on shopping and signage
Conversation between two of my students:
UBC Student: Hey, there's a banana on the ground!
UCLA Student: Yeah, that happens a lot.
A summation of my past two and a half days in LA:
Stores visited so far: Target (West Hollywood and Culver City), Albertsons (Palms and Marina Del Rey), Trader Joes (Palms), Ralphs (Westwood) and Costco (Marina Del Rey).
Number of Donut-Croissant shops seen so far: Too many to count. We even saw one that claimed to offer "Donuts-Croissants-Bagel" - and yes, that's Bagel in the singular. Henry says they're mostly run by Chinese-Cambodians. Reminds me of the Chinese Food-Hamburgers-Pizza-Fried Chicken-Subs spots we'd see in DC that were also mostly run by Chinese from some indiscriminate location in the diaspora.
Number of times my ethnicity has come into question: 2.
Highlight of the trip so far: telling a recently paroled inmate that I was just a tanned Swede rather than the Asian he'd assumed me to be.
Also, within walking/bussing distance of my apartment (in Mar Vista, about a mile from my friend Jill's house and just down Venice Boulevard from Venice Beach) are the following culinary establishments:
1) Tito's Tacos (at Washington / Sepulveda): tasty tacos, with a ridiculously long line-up even at 8:30pm on a Sunday evening
2) Mitsuwa (at Centinela / Venice): the former Yaohan supermarket
3) Zankou's Chicken (Sepulveda / Santa Monica) : rotisserie chicken, accompanied by what my prof's partner Brandy calls "garlic lard"
4) Versailles (Venice / Motor): best Cuban restaurant in town. Named as such because the space formerly housed a French restaurant, and the Cuban owner-operators never bothered to change the signage.
5) Cafe Brasil (somewhere along Venice, just west of Versailles):
6) Howard's Famous Avocado and Bacon Burgers (also along Venice)
7) Empanada's Place (Venice / Sawtelle): empanadas filled with every imaginable filling, only 2 blocks from my apartment
7) Guelaguetza (Sepulveda / Palms): a Oaxacan Mexican restaurant, serving incredible mole (according to my prof, Henry) and also acting as a remittance service and community centre for the Oaxacan community in LA.
UBC Student: Hey, there's a banana on the ground!
UCLA Student: Yeah, that happens a lot.
A summation of my past two and a half days in LA:
Stores visited so far: Target (West Hollywood and Culver City), Albertsons (Palms and Marina Del Rey), Trader Joes (Palms), Ralphs (Westwood) and Costco (Marina Del Rey).
Number of Donut-Croissant shops seen so far: Too many to count. We even saw one that claimed to offer "Donuts-Croissants-Bagel" - and yes, that's Bagel in the singular. Henry says they're mostly run by Chinese-Cambodians. Reminds me of the Chinese Food-Hamburgers-Pizza-Fried Chicken-Subs spots we'd see in DC that were also mostly run by Chinese from some indiscriminate location in the diaspora.
Number of times my ethnicity has come into question: 2.
Highlight of the trip so far: telling a recently paroled inmate that I was just a tanned Swede rather than the Asian he'd assumed me to be.
Also, within walking/bussing distance of my apartment (in Mar Vista, about a mile from my friend Jill's house and just down Venice Boulevard from Venice Beach) are the following culinary establishments:
1) Tito's Tacos (at Washington / Sepulveda): tasty tacos, with a ridiculously long line-up even at 8:30pm on a Sunday evening
2) Mitsuwa (at Centinela / Venice): the former Yaohan supermarket
3) Zankou's Chicken (Sepulveda / Santa Monica) : rotisserie chicken, accompanied by what my prof's partner Brandy calls "garlic lard"
4) Versailles (Venice / Motor): best Cuban restaurant in town. Named as such because the space formerly housed a French restaurant, and the Cuban owner-operators never bothered to change the signage.
5) Cafe Brasil (somewhere along Venice, just west of Versailles):
6) Howard's Famous Avocado and Bacon Burgers (also along Venice)
7) Empanada's Place (Venice / Sawtelle): empanadas filled with every imaginable filling, only 2 blocks from my apartment
7) Guelaguetza (Sepulveda / Palms): a Oaxacan Mexican restaurant, serving incredible mole (according to my prof, Henry) and also acting as a remittance service and community centre for the Oaxacan community in LA.
posted by drunken monkey at 10:39 AM
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