Lesson for Los Angeles Bakers

If you have designs on winning the prestigious cooke bakeoff at the annual Atwater Village street festival, make it fresh, make it tasty, but please don't make it with sauerkraut. Save that avant-garde stuff for the west side. This year's yummy - yet traditional - winner: peanut butter thumbprints.

Back Atcha Franklin Avenue

The generous neighbors at FranklinAvenue.net, in an interesting post about blog-squatting, are sending all sorts of readers to us. Thanks for the props! And right back atcha: Your story about a decade's worth of migrating east in LA made me proud to live anywhere east of Vermont:

"I slowly became obsessed with Los Angeles history, with preserving L.A.'s fragile landmarks, with discovering new restaurants (hole-in-the-wall and famed alike), with trying to get the message across that Hollywood is just one tiny aspect of the nation's second-largest city. Ten years later, I'm not searching in vain for the city's center anymore. I find it everywhere I go."

P.S. - I tried to sign up for atwatervillage.blogspot.com, found it claimed but vacant, and had to settle for this hyphenated version. At least I come up higher in searches.

Atwater Chatter

Here's what's up 'round the 'hood:

• Despite emancipated dogs and unsolicited email, state assembly candidate Kevin De Leon - shown here sitting over Chavez Ravine - wins primary over Chavez relative
• Call it Artwater: J. Ferrari Gallery preview Friday, 7pm; grand opening Saturday, 6pm (3015 Glendale Blvd.)
• Sunday! Sunday!! Sunday!!! Street festival, noon-ish (3100-ish Glendale Blvd.)
• Menupix dishes 23 menus for AV restaurants, while Menupages mashes us into Silver Lake/Echo Park list
• Smartypants' 59-page neighborhood analysis notes "deterioration in a radial pattern away from the center" including, yes, our streets
• Council Prez Garcetti recommends riding "a horse to the top of Mount Hollywood from a stable in Atwater Village"
• Bikini-clad bicyclists on Hyperion Bridge

I Heart June Gloom

For someone struggling to acclimatize from a semi-arid mile-high locale, I sure do like these cool, gray days in LA.

Haves and Have-Nots

Lest history record this year as the beginning of the Great Atwater Village Pavement War, let's hope city leadership can satisfy a Curbed LA rumbler who wants repairs on South AV's concrete streets (item #2) - before he finds out the city just overhauled some of North AV's concrete sidewalks.

Where Bruce Willis Runs Into Ving Rhames

From a refreshing post about the nostalgic power of ice cream, here's a tidbit about the intersection near Foster's Freeze in AV:

"Susan and I made a special hot-afternoon trip over to the Foster's on Fletcher at the south end of Atwater Village... That intersection where the Foster's is served as the location for the scene in 'Pulp Fiction' after Bruce Willis' character ... runs into Ving Rhames' … literally."

Even if all the LA oldbies already knew it, what a cool factoid for a newbie like me. Even cooler is that when I was planning a move to Los Angeles this spring, I considered renting one of those apartments behind Ving Rhames.

I hope this post won't spoil the movie for anyone.

LA's Summer of Green

Google has a supercool environmentally-conscious mash-up of its mapping and video services dubbed Summer of Green. The Los Angeles "tour" shows locations and clips of the Tree People and the Audubon Center. One sub-section I dig: This Hiking Trail. (Screenshot below.)

• Go to Summer of Green LA

Brighten Up LA With a Simple Stencil

This one's from Denver, but Los Angeles sure could use it.

Five Ways the De Leon Campaign Is Going to the Dogs

My inbox says Kevin De Leon, candidate for California State Assembly's District 45, "supports Atwater Village."

Really.

So why would he ... or someone from his campaign ... or someone from another entity that isn't allowed to coordinate with his campaign ... (thanks a lot, California campaign reform!) ... do any of the following:

1. Send email I didn't register for
2. Email me blind in a BCC
3. Send email from Cesar Portillo, with no explanation of his connection to De Leon, and no mention that Portillo's firm contributed $100 to De Leon's campaign
4. Email an empty message with a 292KB image attached (re-published to the right; awfully generous of me, eh?)
5. Let someone's dogs out

If Kevin De Leon wants to support AV, he should know some of us - hell, let's go on a limb and say most of us - support anti-spam email practices. And we support our four-legged friends.

Next Time Try the Fibonacci Sequence

Last night I hoofed over to the Indochine Vien Vietnamese cafe on Glendale Blvd., and ordered Banh Xeo (#4), Pho Tai Bo Vien (#8) and Suon Nuong (#15) to go.

That's 4, 8 and 15.

Halfway home I realized that a Ga Nuong (#16) and a Crispy Vietnamese Apple Fritter (#23) would've nearly completed The Numbers on "Lost."

Indochine's menu, alas, skips 42.

P.S. - To continue the "Lost" theme, here's a food review in four words: Fresh, inexpensive, almost bland.

The City That Never Sleeps In

Sidewalk repair at 6:30am? Ladies dashing out in robes to chase garbage trucks at 6:05am? Surely the 7:00am noise ordinance covers some of these things.

Maybe trash collectors are bitter because their 150% raise will go to the cops.