Anarchists, dinosaurs, and vinyl toys–TTDILA covers it all. The front page of the site explains:

Things To Do In LA was created out of not being able to find something to do in LA. It was created out of missing cool events that you would hear about later or because you didn’t read a certain post. It was created because you don’t know every place to visit in the city. There is always something to do in this city.

Things To Do In LA tells you what’s going on, and places to go.

TTDILA is a curated events list, clearly not guided by PR hack spam but rather by what seems exceptional, interesting, fun, and noteworthy. If you’re at all into video games, anime, local art, horror movies, or geek/fringe culture you should check out Things To Do In LA. Know this: TTDILA wrote to us at blogging.la to ask if we were doing another Doughnut Summit this year before we’d even gotten around to asking ourselves the same question. Jonathan, the brain and muscle behind TTDILA is on the ball. He does the research for the rest of us. Without TTDILA, for instance, I wouldn’t have known about the Anarchist Book Fair or the Dead Flesh Fest this Saturday. I’m not sure if I’ll go to either, but being a fan of both anarchism and exploitation I’m glad to know about them regardless. Reading TTDILA is like having your own personal social secretary/concierge, except you’re on your own in terms of making reservations and dealing with double booking.

In 2003, Mike Schneider and Maria Villar, a young married couple living on Franklin Avenue, started a blog of the same name. More than eight years have passed, they have moved to another part of the city and added two kids to their family, but they continue to chronicle all things Los Angeles and more.

One of my favorite Franklin Avenue features is the restaurant reviews. They have visited hundreds of eateries and provided short and sweet write-ups with just the essential information. High points, low points, what they ate and whether or not they will go back. I’ve referred to it more than once. In addition to eating, Mike and family attend and report on lots of local events, such as the annual Festival of Books and ice skating downtown. They chronicled the remaining years of the Ambassador Hotel and its eventual demise. For the past few years, Mike and Maria have organized the Great Los Angeles Walk. Over 100 Angelenos joined them for the entire 15.8 miles of Wilshire in 2010.

You’ll also find frequent coverage of the local media on Franklin Avenue. Mike is a media insider and L.A is a media town, so it makes sense. Look for posts featuring everything from retro newscast videos to screenshots of Los Angeles locations appearing in tv shows, which I get a kick out of. Franklin Avenue is a personal blog and is peppered with posts about family and occasional out of town vacations. But, it always comes back to Los Angeles, the city that Mike and Maria call home and enjoy exploring.

another excellent xkcd comic

If you’re a regular Blogging.la reader you’ve seen some of our Blogging (in) LA posts by now. We’ve tried to be fair, covering some of our favorites like Weho Daily and the perhaps regrettably named Eastsider LA, as well as at least one that we wish might be different. We’ve interviewed the bloggers responsible for L.A. Can’t Drive and Green LA Girl. We’ve done a round-up of photo blogs and touched on food, real estate, and public service blogs.

Of course, the smattering of blogs we’ve covered over the past two weeks represent not even an iceberg tip of the sites devoted to LA, and we plan to keep highlighting one or two of our favorite and not-so-favorite LA blogs weekly. Drop a comment or write to one of us if you have a site you’d like to have us check out.

OK, so it’s not technically a blog. Or, I dunno, is it?

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.

Twice-Seared Duck from Playa (photography by kevinEats)

In the lovely Blogging (in) LA series thus far, there has been a wide variety of news worthy, photographically stunning, and extremely useful blogs covered, but I’m here to bring in a little sweet & savory into the mix.  Food.

Foodies and Food Bloggers in Los Angeles are making a huge impact in the landscape of both culinary invention as well as the venues in which food is both served and enjoyed.  They are at the forefront of defining a new set of guidelines on which a restaurants success or failure can be measured, and perhaps one of the most prolific (& one of my personal favorites) food bloggers is kevinEats.  (http://www.kevineats.com/)

If you haven’t ever read his reviews, you are in for an undeniable treat.  A well versed photographer who is able to capture the mouthwatering essence of high end dining, kevinEats‘s knowledge of chefs du jour as well as their master counterparts is astounding, and his posts which generally pre-empt the debut of new restaurants to hit the LA scene exquisitely summarize  the experience and tantalize his readers to follow in his footsteps.  If there’s a new chef in town, you can bet that kevinEats will be there, hobnobbing with the staff, part-taking in tasting menus designed to make us wish we had better paying jobs and in general giving us a glimpse into which restaurants SHOULD be added to our never-ending bucket list.

