Category: Misc

  • LA’s Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and Koreatown

    Los Angeles has three Asian neighborhoods you’ll find on the map, and I decided to give them all a visit. For starters I booked a tour of Chinatown and Little Tokyo from Downtown LA Walking Tours (same company that runs the Haunted Tales tour.) The tour started in Chinatown, where the central plaza was covered…

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  • Barnsdall Art Park and a curious encounter with the legacy of L. Ron Hubbard

    Once I’d finished sipping my little cup of espresso at Blue Bottle, I hopped on another bus; this time to Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood. It’s a unusual park on the top of a hill, featuring a house built by Frank Lloyd Wright. There’s a not particularly large patch of lawn outside the fence…

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  • The Echo Park Time Travel Mart

    After spending the morning gorging myself on a food tour, I plopped my bloated ass down on a bus seat for a ride to the Echo Park neighborhood so I could visit a store aimed at time travelers. The Echo Park Time Travel Mart sells items for a variety of time traveling use cases, such…

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  • The Last Bookstore

    Late this evening I stumbled into The Last Bookstore, a large downtown LA store selling books as well as music, DVDs, and various other items. Much of the store was somewhat inaccessible due to author Rowan Blanchard speaking about her new book. This took up most of the main floor thanks to a sizable audience…

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  • Haunted Tales tour from Downtown LA Walking Tours

    This evening I took the Haunted Tales tour from Downtown LA Walking Tours. Their website kind of spoils many of the locations — but it also undersells the tour. First problem: all the photos of buildings and locations were taking during the day, yet this is a night tour. Everything looks creepier at night so…

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  • Historic downtown LA walking tour

    I spent the morning on a long walk through downtown Los Angeles on LA Conservancy’s Historic Downtown Walking Tour. I won’t go over everything on the tour, but I’ll cover a few stops I found interesting. The Central Library is actually two buildings glued together, and aside from books and such it’s also home to…

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  • Museum of Jurassic Technology

    Over the past few years I’ve told pretty much anyone who’ll listen about my fascination with the type of real life interactive adventures from the likes of Nonchanance, including their Jejune Institute, Elsewhere Public Works, The Latitude, etc. [citation NOT needed] and every now and then someone responds by telling me about this oddball thing…

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  • Venice… California

    Over the summer of 2017 I took a long trip around various parts of the Mediterranean, with a stop for a few days in Venice, Italy. While there, I remember thinking “I wonder what that other Venice in LA County is like?” So I knew I’d have to go and find out at some point.…

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  • New Age “sovereign citizens” found guilty of bank robbery

    Mugshots of Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf and Randall Beane from the Knox County Sheriff website. Recently a strange “sovereign citizen” court case caught my eye due to one of the defendants involved. If you’re not aware, sovereign citizens are people who believe for various reasons they’re beyond the reach of law, often because they found some…

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  • Greece

    After checking out of my Airbnb in Rome, I caught the “Leonardo Express” train to the airport, then hopped on a flight to Athens. My friend was gracious enough to pick me up at the airport and let me stay with him and his father at their home in Glifada, Athens. I was a little…

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