Tomorrow is opening night for A-Frame, a collaborative effort between Roy Choi (the chef who brought you Kogi and Chego) and David Reiss (the restaurateur who brought you The Brig and worked with Chef Choi to bring Kogi to his Alibi Room).  A-Frame is a hop, skip, and jump down from Waterloo & City in Culver City, if that helps.  If your “frame” of reference (ha ha) is more along the lines of Bob Villa, Tim “The Toolman” Taylor, and/or Martha Stewart, it might be more helpful if I say that the name defines its structure: a giant A-frame.  If This Old House wasn’t your idea of Saturday morning public channel fun, but going to 24 hour diners in the middle night was, you not only had a better high school experience than I did, but also would immediately recognize the restaurant as a converted IHOP.  Once inside, though, images of all-you-can-eat pancakes dissipate, and you’ll instead spot This Old House‘s blueprints all over it.  As the Los Angeles Times wrote last week, the walls are sanded, bare, naked.  We’re going back to the basics, people, starting with the foundation.

While Roy Choi isn’t A-Frame’s official chef (Jonas Curameng, sous chef at Kogi and Chego, is), he had a heavy hand in creating and curating the menu.  The current trend in dining continues to be science non-fiction in the kitchen: liquid nitrogen once used to freeze and safely store alien-human hybrid embryos in The X-Files is now used to fashion cocktails.  Chef Choi eschews all that; instead of HAL 2000 boxed in a sanitized hospital-white spaceship, he went a few hours/ice ages back to the apes, nature, and fire.  He’s aiming to bring you back to that primordial place, when we ate with our hands and tore with our teeth.  Almost everything on his menu is designed to be eaten this way, messily, with lots of napkins and, when you’ve run out of napkins, your shirt.  This is what food under fire used to taste like, remember?

None of the dishes I tasted were finalized when I tried them, so I’m a little hesitant about giving too many details.  That said, even in their semifinal stages, they were delicious.  Unlike the the predominantly Korean flavors of Kogi and Chego, the dishes here explicitly pull flavors from all over Asia: in addition to Korea, you’ll taste Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, China, the Philippines.  And, because this is all brought to you by the team who thought to put kimchi in a burrito, Mexico represents.  Take those flavors, im-/emigrate them into a building with architecture popularized by an American, and you have A-Frame’s version of Los Angeles, California, USA.  Eat your heart out, Tea Party.

Tomorrow, when you go, start with the fresh kettle popcorn sprinkled liberally with furikake, a Japanese condiment comprised of dry fish and seawood.  Seriously, you can eat this all day.  If you don’t believe me, believe one of the kings of molecular gastronomy, Michael Voltaggio:

Besides the kettle popcorn, get the fried chicken.  Mashing the Peking duck process with the beer can one, the chicken is brined, rotisserie’d, then fried.  Overall, it’s a 24+ hour process that results in juicy meat and a crackling, uber-crispy skin.  Alongside the chicken is their version of the 1,000 year old egg, so you have the poultry version of Dave Bowman in 2001 in that you’re literally going from beginning to end.  The chicken is served with two sauces, one red, one green.  My favorite is the green, a smooth salsa verde.  As it happens, the salsa verde is the Jane Lynch of the menu: it makes frequent appearances in the background, all of them memorable.  Try the salsa with the cocktail shrimp (seasoned and tossed haphazardly in a bowl instead of dancing daintily around a martini glass).  Others: lamb shanks that are beautifully charred and are meaty without being gamey; sweet crab cakes that are to be tucked inside lettuce leaves; and a tofu salad deemed amazing, even amongst the most ardent of meat eaters.

Even the desserts can be eaten with your hands.  I know you will be stuffed to the gills, but try at least one of pastry chef’s Beth Kellerhals’s creations.  If only one, the churros dipped in chocolate are the best thing sitting on the scale between Salina’s Churro Truck and Lucques‘s Churros y Chocolate.  Apparently, there also will be an apple pie with cheddar ice cream.  I’ll tweet all about it when I try it tomorrow.

Everything is served family-style, so get whomever you consider family together so you can try as many things as possible.  Oh, eating together at a communal table.  And sharing food and stories.  Remember when we used to that?