But, reader be warned… this is not a blog to be consumed on an empty stomach, or you’ll find yourself angry that you’re not sitting in front of a plate of teriyaki foie gras or squid ink pasta.  Well, you might still be angry on a full stomach, but it won’t be quite as painful.

[This post is part of our Blogging (in) LA series]

I admit it: I love Curbed LA. It’s a guilty pleasure and a sort of embarrassing confession from someone who doesn’t even get TV reception. Curbed is blogging junk food. It’s like cheetos or red vines–empty calories, but sometimes just exactly what you want.

For the unitiated, Curbed covers, for the most part, LA real estate. They do link round-ups of stories from around the blogosphere and occasional tangential news stories, as well as “rent check” posts about apartments for rent around LA, but their meat-and-potatoes posts are the ones that detail extraordinary houses/palaces/design catastrophes for sale. I’m sure my fascination with, for instance, this Versailles-lite Sunset Boulevard mansion is the same sort of engine that drives so many of those house-oriented shows on television, but somehow Curbed delivers it in a way that I find compelling instead of off-putting. Who hasn’t always wanted to see inside the House of Davids??!! I know I have. Thank you, Curbed, for making it possible. It is, in fact, more atrocious than I imagined.  

But it’s not all architectural traffic accidents on Curbed, there are also posts like this one that make me wish I had a spare $629,000 sitting around. Or this one that makes me want to organize a b.la expedition to explore the old Nazi ruins in LA.

So thanks, Curbed, for being consistently entertaining and letting me peak inside some of LA’s interior decorating travesties.

I have a love-hate relationship with The Eastsider LA blog. I love it, unconditionally. I hate its name, conditionally. But the conditionals were reversed when veteran journalist Jesus Sanchez debuted his blog in July 2008, pretty much at the latest boil-over of many long-simmering battles in the never-ending Eastside vs. eastside border war waged between those adamant few of us who will over-zealously know and protect and defend the Real Eastside of Los Angeles calling bullshit against the legions who roll their eyes at our protestations, either ignorantly not knowing and not caring — or worse: ironically knowing and not caring.

Jumping into such a fray allied with a dismissive westside-influenced gentry to defiantly plant his flag several miles off-target in the city’s historic Westside was a bold move, and at first I huffed and puffed and blew it off off, vowing somewhat petulantly to ignore Sanchez and his online efforts.

But try as I might, I couldn’t. Because not only was The Eastsider LA a bold move, but it boldly went where few other blogs were going in the area. It covered crimes, schools, business, homes, history, and happenings, with a dedicated focus and professionalism that’s led to the creation of a vibrant, diverse online community that I’ve long wanted to see in my section of the city.

This? From a person who gaaah’d and grrrrr’d most recently over the previous weekend’s “Taste of the Eastside” event (more like L’eastside) that took place in Barnsdall Park, featuring eateries primarily from Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz and Atwater Village?

Yep. So how did I go from full-on rejection of The Eastsider LA to utmost respect? Well, by rationalizing a bit; by seeing the title of his blog not as representing any strict boundaries or an obstinate rejection what I consider with equal stubbornness to be The Eastside. Rather, the title has come to represent a broadened state of place and sense of citizenry, a bigger picture. Such a stance was aided by the fact that Sanchez was born in Boyle Heights, grew up in East Los Angeles, and attended East LA College. Though Echo Park has been his home for more than 20 years, he is a product of The Eastside — and a proud one. And he brings that history and that knowledge with him.

