With a grant from the Awesome Foundation — which is apparently really a thing — these folks hung swings all around LA. So people could swing. I kinda wanna go try to find some.

That’s why I’m glad The Last Bookstore in LA had its grand re-opening last week, after vacating its former (and much tinier) spot at 4th and Main. Los Angeles may not be Seattle, but we’ve got our fair share of great little bookshops.

Me, I’m a fan of Skylight and Wacko, mostly because both are walking distance from my apartment. I also love two Glendale shops right across the street from each other, the Brand Bookshop and Mystery & Imagination (whose sign outside actually reads “BookFellows”). And I know at least one of my fellow bloggers (as well as many of you, I’m sure) is a fan of Book Soup (and with good reason; that place rocks). And I know Travis is a fan of the Taschen shops; I like the one in the Farmers Market because I pass it on my way home from work every day.

But I’m sure there are a bunch I don’t know about. What’s your favorite bookshop in LA?

No, actually, the opposite is true: On warm days like the ones we’ve been having lately, nearly everyone gets out and does a little perambulating. No, the problem is that when people in Los Angeles choose to use the sidewalk, they do so while forgetting or being wholly ignorant of the rules of sidewalk travel.

Seriously: My resolution for the second half of 2011 is to try to be a little more cognizant of my fellow pedestrians, which means staying alert and making sure to share the concrete with everyone. And, frankly, I think some of my neighbors could use a little refresher on sidewalk etiquette as well; the sidewalks here tend to be narrower than in other metropolitan areas, and it’s a bit more of a challenge to maintain proper respect for the people around you. As such, hereare some answers to a few of the more frequently asked questions about sidewalk etiquette:

Right now I’m walking down a Los Feliz street with a friend. We’re walking side-by-side and having a chat. I can see another couple walking toward us, also side-by-side. What should we do? When a pair of couples walking abreast approach one another on a narrow sidewalk, etiquette dictates that both couples should, for the time it takes to pass one another, proceed in single file. This prevents the more deferential couple from having to walk into the street, or onto the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb, an area often littered with animal feces and other filth. By walking single file, you may be forced to temporarily abandon conversation, but frankly what you were saying wasn’t very interesting, so really we’re all better off.

I own a dog. As I enjoy obeying the letter of city leash laws rather than the spirit, I walk him on one of those Extend-O-Leash things that allows him to walk up to 60 feet ahead of or behind me. How can I best use this to irritate people? Since many Angelenos love dogs, it’ll be difficult for you to annoy your fellow pedestrians, but effort will bear fruit. If possible, walk alongside your dog but as far from him as possible, so his leash is stretched across the thoroughfare like a tripwire in a jungle adventure film.

Is it ever appropriate to give someone The Shoulder? You should only bump someone with your shoulder when you physically have no other place to direct your body. If it’s impossible to get around someone without walking into an obstacle — like a wall or a mailbox or a Greenpeace canvasser — you may have to do some bumping.

It’s very important that I convey to a friend, in as few characters as possible, the fact that I just figuratively laughed out loud as his most recent joke. How should I proceed? Text messaging while walking down the sidewalk is what ethicists call a “double-edged sword,” since doing so makes people want to attack you with a sword. The preferred practice is to step into an out-of-the-way segment of sidewalk to send your text (“omg jerk just had dog leash stretched across sidewalk like tripwire in jungle adventure film lol”).

My friends and I are having an important conversation while standing around. Should we take up the entire sidewalk and refuse to move for anyone who walks by? Absolutely. This way, everyone who walks past you will know just how very important your conversation about which fashion designer or chef or mailman or whatever will be kicked off some stupid show this week.

Spend more than five or so hours a week on the Internet and you’re bound, at some point, to come across Reddit: A group blog with about a zillion users who post questions to other members, links to interesting (or, more often, snicker-inducing) content, conversation starters and the like. The entire site is composed of smaller “subreddits” that focus on specific topics, like world news or sandwiches.

One of the best is Reddit Los Angeles, where users post all sorts of stuff about our fair city, like this reminder that LACMA is free on Memorial Day, or this picture of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile at Griffith Park Observatory, or this discussion of street-paving inequality.

