mitsuwa mmm...

This weekend we hopped in my brother's barely working volvo and drove our friends down to socal for shows in LA and San Diego. Unbelievably, it was the hottest weekend on record in Los Angeles as we sat in traffic on the freeways with 5 people, a dog, a trunk full of equipment... and no AC! Eeeek! It was actually debatable whether windows up or down was hotter.  Los Angeles. I just don't understand the concept. You must drive everywhere; everywhere is at least 45 minutes away. This is no way to live. Well, upsides of our weekend included excellent Thai iced coffee, make your own pizza dinner, club card purchases, Young Prisms, and the mitsuwa japanese market. If you happen to be way out in west LA I would definitely check out this gem.



Beef noodle bowl lunch special. heck ya



book alert

I've been completely consumed by Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries. Easy is a totally human hero whose dark upbringing in the racist 1940s south gives him the smarts to solve mysteries for his friends in Los Angeles, who wisely turn to him rather than the white police in the 1960s. In some books, he fulfills a seemingly simple request from a close friend, in others, trouble arrives in his otherwise peaceful life as a building superintendent and he maneuvers out of it unharmed. I'm reading Bad Boy Brawly Brown right now, but I think I need to go back to the beginning and read them in order. Enjoy!

American Novelist Walter Mosley. Pic from this site.

happy LA plants

Hmm how do I get my plants to look like these? pics from my visit to sunny LA

Los Angeles

Mimoun is in the New York area touring with Family Portrait, so I planned a long overdue visit to Echo Park to visit my coolest cousin, Molly. Due to the saddest thing, Molly had to be in San Diego for the weekend, and I decided to get on my Delta flight anyways and spend the weekend with my aunt and uncle in Manhattan Beach. Their home is glorious, surrounded by other equally glorious homes, and the size of their pantry is in fact larger than the kitchen of our Mission apartment. Sneaky LA. I was quickly enamored with my soak in their hot tub, steak dinner, and stellar red wine, and began to think, why do I hate LA again? Ah yes, when I woke up at 4 am as usual, trying to solve every problem in my life simultaneously and needing a glass of water, I was brought back to earth by the salty-sweet, pool water taste of tap water that’s traveled hundreds (thousands?) of miles from its source and has picked up heavy metal souvenirs along the way. I choked down my Calm Forte homeopathic sleeping pills, and lay back in bed reviewing the memories the thick, chemistry experiment water had prompted: Muggy, earth quake weather days, playing tag in the dry backyard of my grandmother’s house in Hollywood, my grandfather’s shaky hands reaching for the hot sauce at El Coyote restaurant on Beverly Blvd, and my parents bellowing along to Randy Newman in our purple minivan driving down Highway 5 “I loooove LA...We love it!" My internet is too slow right now to embed the video, but please go watch this music video on Youtube if you've never seen it-hilarious! Fond memories, yes. Fond of LA, no. A great big freeway. Happily, I'll be back under my cloud of smug in the bay area tomorrow night, sipping delicious tapwater with a microwaveable trader joe's dinner.