Johnny & Carlo
Things To Do
The Lodge
our humble home
The Getty
Perhaps the most important element of the Getty Center is its hilltop site in the Santa Monica Mountains, just off the San Diego Freeway. From there, visitors can take in prominent features of the Los Angeles landscape--the Pacific Ocean, the San Gabriel Mountains, the vast street-grid of the city. Inspired by this interplay, architect Richard Meier sought to design the complex so that it highlights both nature and culture, creating a synchronistic, organic whole. The use of stone--1.2 million square feet of it--is perhaps one of the most remarked-upon elements of the complex. This beige-colored, cleft-cut, textured, fossilized travertine catches the bright Southern California daylight, reflecting sharply during morning hours and emitting a honeyed warmth in the afternoon.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Rising on the site of an old adobe ranch home, LACMA was the largest new art museum the country had seen in a quarter century when it opened in 1965. The original buildings are an exquisite example of midcentury streamline moderne. In 2010 Renzo Piano breathed new life into LACMA with the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) and the Resnick Pavillion. The scope of the project was to fuse the scattered buildings of LACMA into a cohesive campus with new exhibition spaces and a strong visual identity for the museum. To coincide with Piano's new buildings artist Chris Burden installed Urban Light. Urban Light has been unofficially adopted by Los Angeles as a symbol of the city and is indisputably the most popular artwork on campus. Composed of 202 historic streetlamps dating from the 1920s and 1930s originally spread throughout LA, the large-scale sculpture has become ubiquitous as the face of LACMA, a point of pride for many Angelenos, and a destination for visitors from around the world.
The Broad
Are you seeing a trend yet? If you are going here make sure to budget time for a bite at Otium
The Wallace
cute neighborhood spot with a great happy hour and brunch
Otium
What is an ambitious restaurant in America at the moment? Does it require the elaborate French-based cooking at restaurants like Le Bernardin or the French Laundry, or does it hew closer to the vaguely experimental vibe of Manresa or Alinea? Does the global eclecticism of Providence or Spago qualify? The casual hyper-local rusticity of Lucques or Rustic Canyon? Do there need to be truffles, foie gras and A-5 Kobe beef, or could a well-cooked turnip be enough? At Otium, Timothy Hollingsworth seems to be trying to do no less than to reinvent what an American restaurant might be. The original Spago pioneered the open kitchen, but at Otium there is not so much as a counter between the dining room and the stoves. But most of all, Hollingsworth is attempting to nudge American cooking into the conversation — not the idealized regional cuisines cataloged by people like Edna Lewis and James Beard, but American cooking as it is experienced by most of us in 2019
Bavel
Menashe’s hummus is magnificent, a ring of silky, airy purée surrounding a big spoonful of chunkier, denser stuff; a green rivulet of olive oil; smears of spicy, smoky harissa and green puréed herbs. The pita has inflated into a sphere on the hot fire, but its interior has the lovely, evolved gluten network of a slow-risen country loaf. And as you scrape the bread between one density and the other, through the oil or not, the dish becomes an essay in the nuances of texture and fragrance, a nifty, chefly trick. Bavel is a soaring converted warehouse near downtown’s 4th Street Bridge, on a block where Sonic Youth once played a free show on the street; all brick and chunky wood, an eccentric acreage of orange tile, and what looks like a forest of air plants cascading from a huge frame that is improbably not anchored with macramé. The cooks in the open kitchen knot bandannas around their foreheads in the style made famous by Menashe at his nearby restaurant Bestia.
Röckenwagner
This cute little brunch spot is a stone's throw from the Lodge that we visit almost weekly
West 3rd Street
Got a shopping itch that just NEEDS to be scratched? West 3rd St. has just what you're looking for. From the killer vintage finds at Polkadots and Moonbeams to the never ending sample sales at Shopaholics and everything in between we'll be shocked if you come home empty handed. If You just HAVE to visit LV, D&G, or Gucci you can hop over to the Beverly Center. If you Want to snap your little ones on a trolly for the gram, the Grove is also very close by. Not only does the dreaded Grove have the aforementioned trolley, but it has a movie theater, an apple store, a Nordstrom's, and a Crate and Barrel for any last minute gifts ;) Not to be confused with the tourist hell-zone that is Santa Monica’s 3rd St. (i.e. The Promenade), this little thoroughfare connecting The Beverly Center and The Grove in Mid-City is the glistening stretch of sidewalk where brunch never ends, and cupcakes are the main course.
Manhattan Beach
Looking for that quintessential Southern California day at the beach. Look no further than the perfectly manicured shores of Manhattan Beach. With its picturesque pier and old timey charm its no wonder that the Beach Boys felt some good vibrations here.
The Landmark
Looking to catch a flick while your in town? This is hands down our favorite theater in town. It specializes in art house, foreign, and indie films, but also has a few blockbusters to pay the rent. The wine bar in the lobby is especially enchanting at sunset with its sweeping views of the LA basin. Looking to have a proper dinner before or after your movie? Make sure to check out the Westside Tavern right beneath the Landmark
Westside Tavern
Dinner and movie? Look no further