If you want to post or take part in the discussions, you have to be a registered Reddit member, which takes nothing more than a username and password (you don’t even need to give ‘em an email). But lurking really gives you everything you need, whether it’s a primer on local brewpubs, a food truck alert, or tips on living in LA without air conditioning.  Of course, if you do sign up, you can take part in meetups, buy some dude’s fish tank, join a D&D group, or share vital information about a missing dog.

I kind of prefer Reddit Los Angeles to a lot of other LA blogs; because there’s such a broad diversity of personalities among members, you don’t get that off-putting sense of you-should-totally-care-what-I-think self-importance that many individual bloggers seem to develop (a phenomenon that isn’t at all limited to LA blogs). It’s not exactly a good place to read a good restaurant review or an account of someone’s urban expedition, but  it’s an excellent resource for finding other LA-related web resources. And the conversations are good, too.

In Los Angeles, one of my favorite in-house blogs is the Los Angeles Fire Department’s. Aside from providing a pretty comprehensive list of brush fires in the area — useful for those of us who enjoy hiking — it also features occasional heartwarming gems like last week’s hawk rescue in Woodland Hills, or the most recent post detailing the rescue of nine pets from a Hollywood Hills home.

Lest you think the LAFD blog is full of self-congratulatory posts about cuddly animals, wonder no more; the blog doesn’t shy away from mentioning deaths from fire, both animal and human. It reports firefighter injuries as well. A strong part of the blog’s mission is encouraging public safety, as evidenced by this post featuring images of a suspected arsonist.

If I’m being completely honest, not every post is a winner; the post congratulating Seal Team Six for killing Osama bin Laden was a nice gesture, but is more press release-y than truly informational. But who am I to judge? On my own blog I once wrote a 300-word post on oatmeal. And that was after writing a separate 200-word post that also featured oatmeal.

Overall: Great blog, and thanks to the LAFD for maintaining such a friendly and positive presence on the web. Oh, and also for making sure we don’t all die in fires. That probably also deserves some thanks.

But the nice thing about frequenting the coffeeshops of LA is finding the best drinks. Sabor y Cultura at 5625 Hollywood Blvd (Facebook, Yelp, Citysearch) has two of these: The iced chai latte and the red velvet latte.

Still life with iced chai.

Sabor’s iced chai latte is pretty much what it says on the label. But every coffeeshop has its own chai blend, and in my opinion, this one’s the best. Rich and smooth, it’s closer to a milkshake or a smoothie than the thin concoctions you find elsewhere. If you’re like me, you’re generally not a fan of iced creamy drinks because of the way the ice waters down the milkiness of the beverage. But the Sabor iced chai starts out thick enough that melting ice cubes don’t ruin it.

Sabor’s other great drink is one that’s more unique: The red velvet latte, a crimson-hued confection that warms your morning like a cardinal in winter. When I first saw it on the menu I balked; as I age I’m developing a diminished tolerance for extreme sweetness, and just reading the menu item threatened to send me into a Brimley-level diabetic fugue. But my girlfriend, who is several years younger than I am and has perfect teeth, asked me to bring her one home. So I got it.

Do not adjust your monitor.

As I mentioned, it’s actually red, which is a little unnerving since I can’t imagine there’s any natural flavoring that, you know, does that. But the good news is that it’s only about as sweet as hot chocolate. And it tastes exactly like red velvet cake. Now, red velvet cake generally has cocoa in it, so it’s entirely possible that the reason I’m comparing it to hot chocolate is that the red velvet latte is little more than a mocha with some coloring in it. I don’t know. But my brain says “red velvet” when I drink it, and that’s good enough for me. My brain and I agree on so little, so it’s nice to have this bit of common ground.

I know our own Alexandra is a fan of Sabor y Cultura as well, in particular their Mexican mocha (which is also delicious). Anyone else out there love this place?

An adorable future hot dog. Photo by Flickr usr be_khe.

I saw one a day or so ago, in Hollywood, and was baffled, because I hadn’t yet heard the news that the famed NYC hot dog merchant was opening up a restaurant here in town. Now I wish I had snapped a picture, but alas, my phone sucks anyway. A quick tl;dr for those too lazy to click the link: There’s a Papaya King opening up in Hollywood later this year, and they’re starting the party early by tooling around town in a food truck.

