BHAM BUZZ
My L.A.
Story

From Chinatown to Olvera Street
But enough already with the glitz and glamour. L.A. is also great for being one of the country’s most international cities, and for a literal taste of its diverse offerings, you can’t miss the authentic ethnic foods to be encountered throughout the city. One must is a weekend visit to Chinatown for a brunch of Dim Sum. For the uninitiated, Dim Sum is a general term for various dumplings and other Cantonese specialties, ordered not from a menu but off of carts that pass continuously throughout the dining room. Two of our favorite places, generally considered the best, are Ocean Seafood and Empress Pavilion.

Next, follow your meal with a leisurely stroll through Chinatown’s many small markets, packed with not only Asian groceries and herbs but also toys and colorful curios that make for great souvenirs.

If, instead, you’re in the mood for some Mexican flair, you can travel just a block or so to Olvera Street, known as “the birthplace of Los Angeles.” Here you can sample fresh taquitos and other authentic Mexican cuisine at a number of outdoor cafes, enjoy spontaneous outbreaks of Mariachi music and peruse the shops for Mexican arts, crafts and gifts. Olvera Street, where free tours are offered every Wednesday through Saturday between 10 a.m. and noon, is also home to a number of historic buildings, including the Avila Adobe, built around 1818 by former mayor Franscisco Avila, and the Pelanconi House, which was built in the 1850s and is considered the oldest brick house in L.A.

Beyond Hollywood
For television and movie lovers, there is no shortage of studio tours that offer a glimpse into some of your favorite film sets and plenty of juicy trivia. NBC Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers all offer tours, and it’s worth taking at least one of them to get a flavor of behind-the-scenes Hollywood.

In contrast, though, to the packaged view into the world of movie stars and filmmaking that the major studios offer, L.A. also gives theatre buffs the chance to see some of the highest-quality plays anywhere in America, up close in some truly intimate settings. Places like the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, Actor’s Gang Theatre in Culver City, The Coronet Theatre in West Hollywood and Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills are among many venues for new plays, and you never know who might show up on stage—or in the audience.

L.A.’s Museums
Along with great food, international ambience and theatre, L.A. also boasts excellent, long-standing cultural institutions, from its many art museums and galleries to important historical sites. Along with hosting some spectacular raveling exhibitions, the museum also holds permanent collections featuring contemporary, African, ancient American, Chinese, Japanese, German Expressionist and Islamic art, to name a few Meanwhile, The La Brae Tar Pits display the site where tar, tens of thousands of years ago, trapped animals such as mammoths, slots and saber-toothed cats, producing a collection of fossils that dates to the last Ice Age. The accompanying Page Museum allows visitors to watch through a window as scientists continue to clean and repair the ancient bones excavated here.

I’m leaving out plenty of other noteworthy institutions, for there are too many to mention in a short travel piece (though I hate to omit one personal, idiosyncratic favorite—the Museum of Miniatures, home to a tiny Titanic constructed of 75,000 toothpicks, a miniature duplicate of the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors and business-card-size replicas of Van Gogh paintings).

But on a more serious note, no visitor to L.A. should miss the Museum of Tolerance, best known for its Holocaust Exhibit dedicated to keeping alive events of that period from the rise of the Third Reich to the liberation of the concentration camps.

Each visitor begins the tour with a passport card containing the name of a child whose life was changed by the events of the Holocaust, and throughout the tour the passport is updated until the ultimate fate of the child is revealed at the end.

Surf’s Up
Aside from Hollywood, of course, L.A. is perhaps best known for its beaches. There are several famous stretches, from quirky Venice Beach to Manhattan Beach, known as the birthplace of beach volleyball. You can take your pick, but you’d be remiss not to visit Santa Monica Beach if for no other reason than for its famed Santa Monica Pier—touristy, but classic for its kitschy souvenir shops and greasy seafood diners, not to mention a fullfledged amusement park. While you’ll find a series of fun rides for both kids and adults, there’s one iconic fixture you can’t miss: the Pacific Wheel.

Always a mainstay of the Santa Monica Pier’s Pacific Park, it’s gained new notoriety these days as the world’s only solar-powered Ferris Wheel. Lit with more than 6,000 multi-colored bulbs and offering an expansive view of the Pacific from on high, it comes close to capturing the spirit of L.A. in a single fixture: pretty and bright, slightly unreal-seeming and pleasantly thrilling.

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