A-Frame is at 12565 Washington Blvd in Culver City. Starting tomorrow, the kitchen’s regular hours will be 5pm – midnight.  The fully stocked bar will be open until 2am, every day of the week.

Vote yes on Prop 21! Help save California State Parks! Wait…what day is it? [checks election returns] Oh crap.

Well, here’s another way to help our amazing parks and have a blast while doing it. The CA State Parks Foundation is having a weekend of movies showing off State Park locations used in the films.

Are you a Star Wars fan? Would you like to meet Mark Hamill and Billy Dee Williams? Here’s your chance! The highlight of the screenings will be a showing of Star Wars: Epsisode VI Return of the Jedi at 1:30 pm on Saturday (11/6). Mark Hamill will do a Q&A after the show. Billy Dee will sign autographs beforehand (for purchase). Jedi used Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park and Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park for Ewok related locations.

At 4:30 on Saturday, they will screen M*A*S*H* and a Q&A with Elliot Gould will follow. There will also be screenings of two the tv episodes of M*A*S*H* with additional Q&A. Both the film and tv show used Malibu Creek State Park for many of their locations.

Sunday brings Sparticus (Hearst San Simeon State Historic Monument) and Planet of the Apes (Malibu Creek State Park) with a Q&A afterward with actor Lou Wagner who played Lucius.

Ticket prices are $10 (adult) $8 (child) for individual movies. You can also buy 3 movie packages for $25 (adult) and $18 (child). What a deal to see these movies on a big screen!

Our state parks are an amazing resource and I hope you’ll support them by simply enjoying them. BONUS: if you ever wanted to find movie and tv locations and take your picture in those exact spots here is a list of state parks and the movies they played a part in.

The full weekend schedule is here along with theater locations for each day. (This info is directly from the event website.)

Saturday, November 6th

The Paramount Theater
The Studios at Paramount
5555 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 9003

12:30PM – Autograph signing with Billy Dee Williams andDavid Barclay
Autographs available for purchase from Billy Dee Williams for $40 and from David Barclay for $25.
1:30 PM - Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi(Running time: 134 min.), followed by Q&A with Mark Hamill
4:30 PM - MASH (Running time: 116 min.)
6:30 PM – Q&A with Elliott Gould
7:00 PM – Intermission
8:00 PM - M*A*S*H (2 TV Episodes)
9:00 PM – Q&A with actors William Christopher (Father Mulcahy) and Jeff Maxwell (Igor, the Cook), Charles S. Dubin (director), Gene  Reynolds (co-creator), Burt Metcalfe (producer), Dr. Walter Dishell (medical advisor), and Ken Levine (writer).

At Saturday’s screenings, popcorn and bottled water is included in the ticket price. A taco truck and bar will be on site with food and drinks for purchase.

Sunday, November 7th

Darryl F. Zanuck Theater
20th Century Fox Studios
10201 West Pico Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90046
1:00 PM - Spartacus (Running time: 198 min.) Introduction by film archivist Robert O.Neil.
5:00 PM (UPDATED)- Planet of the Apes (Running time: 112 min.) Q&A with actor Lou Wagner (Lucius) and the film’s makeup artist Daniel Striepeke.

Thanks to all who voted for their candidate for Classic Eats 13!

The Winner with 50% of the vote is: LAX Adjacent – Pann’s and The Buggy Whip!

We will meet at 5:00pm this Saturday night (11/6) at Pann’s for classic Googie signage and awesome diner nosh, then traipse on over for an after dinner cocktail at The Buggy Whip around 6:30pm. As ever, look for me with the Classic Eats sign at both places.

If you are going to come this Classic Eats, please comment and let me know so I can save enough space at each place.

Thanks for voting and I look forward to seeing you there!

Pann’s
6710 La Tijera Blvd
LA 90045
323-776-3770

The Buggy Whip
7420 La Tijera Blvd.
LA 90045
(310) 645-7131

October 31 was such a lovely day — and with the yard fully ghoulified and a few hours to slay before any trick-or-treaters arrived, it was all the better to go for a long bike ride to test out the timelapse capability of  my new GoPro cam.