As a fan of mechanically-separated beef and pork sausages this excites me; as a native Philadelphian who thinks LA kicks NYC’s ass in every possible regard while barely breaking a sweat (sorry, Travis), I’m a little dismayed. What, Pink’s extra-salty tube steaks don’t satisfy anymore? Skooby’s can’t slake your thirst for hot, glistening wieners? A thick, hot, West Hollywood-style pork dachshund slapped between two warm and willing buns at the Sunset Strip Carney’s just doesn’t do it for you anymore? Fine, LA. Turn to the New Yorkers. See if I care.

Ah, who am I kidding? I’ll try it and I’ll probably like it. Unless the casing is thick. My girlfriend is a New Jerseyan who thinks that hot dogs are best when they snap when you bite them. She is beautiful, and I love her, but she is woefully wrong. We’ll see how these Papaya people measure up.

So, anyone seen the truck? Readers with pics of the truck can post links, or give me permission and I’ll post one here.

Terrifying! But ecologically important. Photo by Bilby.

UPDATE: If you’re interested in learning more about bees and colony collapse disorder, you should head to one of the Laemmle Theaters this weekend to see VANISHING OF THE BEES, a new documentary on that very subject. It’s narrated by Ellen Page, who I’m pretty sure I saw in Whole Foods once, so I have a personal interest in this film.

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Let’s face it: Honeybees are jerks. They fly around your face, buzzing and buzzing, trying to get you to swat them so they have a legally bulletproof excuse to sting you. They’re the Nelson Muntzes of the animal kingdom. If they were bigger than us and had hands, they’d constantly be imploring us to Stop Hitting Ourselves. So when you find a beehive on your property, your first reaction might be to call in Seal Team Six.

But wait. Little snots that they are, honeybees play a valuable role in the natural environment. They provide free, natural pollination to commercial crops, valued in the billions of dollars. They also produce honey, without which we would not have the hilarious adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh. So it’s important to maintain the bee population, particularly in light of their recent decline in population.

Fortunately, the Backwards Beekeepers are here to help.

The Backwards Beekeepers is a community of organic beekeepers working to preserve the honeybee population in and around Los Angeles. As part of their mission, they offer removal services for nearly any beehive found on an LA property.

Just call the Beekeepers’ Google Voice number, leave a message detailing your address and a description of the beehive (where it is, how big it is, whether the bees are enormous and radioactive, etc). Since it’s a free service, they can’t always help everyone who needs it — particularly if the beehive is in a really hard-to-reach spot — but they’re providing a valuable service to both homeowners and the environment.

Not to worry: We’ve got just what it needs. Cornel West — yes, that Cornel West, the Princeton prof, the cerebellum of the civil rights movement, the guy who calls everyone “brother,” even people who vehemently disagree with him — will be chatting with Carl Dix, conscientious objector founder of the American Revolutionary Communist Party. What are they gonna talk about? I’m guessing bundt cake recipes.

No, seriously: They’ll be discussing the state of education in America against the backdrop of police brutality and the prison system. The discussion begins at 7 PM at the DeNeve Plaza Lecture Auditorium at UCLA.

EDIT: Forgot to post the link. Here you go.

Unlikely to be a problem

First the lizards invaded Los Angeles. Now it’s the bears. No, not that kind. Stop it, you.

I live in Los Feliz and see plenty of coyotes (no, not that kind; stop it, you) and even the occasional hawk. But I’ve never seen a bear. For that, I’d need to move to Altadena, apparently; recently, bears have been showing up there at an unprecedented rate, devouring domestic chickens and getting shot by possibly unscrupulous residents (Warning: Somewhat unsettling photo of an adorable bear cub lying dead).

Apparently, though, bears are not a huge deal in the northern environs; residents report sightings all the time, last week’s ursine poultrophile notwithstanding. But it’s unlikely anyone will get hurt. In the past three decades, only about a dozen bears have attacked humans, and that’s throughout the state of California. If you’re a human, and you live in the LA environs, bear attacks probably aren’t something you need to worry about.

But whether two sudden reported bear incidents is a symptom of human encroachment or  journalistic follow-the-leader is beyond my ken. Any Altadenans or wildlife biologists out there care to comment?