From July 15 to the 17th, downtown LA hosted Future City – Little Tokyo Design Week; a four-day festival celebrating innovations in design and technology. With the evolution of sustainable urban development as its chief goal, this first installment of LTDW showcased container exhibits, film screenings, fashion shows, dance parties, product demos, performances, music, and awards ceremonies. And a caravan of LA’s finest food trucks, of course.
If you find yourself in Bangkok and looking to start your night out on the town at 2 a.m., you ask the locals where to go. After a 15-hour plane ride from LAX to Bangkok paired with a 15-hour time change, the jet lag makes you lose your mind. I took a “nap” upon my arrival that felt more like a coma. Attempting to sleep for an hour at 6 p.m. turned into me waking up at 2 a.m!
Panicking that I was missing out on the nightlife, I asked around if anything was still happening and received a unanimous response that I should head over to Khaosan Road. Like a careful little tourist, I got specific directions from my hotel concierge and jumped into my cab, prepared to give the driver a play-by-play of how to get from point A to point B. He looked at me with a grin and said “Khaosan Road! Everyone goes there. I don’t need the map” and we were off.
The summer season is almost upon Los Angeles, if one can even call that slight temperature elevation between April and May a “season change”. No matter! Even now, some winter-banished grills are seeing daylight again, and America’s favorite pastime is returning to SoCal lawns. Just in time for barbeque season, DIKLIK art and Meltdown Comics bring you Meat! – an art show dedicated to the edible flesh, and featuring art by Michael Kupperman, Brandon Bird, Charlyne Yi, Carlos Ramos, J.R. Goldberg, Julia Vickerman, Myke Chilian, Layron Dejarnette, John Olsen, Richard Lee, Deanna Rooney, Britt Sanders, Andy Ristaino, and Jhonen Vasquez.
Just down the street from The Roxy Theatre, Talésai on The Sunset Strip has been dishing out tasty Thai cuisine to notoriously picky L.A. palates for nearly 30 years. Family owned and operated since the beginning, the restaurant is now expanding on their recipe for success and opening a neighboring “sister space”, serving up simple yet delectable street food.
The vision of chef/owner Kris Yenbamroong, Night + Market delivers a menu of Thai tapas in a unique gallery like setting. Having practically grown up in the restaurant’s kitchen, the chef has been cooking almost as long as he’s been able to hold a fork. “I’ve always been a fan of food that tastes amazing and isn’t fussy. I want everything on the plate to be essential to the dish, so that means no garnish, or fluff. That’s what street food is; it’s one thing that tastes really good and maybe one other element, like a condiment.”
For the full article, go To theroxyonsunset.com
Saturday and Sunday, the streets of Silver Lake were filled with hipsters, carnies, corn dogs, oversized stuffed animals, rides, and the sounds of ear-pleasing bands. This year’s 30th annual Sunset Junction Street Festival recruited tens of thousands of Angelinos to brave the heat, impossible parking, and intense crowds with the mission of shoving their way into the front of one of the 5 music stages. The must see acts were: Ghostland Observatory, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Big Daddy Kane, Sam Sparro, Mayer Hawthorne, Fishbone, Shiny Toy Guns Hybrid Digital, Ohio Players, The Whisperers, Bad Brains, and Lee Scratch Perry…just to name a few.
Today had to begin a very specific way before I sat down to write this piece: I had to eat cake for breakfast. That’s because the the Dark Arts Festival entertained their guests with a real-life cake-eating contest, in the spirit of the event’s second night’s theme: “Let Them Eat Cake: The French Revolution” Inspiration is important, after all.
Opaque could best be described as a sort of novelty restaurant in Santa Monica, California — one that a lot of people seem to have heard about through the grapevine but to which few have actually been. If you haven’t heard, it’s where full-course meals are served in a completely pitch-black dining room (yeah, the above pic was taken with a flash-bulb) and plays like a sort of sensory-deprivation experiment that sort of doubles as a gourmet dining experience. One of the first things you notice about the place is how seriously they take their theme — even the outside makes it stand out as the only place on the block in total darkness. So is it worth all the hype?