This from a recent list in the NYTimes T Magazine recommended by Dean Wareham, a singer and guitarist who recently moved to LA after many moons in Brooklyn! (Maybe that’s a trend, seeing as my brother just did the same…Or one more example and we’ve got a “trend”…)
Hollywood Farmers Market
“We have an avocado tree in our backyard, but the squirrels get to them before we do. This is one of the only places we can walk to, and we go every Sunday. The produce is amazing. I buy the fruits, Britta buys the vegetables.”
Ivar Avenue and Selma Avenue between Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard; Sundays, 8 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Chichen Itza restaurant
“This place is in a kind of cheap mall downtown. Jonathan Gold wrote about it. It’s Yucatan cuisine. I don’t know how it’s different from other Mexican food — I’m not expert enough. But it’s great.”
3655 South Grand Avenue; chichenitzarestaurant.com.
Vermont Canyon Tennis Courts
“It is much easier to exercise out here. And right over here in Griffith Park, it costs five dollars an hour to play tennis, whereas in New York, you’ve got to get a season pass, and it’s a luxury. I go to the courts up Vermont, right by the little golf course. I took my son there three times a week last summer.”
2715 Vermont Canyon Road; laparks.org.
Books on L.A.
“When I got here, the first thing my friend gave me was Reyner Banham’s famous and controversial book, ‘Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies.’ I also loved ‘City of Nets,’ by Otto Friedrich. It’s a great look at Hollywood in the ’40s, with a focus on Europeans like Thomas Mann and Stravinsky. Bertolt Brecht lived up Argyle Avenue, right over here. He was the most famous playwright in the world, but he was in Hollywood writing out of his native language, and he was broke.”
Largo at the Coronet
“‘City of Nets’ was recommended to me by Flanny, the owner at Largo, where we’ve played. In fact, he sells copies at the concession stand there. He likes it because his new location (in the old Coronet Theater) is mentioned in the book; it is where Brecht and Charles Laughton staged ‘Life of Galileo.’ Brecht was my hero at age 17, and to perform on the very same stage was cool.”
366 North La Cienega Boulevard; largo-la.com.
Cinefamily
“This is an old silent movie theater. They show movies that don’t get a wide release. I went and saw ‘Once Upon a Time in America,’ the Sergio Leone three-hour epic. And a lot of comedy stuff, too. We’ve played there, and Britta did a reading there once.”
611 North Fairfax Avenue; cinefamily.org.
Acting
TakeBetsywithyou 