But before y’all go thinking that I’m humming “We are the World” in complete assimilation, I recognize The Eastsider LA’s wider reach is economically motivated, designed to tap not only more eyeballs on this side of the river, but more advertising dollars as well. There’s nothing wrong with that in my book. But even if there was, the bottom line is that Sanchez has worked hard cultivating The Eastsider LA into a dynamic, dependable and go-to resource for news and views on things that are happening in the historic Eastside and Westside, regardless of whether one thinks those places exist in the present or the past.

As someone who rides bikes in Los Angeles, who is obsessed with subcultures, and who walks the line on cool kid wannabeness, it’s no surprise that Takeover LA is one of my daily reads. If you aren’t into bikes then it’s likely of no interest to you, but if you are this is a rabbit hole that runs very, very deep. TOLA (as it’s more commonly known) is an LA blog in that the authors live in LA, the post about LA events, post videos of LA stuff and LA is in the title of the site, though I’d argue it’s focus is really more about the fixed gear / track bike scene. They write about stuff they are into, and since they are in LA a lot of that stuff happens to be in LA as well. There is also no question these are the cool kids, which, not being one of the cool kids, is cool to be able to live vicariously through this blog. It’s a fun guilty pleasure at worst.

On the good side they posts all the time. Really several posts a day on any given day. These are pretty well balanced between videos, photos, events, reviews and profiles. I can’t say I’m totally down with some of the fashion they endorse but I’m old so that’s to be expected I think. If you wanted a good idea what is cool in the fixed gear scene right this very second, you could read TOLA for one day, and no other site, and have a very good idea. They are seriously all over this, and I really appreciate passion in a blog. There’s no question they are into the stuff they are writing about.

On the bad side, I’d challenge you to find a single review on the site that says anything negative about the product they are reviewing. I’d also challenge you to find a review that doesn’t causally mention that the product they are reviewing was given to them free. I’d also challenge you to find a review that didn’t say that said free products were awesome. Ethically, this is a little suspect. I don’t really trust their reviews because of this, are they giving this product a good review because they like it or because they got it free? It’s hard to tell. I wish they talked more about stuff they thought was lame or not awesome, or stuff they just bought for themselves because they wanted rather than only stuff given to them for free. That would add a ton of credibility in my book, but again, I’m old. So take that how ever you will.

This post is part of the Blogging (in) LA Series.

Los Angeles, with its vast geography, smog, traffic, and challenging mass transit options, might not be the place one would most expect to find an eco-blogger living and thriving. But Green LA Girl is someone who does just that – lives and thrives in Los Angeles seeking to incorporate eco-friendly principles in her day-to-day life and keeping record of her experiences doing so on a blog that offers a variety of insights and solutions both for Angelenos and for those not fortunate enough to live here in our great city. Covering a wide range of topics–from consumables (fair-trade organic coffee or chocolate) to fashion (eco-friendly panties) to eco-friendly item giveaways (yoga mats, coffee mugs, etc.) to reducing home energy use–Green LA Girl provides a wealth of knowledge of information that can help us strive to live in better harmony with our environment.

Green LA Girl was kind enough to take some time out of her Sunday afternoon to answer some questions for us, and here is what she had to say: Read the rest of this entry →

Generally, I’m a pretty skeptical person, but for some reason I always thoroughly enjoy in-house blogs. Maybe it’s because the best of them aren’t simply shills for the parent organization, but providers of interesting or valuable information. I always cite the Google Blog as Exhibit A.

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.

Well, you knew this was coming.

LAist is one of the oldest group blogs in LA, and probably the one we at blogging.la have been most often compared to. (even though many of those comparisons were made by the staff of LAist) The site has at one time or another been steered (to some extent) by bloggers I have a lot of respect for. I’ve always liked Jason Toney, I’ve said plenty of times that I think Tony Pierce was at one time the best blogger in all of Los Angeles, and Zach Behrens undoubtably raised the bar there when he was handed the keys. Anyone who knows the history of blogs in LA knows those three names very, very well. And rightfully so.

I don’t know how many seconds it was after the Blogging (in) LA series was proposed that I was told by everyone that LAist was “all me” but I suspect I could count it on one hand. *Maybe* two.