My unplanned route ended up incorporating the “supersecret” ped/bike path that parallels the 110 Freeway between Chavez Ravine and Cypress Park, but then I detoured onto the LA River bed where my immediate proximity to the mouth of the Arroyo Seco left me no choice but to see what it would be like to ride upstream along its bed.

See for yourself (might make for an interesting group ride one of these days — who’s in!?):

PS. My entire trip totaled about 26 miles, but the cam’s memory filled up about a third of the way out where this vid stops. Sigh, 4-gig SD cards just ain’t what they used to be.

The gray represents countries without electoral democracy, according to think tank Freedom House.

So.  Did you vote yet?  Are you parading your “I Voted” sticker arrogantly the way people at Coachella breathed, lived, and slept in their wristbands?  No?  Well then.  Get on it.  Where’s My Fucking Polling Place is self-explanatory.  Use it if you need it.

If you don’t know what on earth is going on because you were the type of person who partied the night before the big final exam, studied a little bit in the morning, and went on to set the curve (no, I’m not bitter at all), there are a few last minute study materials readily available: reliable ol’ Smart Voter has the full text of the measures and candidate statements; the LA Times’ Voter Guide (with their endorsements) is available here; and GOOD Magazine put together a 51-page behemoth of a guide here.  Red pill, blue pill: make your choices wisely.

Too apathetic to vote?  Yes, me too, almost: because nothing gets you out of bed faster than the promise of a free meal and/or drink,  the powers that be will bestow a heap of free things upon you if you vote.  Flashing your “I Voted” sticker at the following establishments will earn you:

• a free appetizer at STREET with $10 minimum purchase (me, I’d go with the kaya toast – it is that good)
• free fries at The Counter
• a free Espolon tequila margarita between 7 and 9pm at Pink Taco
• a free cupcake at LARK in Silver Lake
• a free glass at wine at Pourtal
• a free shot of soup, pickles, or dipping sauce at The Grilled Cheese Truck
• 10% off your tab at Santa Monica’s Bite Bar & Bakery
• free iced tea or lemonade at Mixt Greens
• 10% off any bottle of wine at Colorado Wine Company
• 10% off your purchase at The Manila Machine’s food truck
• a free cookie from Platine Cookies (get a platino while you’re there, too)
• a free hot dog from Pink’s (limited to the first 1000 people with the sticker)
• a free margarita at CASA downtown
• free admission to the Skirball Cultural Center
• free admission to the Comedy Store’s Original Room show
• free admission to tonight’s show at the Viper Room

[I'm updating the above list as the day goes along.]

Oh, and I guess you can get an “I Voted” badge on FourSquare, if you’re into that sort of thing, but  I might officially check out of the app after seeing the number of people check into the San Francisco riot last night.  What, pray tell, exactly is the thought process behind checking into your local riot?  Anyway, whether you’re voting because it’s your civic duty or because the carrot is too appetizing and too free to pass up, just get on out to the polls.  That will be the one productive thing you’ll do today.

* The research and data behind the map can be found on Freedom House’s website.

As every year, I had to make a cheat sheet. No, this is not an official b.la endorsement of anything.

It’s easy. Find your polling location here. Polls open at 7 AM and close at 8 PM.

mouse pad

We B.la’ers contemplated a Halloween series this year–some kind of spooky or scary L.A. collection of posts focusing on our favorite fright factor in the city or some bone chilling experience we’ve had here. Sad fact: many of us (such as myself) were too busy trying to stay afloat in our (very scary) millennial economy to have time to devote to the series, and a notable number of the remaining B.la’ers didn’t really have a scary experience in the city to relate (and no, encounters with fake boobs or bad fashion do not count; we’d already established that).

Me, one of the things I love the most about L.A. is how very dark and yet simultaneously cheerful it is. Honestly, it’s that very sensibility that convinced me to move here in the first place. A little more than nine years ago I was visiting L.A.. I’d interviewed for a job here but I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to live in Los Angeles. My impressions of the city were largely negative, gleaned mostly from a prejudiced east coast crowd who criticized the city for not enough book stores and metro stops and too too many motivational speakers and girls in fuck-me heels. Women in D.C. wear Reeboks on their way to work, okay? So I came out here for a week to make my own determination and came to the conclusion “Yes, and?” otherwise known as “You say ‘fuck-me heels’ like that’s a bad thing.”

