My Personal LA Vibe Curation List

30+ recommendations for anyone with my specific taste who is visiting the city of Los Angeles

The listicle was dead on arrival when it started cropping up around the Buzzfeed-era internet. I have read very few good ones, and I think this is mostly because people try to combine a narrative arc (long) with a list (short) and get lost somewhere in the process, the piece being neither substantial nor entertaining enough to merit the format. When I say this, please know that I am never referring to my sister

Mackenzie Thomas

, who quite frankly has been the sole pioneer of a fantastic listicle renaissance the likes of which we’ve never seen.

I am no Mackenzie Thomas. So, keep in mind…this is not a listicle. This is a good old fashioned LIST! (with heavy commentary, as brevity has never been my strength)

As you may know, I lived three and a half sexy/sad/amazing/lonely years in Los Angeles before making the sacred pilgrimage over to New York City. The first iteration of this list was several years ago — I made it for

rayne fisher-quann

who was going to be visiting someone in the city who had been living there for a few months. This is important context. I set out to make a recommendations list that hopefully went a bit beyond the obvious haunts that young, hot people in Los Angeles already knew about. Myself always being a step or two behind young, hot people (born a Capricorn with a downward canthal tilt), I can’t promise that these recommendations are cutting edge. They are almost certainly NOT! This is my first warning.

My subsequent warnings are of course that I was a transplant who exclusively lived on the East side of Los Angeles. My friends were mostly other transplants. This is by no means a definitive list of the best spots in the city, nor is it a particularly educated or well-rounded one. I am sure that it would be highly embarrassing if read by an LA native, so if that is you, please save yourself and move on. But it is my personal list, the one full of places I love, that I send to friends who are visiting or moving to LA, crafted and updated carefully over the course of several years.

I get frequent messages from people asking about my LA recommendations, so I thought I would drop the master list for anyone who is interested. The list contains 30+ of my favorite experiences, restaurants, bars, dance spots, shopping, and nature spots/beaches. With all those qualifiers, my recommendations are as follows:

P.S. this is the only post I’ve ever written on Substack that is TOO LONG FOR EMAIL!!! so, if you’re a paid sub and you get cut off in the inbox, just head over to the app/web browser to read the rest :*

---

EXPERIENCES

• cinespia at hollywood forever cemetery (hollywood)

a truly iconic venue to see a movie at.. it’s outside, so the vibe is like bring a picnic blanket + some snacks + wine. if you’re visiting shortly after the publication of this piece, you should know that they’re showing coraline on 10/12

• american cinemateque at the los feliz theater

speaking of movies.. (and you WILL be speaking of movies if you are in los angeles for any amount of time), american cinemateque has a great program running at LF3 every weekend. they show very…criterion collection movies if you catch my drift. LF3 is an amazing theater in general — super small rooms that are beautifully hand-painted — but they show the cinemateque stuff in the back room with the larger screens. this is important because mostly they show films in 35mm. an incredible people-watching site. i took kate to see blue velvet there, and you should have seen the way the film bros looked at them while they loudly pronounced “i had never even heard of david lynch before today!”

• the vista theater (los feliz)

okay speaking of movies ONE FINAL TIME!!!!! and then i’m done. a gorgeous theater that was mercifully saved from bankruptcy by none other than quent*n tarantino. exceptionally beautiful. i took myself on a lot of dates there. going there is the closest i’ve ever felt to living in the old hollywood times.

don’t you just wish you had a pashmina…

• dancing + karaoke at club teegee, every wednesday (atwater village)

this is one of my favorite spots to go dancing. they let rayne in one time with a photo of someone else’s ID, so do with that information what you will. so you can also come for that anytime however i am.. obsessed w/ their karaoke on wednesdays. very chill and good energy, amazing people watching, and it’s in a closed-off section of the bar so you can bounce back and forth between the main bar & karaoke room if you don’t wanna be in there the whole time. the host is very charismatic and there’s a few regulars who i am particularly fond of. my favorite old queen will show up early to go first and probably sing something from rocky horror. there’s usually a floppy-haired brunette who always sings a pretty good rendition of mr. jones, but it’s usually overtaken by the desperate PLEASE FUCK ME!!!! eyes he maintains throughout the entire duration of the song.

• rollerskating at moonlight rollerway (glendale) 

extremely well-known and iconic LA place but for such good reason. they filmed a euphoria scene here. great music, really fun, and best enjoyed in the middle of the week in the off-season so you can reap the benefits of a rink not absolutely littered with people 

• LA ghost tour (hollywood)

SO kitschy and touristy and absolutely worth it. i had such a fun time when i went with a friend and pregamed it before. you basically just walk around hollywood boulevard at night and some guy tells you about all the haunts (literally). if you can, go on a night that cody is leading the tour — he’s a gem. i left my one and only google review for him because i was so charmed

not sure why i was so threatening here