hollywood Forever survivor while waiting for my food (Her: “Wasn’t that amazing?” Me: “It was amazzzzzing.”), but anything that happened after 9:00 AM was pretty much stricken from my sleep-deprived mind.

I’ve still got a small case of what I’m calling “graveyard cough,” but my scratchy throat is a small price to pay for a concert experience that I’ll never forget. Though the gates of Hollywood Forever—the “resting ground of Hollywood’s immortals”—opened at midnight, my friend Frances and I opted to take a disco nap at my apartment and show up around 4:00 AM. Fighting our way through Hollywood’s foggy streets and dodging a neon-clad male hustler yelling “You know you can afford me!” to passing cars, we finally crossed into a land of phantoms, headstones, and hoodie-wearing Silverlake hipsters.

We missed a screening of Bottle Rocket earlier that morning, a movie chosen specially for the occasion by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. But no matter, because there was a projection of Planet Earth on the mausoleum wall and hypnotic mood music to lull us into a half-meditative, half-delirious state. The band must’ve sensed how out of sorts we would all be, so they called on Buddhist monks—yes, actual Buddhist monks—to be our alarm clock at 5:30 AM with a blessing and chanting ceremony.

As if that wasn’t enough to settle us into a state of pure zen, the band then took the stage, launching into their work from For Emma, Forever Ago and the Blood Bank EP. I’ve always filed For Emma under “writing music,” or “hole me up in a cabin for the winter” music, which, actually, is just what Vernon did when he was recording the album. But live I wasn’t moodily swaying my head back and forth like I’m wont to do when Emma wafts through my headphones. Oh, no. There was a bit of strange seated dancing going on, some tapping of feet, and tempo-synched neck bobbing that I normally reserve for whatever mega-awesome remix I’m obsessed with at the moment.

Yet Bon Iver, all heart on stage, gave us the kind of magical melancholy that we all sleepily trekked there for. After a finale of “The Wolves (Act I and II),” the mostly ass-parked audience gave a standing ovation and Vernon left us with this cryptic note of thanks: “Thank you guys so much for making this so wonderful. You guys are so kind, for real. Let’s do it again, maybe—or maybe never again. I love that.”

I love that, too.

Stumbling through cemetery fog at 4:00 AM

Sleepy Bon Iver fans