Minnaert's Trashy Lingerie from Wikimedia Commons

The turning point came on the day that Andrea, my bff who came out here with me to visit, dubbed “the sex and death tour of L.A.” We went to the Fredericks of Hollywood Lingerie Museum [now closed, so sorry readers], the Museum of Death [recently reopened, you'll be happy to hear], Trashy Lingerie on La Cienega, and Necromance on Melrose. These latter two stores we happened upon by accident, drawn in by the army of bunny eared teddy-clad mannequins in the window of the former and the desiccated animal carcasses, bird skeletons and foot binding shoes in the latter. Hurrah for fetishistic consumerism!

But the pièce de résistance of the tour was Skeletons in the Closet, the gift shop at the Coroner’s Office downtown. I had read about the store in Roadside America, but I didn’t really realize that the shop is actually *at* the Coroner’s Office, which is to say, you walk by a lobby of people waiting to identify remains on your way in to buy beach towels with chalk outlines on them and garment bags shaped like body bags.

Chuck "Caveman" Coker's picture used through a Creative Commons license

The shop itself is a bit ramshackle, occupying as it does, a left over office not so skillfully repurposed as the coroner’s emporium. The day we went, there were a handful of people. A couple of women seemingly on their break from their downtown jobs were doing a little gift shopping after lunch. There was an adorable teen-aged goth girl complete with a purple lined cape, swirly eyeliner and a dad who looked like he could be related to Tom Boswell. He had apparently given her a ride and was also funding the purchases. “Oh dad look,” she’d exclaim, “Souvenir toe tags! Can I get one dad?” “Sure honey,” he’d reply, “Go right ahead.” Coming from the east coast, I’d never actually seen a chipper goth kid before. She was all smiles. I was charmed. Even better, Teen Vampire had a doppelganger. A Hannah Montana type was there with her mother on an informational interview with the coroner’s investigator because that’s what Hannah wants to be when she grows up. “You never forget your first body,” the coroner’s investigator was saying. “I remember I had to identify the stomach contents: green beans and onions.” “Ew!” said Hannah, her mother and the Coroner in unison and all three wrinkled their noses.

It was without a doubt the most surreal and creepy vacation day I have ever had, beginning with the gallery of John Wayne Gacy clown paintings at the Museum of Death and ending with the purchase of souvenir insulated mugs that said “L.A. Coroner’s office. Stay cool!” on the side. I was in love. I moved here within the year.

I like to think of the zeitgeist here as “sunshine gothic.” Clearly, not everyone sees the city this way (or we’d have done that series for you), but from my perspective our happy decadence is one of our best qualities. This is the way the world ends–not with a bang but a party.

Halloween detritus -- my favorite kind

L.A., how was your Halloween?  I went to the 4th annual Halloween party held by one of my writer’s group friends.  We had amazing dj music courtesy of the big outdoor Mexican wedding next door.  And we had an always enjoyable theatrical bent to many of the costumes.  These included:

–Maleficent from “Sleeping Beauty”
–The Cure’s Robert Smith as a goth zombie, or “Gombie.”  I didn’t realize how much he looks like Edward Scissorhands.
–A pink Crayola crayon
–A Renaissance Vampirella
–Waldo
–A Killer Bee
–The Bride of Frankenstein
–A crazed Laker fan (aren’t they all?)
–Charlie Brown
–Eddie Munster

Surprisingly, we had no “Jersey Shore” cast members, and no politicians.  But we had some topical characters, including a Chilean miner and a couple from “Dancing With the Stars,” albeit with a fishnet twist.  And, perhaps appropriately, our costume contest winner was a tv character: Tina Fey/Liz Lemon from “30 Rock,” including rectangular glasses, clipboard, and bag of Sabor de Soledad Mexican cheese puffs.

So, how about you? Any standout costumes at your Halloween wardrobe (mal-)functions?