For most people, this is a place to drive through. The majority of people who experience Barstow do so as a gas or food stop between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. For them, it offers little more, and the small towns outside of the mighty metropolis of Barstow (at under 30,000 people it is by…
The festival is small, but cute. I am in Newberry Springs, California, about twenty minutes east of Barstow along Interstate 40, on a crisp November morning, joining literally thousands (not at one time) of locals and visitors honoring the little green nut, the pistachio. Here in California’s high desert (high referring to the elevation, significantly…
This is not what a desert in California is supposed to look like. The thought creeps into my head for the hundredth time, and I’m barely halfway up the Pisgah Crater. My drive here, only two miles from Interstate 40 and Route 66, just east of Newberry Springs and about thirty minutes from Barstow, went…
It is, without a doubt, a beautiful afternoon in Los Angeles. Warm - it is in the low 80s at noon on this July day - but with a gentle breeze, it is the sort of day you just want, you just need, to be outside. The sky is a deep blue, and I am…
I’ve walked these streets a hundred times or more. Probably a lot more. And yet here I am, finding myself learning about new features I had never before noticed. I am here in Old Town Pasadena for a walking tour organized through the Pasadena Museum of History. The tour is focused on “saloons and speakeasies,”…
Note: another version of this story appeared in City Lifestyle Laguna Niguel magazine. Otto is only a few months old, but he is already bigger than many human adults. And yet, by elephant seal standards, Otto is still quite small. And that’s why he’s here, in an enclosure at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in…
There’s an excitement in the air that can only come from people hungrily waiting for food, searching rows of stalls for the next morsels on which to dine. The music is loud, just barely drowning out the sound of my stomach rumbling. It is hardly 5pm, and already the place is crowded, although the line…
If asked to name the best venue in Los Angeles to see a concert, most would immediately say the Hollywood Bowl. And really, who can blame them? Set in a natural bowl in the Hollywood Hills, the amphitheater is a beautiful, open-air gem that is coincidentally celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. (My last three…
It is an unexpected way to start my day, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. I came into United Bread and Pastry to pick up some traditional Filipino treats, perfect to begin a day of exploration here in Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown. As always, I introduce myself, say that I’m a writer doing a story on…
How much of my story came from this place? Would I still be the same person had I grown up elsewhere? How much of this city is in me? Or I in it? Brand Boulevard has certainly changed in the forty-one years since my birth, though it is still - and probably always will be…