That should really be no surprise given our history – personally, between blogging.la and LAist and between parent companies Metblogs and Gothamist. If you are new to all the drama lets just say it’s been a long and sordid history, whose sordidness is only exceeded by it’s drama. And since I no longer speak for Metblogs I feel OK voicing my own opinion without having anyone go ballistic claiming whatever random business, political, whatever bullshit seemed suited at the time. So I’ll get it out of the way quickly, I’m not a fan of LAist. Read the rest of this entry →

There are many that call themselves daily, but only a few truly do it daily. Several are every few days, even a few are closer to monthly updates. Other than a glitch last week when when blogger was down a few days the regulars never missed a beat. Having tried this once and failed I have to admire the motivation and tenacity to post something daily, that in itself is no small feat.

My hands down favorite of the daily photos out there is the Pasadena Daily Photo. Why? Simply because since 2008 blogger Petrea Burchard hasn’t missed a day. Not only are her images well done, many cross the border into the fine art side of photography. Of course she has her share of cute puppies, news/documentary and slice of life stuff but her best work comes on Monday. Monday is “Zen Monday” when she posts an image that is left for discussion and interpretation by the viewer and they leave their thoughts in the comment section. Monday is my favorite day of the week thanks to Zen Monday.

Here is the run down of the other daily photo blogs in the LA Area that I follow with a short comment describing them.

• Pasadena Daily Photo…she rocks what else can I add to what I already said?
• The Sky is Big in Pasadena…nice guy documenting what he sees and does each day in Pasadena.  A few pics of his family and co-workers which don’t mean much to anyone who doesn’t know him. Never missed a day since he started in ’07.
• Altadena Daily Photo…updates very infrequently but does nice quality work, especially enjoy the scanner stuff.
• Gem City Images…an interesting daily documentary, with a few arty bits of my little corner of LA (aka Monrovia Daily Photo).
• Covina Daily Photo…updates daily, always very well done arty photos, if not a bit overly ‘shopped.
• Temple City Daily Photo…he puts up daily but I visit only weekly, not much interesting going on there often.
• Palos Verdes Daily Photo…does it daily, and usually has some interesting images, some shopped, some just very well shot.
• Daily Photo LA…doesn’t do it daily, and content isn’t just LA, but rather rambles about So Cal.  Decent documentary images for the most part, nothing really spectacular.

I probably missed a couple so feel free to shout out your favorite daily photo blog in the city in the comments.  Certainly I can stand to add a few more interesting blogs to my list of daily reading.

This post is one of many in the Blogging (in)LA series we are running the next few weeks.

I don’t watch TMZ, because Weho Daily is my TMZ.

Weho Daily reads like a cross between an old gossip rag and a PTA newsletter.  And I love it.  It’s not too serious, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, it doesn’t claim to be any more than it is, or any less.  It is, to me, one of the best examples of a neighborhood blog: it reports pertinent and not-pertinent news with a tone and sense of humor that embodies its surroundings perfectly, and all of its coverage is useful for everyone reading.  The serious stuff (the stories in the Crime and Safety section are no joke) is balanced with the scandalous stuff (“Chris Brown, New WeHo Resident, Becomes Violent in NYC”) and, balancing all of the above, is the unique, only-in-West-Hollywood stuff (“Is That a Rabbit in Your Pocket? Why Yes, Yes It Is”, summed up thusly: “drunk male in camouflage harassing passersby, has a baby rabbit in pocket”).

The only thing that might be better than the site is its Twitter account.  Whomever runs that account pays fantastic attention to various police scanners and is a mad genius.  Just when I’ve had enough of people tweeting about yet another problem I don’t care about, @WehoDaily tweets something like this: Read the rest of this entry →

I love the Militant Angeleno.

I could end this review right there and be completely confident that I’d expressed my feelings about this specific blogger and his/her site accurately. The Militant Angeleno is really one of the greatest blogs in the city, and LA is a better place because it exists. I’m not saying that to win points, I actually don’t even know if the Militant knows I exist. I don’t care. I wake up happy knowing the Militant exists.

