Earlier last year, Betty and I recapped our favorite travel movies of all time. Here’s a new one for the list: Exit Through the Gift Shop which made me want to visit London and encapsulated something intrinstic about Los Angeles better than 1,000 Hollywood-directed flicks. I’ll admit that for the first thirty minutes I thought I [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Los Angeles'
Travel Movies We Love: 2010′s Best
February 7th, 2011 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Travel Movies We Love
Tags:artists·celebrity·fakes·Los Angeles
Fail ‘o’ the Day: Did We Say Hotel? We Meant Motel.
May 25th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Fail 'o' the Day
Recently, I figured something out that seemed significant to me. I have no hotel in L.A. that I’ve ever stayed at twice. Each and every one has had some fatal flaw. Admittedly, I’m hampered by two things: A hope for a stylish interior, and a desire for ample amounts of the single most important hotel [...]
Tags:hotels·Los Angeles
Visiting Marilyn Monroe in L.A.
May 17th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Celeb spotting, Recommended sights, Urban archipelagos
Is it creepy to sightsee a cemetery, camera in hand? I had a blast at Paris’ Cimetière du Père Lachaise (with a great interactive tour here), so it didn’t strike me as weird to bust out the photography when at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Marilyn Monroe’s final resting place. The lipstick traces are fun. [...]
Tags:Los Angeles·Paris
Tastes Just Like Glitter Mixed with Rock ‘n’ Roll
May 14th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Celeb spotting, Novelty, Urban archipelagos
Earlier this week, I was in Los Angeles. I’ve already written about how I love the funky side of L.A., specifically Venice, where the photo above was taken. But this past trip I was a little obsessed with the glam side of L.A., possibly because I was listening to The Fame Monster most of the [...]
Travel Movies We Love: Sign Us Up for Communist Kitsch
April 1st, 2010 · 1 Comment · Blog posts by Lia, Travel Movies We Love
6. Good Bye Lenin! (2003) Alex lives in East Berlin. It’s 1989. His mom falls into a coma for a few months, and in that time the Berlin Wall falls. Mom wakes up, and because she’s a true believer in Communism, he painstakingly recreates all the aspects of East Berlin that are quickly evaporating in [...]
Tags:Berlin·Germany·Los Angeles·Russia
The Single Best Hotel Amenity
March 21st, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Good design
Monocle magazine is more than a little precious. Plus, they don’t make all their magazine content available online, even months later, which is just so very Conde Nasty. But they provide steady employment to Alain de Botton, who–while equally precious–is also someone I’m an admitted fan of. In Monocle’s hospitality-themed issue, he has a brilliant [...]
California Paradise
March 20th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Novelty, Recommended sights
Last night, I saw The Runaways, and I can’t stop thinking about a few things: Los Angeles Glam rock Knee-high sparkly silver platform boots–and how it could possibly be that I don’t have a pair The movie was a better-than-average bio pic (which is a low bar), but mostly, the visuals are what will stay [...]
Tags:beaches·California·favorite writers·Los Angeles·rockers
The Empty City: Beautiful, Disturbing, or Both?
January 21st, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Novelty, Obsessed with Japan, Urban archipelagos
I love cities. Pretty much every trip I’ve ever taken was, essentially, a trip to cities, and more than that, I identify with them as bastions of multicultural and cultural vibrancy. I subscribe to the idea of exalting the urban archipelago.
If you combine an obsession with cities with the idea of having it all to yourself, you get amazing “empty L.A.” shots by Matt Logue.
Tags:dreamscapes·Edward Hopper·Los Angeles·New York City·Tokyo