If you aren’t already familiar with the Militant I feel sorry for you. I’ve called LA home for over 10 years now. In fact, as I’ve said on numerous occasions it’s the only place I’ve ever lived that really felt like home. I take a lot of shit for that because it’s cool to hate LA. Especially if you are someone who has never been to LA, or someone who lives in SF. Because of the Militant Angeleno I feel justified telling people hating on LA to die in a fire. LA has a lot to offer, way more than most people notice at first glance. Or second glance. Or even third glance. The Militant is there on the front lines helping people to see more of what LA is all about. It’s not one neighborhood. It’s not one style. It’s not one identity. And that’s what makes it so amazing. The Militant Angeleno is my hero because he/she is out there banging that dumb every day and there is no question countless people in LA know more about their own city because of his/her efforts. This is turning into a gushing fanboy post but it’s 100% honest and heartfelt.

If I had to scrape to find a complaint, and that’s really hard to do, it’s that the blog isn’t updated as often as it once was. Used to be you would get several posts a week. Now a few posts a month is lucky. But I’m guilty of the same thing and know how life gets in the way sometimes. If you don’t already make a habit of reading the Militant you should start. Because I said so. Also here’s an interview with the Militant from a few years ago that sheds a little more light. Go Dodgers!

I can’t think of a better day to talk about this next blog than a rainy day in Los Angeles. I just drove back from the gym which is less than a mile from my house, and in that single span I saw more 4 wheeled dumb-assery than a Target parking lot in the Valley on a Saturday. Which, by the way, I personally believe is the single most dangerous place to walk in all of Los Angeles. Compton ain’t shit when you have a horde of trophy wives in Escalades on Blackberry’s meandering blindly in search of two parking spots they can sprawl their Bimbo Boxes in showing the world just how much they don’t give a fuck about their fellow human beings. Now that I have that off my chest…

I was doing research a few months back while I considered starting my own ‘Bad LA Driver’s Blog’. “The Devil’s Taint”, which is what I affectionately call the 405, was going to be a masterpiece of snark, wit and plain old trash talking. Then I found L.A. Can’t Drive… My hopes were dashed! The site was everything I wanted. Replete with photos, hilarious stories and not just an Idiocy Meter™ but an Asshole Meter™ as well. So I gave up my dreams and added L.A. Can’t Drive to my newsreader and haven’t looked back.

The founder of the site, a bloke naked Mike was kind enough to do a quick interview with me about the site, driving and other fun stuff. Enjoy and check out the site. He does take submissions from the public so if you’ve got any doozey’s send them his way. Just check L.A. Can’t Drive for details.

J: First off I love your site. As a 10yr+ LA driver I see this stuff every day and I’m glad you’re there to chronicle the gems. How did you get started with the site? Was there one particular incident in particular that spurred you into action?

M: The website has always been and always will be a medium for me to vent freely about my frustrations with asinine, assholish, and quite frankly retarded–yeah, I said it, you overly PC fake-as-hell bitches–L.A. driving. All kidding aside, when I moved to L.A. in 2006, I found myself succumbing to road rage, which when coupled with my sciatic issues from sitting in traffic all day, made me a pretty irate commuter. As a born and bred New Yorker, adjusting to the culture and lifestyle of Southern California is hard enough without having to deal with sucky drivers. And believe me, the irony has not been lost on me that a Chinese (albeit Asian American) male from New York City is writing about bad driving. Contrary to what some detractors may say, I have never claimed to be a perfect driver, nor do I drive like I’m chauffeuring Miss Daisy. And I certainly don’t drive around like a citizen cop trying to find bad driving for my blog. I needed a cathartic release from my daily frustrations, and being a creative person at heart, I thought that writing about my anger and letting it go in the webosphere was healthier than acting it out behind the wheel and screaming epithets at other drivers. There wasn’t one particular incident that made me decide to finally start making a running commentary on L.A. driving, though I must say that the plethora of drivers cruising around at night without their headlights on blew my mind from day one. And I’m not talking about dusk either…owls are hunting and roaches are having bonfires, and yet a disturbing percentage of L.A. drivers still have no idea that their headlights are off. To this day, I still don’t understand it, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in any other city I’ve lived in or visited.

Read the full interview after the jump