Hooray! Some Reasons to Love L.A.

Yes! Just as I was forgetting it was possible!

I don’t think I have to list all the things about L.A. there are to dislike. Even those of you who have never been here could probably make out a reasonably accurate list. But I just had a week when I was reminded more than once of reasons to appreciate this “city”. So, in light of the worrisome nature of right now. I thought I would share.

It started when we stumbled into a great new restaurant in, of all places, Reseda, a town that does not get a lot of love. It is probably most famous for being singled out for sarcastic mention by both Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. That ‘Terminator 2- Judgment Day’, ‘Erin Brokovich’, ‘Grease’ and ‘Cobra Kai’ are all set in Reseda explains the rest of the general image. So it is among the smaller cities in the San Fernando Valley that I felt it was sensible to avoid.

But ever since I developed a crush on a Vietnamese market in Reseda, I have been making regular pilgrimmages to the area. I got excited by the fact that I have no idea what half of the produce they are selling is even called. It was fun to buy some and then go fishing on-line for recipes. Plus I always end up buying some of the peculiar packaged stuff they carry, just for the amusement value. This time it was

and of course

However….this week a second excellent reason to go to Reseda emerged.

1. THE PSYCHIC VEGAN POWERS OF KEVIN

On our way home from the afore mentioned market we decided to stop at a vegan restaurant we found in an online search. It was located, as are all things Reseda, in a slightly dreary mini mall. The outside looked bland almost to the point of invisibility. But when we walked in, this is what we saw

To underline why Im posting this photo….it says “I PICK. YOU EAT.”

Obviously I read that message the minute we walked in, because I compulsively read everything posted on walls and in stores, checking for weird word uses or misspellings. So I didn’t realize it was a message I needed to take literally. As one does in a restaurant, we started to peruse the menu in order to get something to-go.

This is Kevin, the owner. “I pick out your food for you,” he said, immediately, “I am psychic.”

That is when I began to clash with the owner Kevin, seen in the above photo: “You see the sign?” he asked pointing to the wall, “I pick. YOU eat.” “So we don’t get any say in this at all?” I countered. “No.” he answered.“Last week I catered a big party for Jane Fonda.150 people. No one had any idea what they were eating.”

“Well, I think I just want to get a sandwich” said Andy, wasting everyone’s time by pointing to something he liked on the menu. “No. You can’t have sandwich to go. It will get soggy. They don’t travel well.” replied Kevin.

“Okay. So what can we have?” I ask. “I’ll bring you a sandwich but only if you eat it here. And how many dishes you want to go?.” asks Kevin. “Two.” I say. “But you don’t want any suggestions from us?” “No.” he says, “You see all those receipts on the wall by the cash register? Those are all orders No one knows what they are getting.”

Cutting to the chase: we had a vegan sandwich which we ate in the restaurant, as mandated. It was layers of thin sliced vegetables on a roll topped with a couple of dumplings. And it was fantastic. Maybe the best sandwich ever. It looked like this.

Sadly, I didn’t take this photo.

Because by the time it occurred to me that I should take photos, it looked like this

In fact, it was so good that I immediately started to worry that the place and its eccentric,bossy, hilarious owner Kevin would soon be out of business. But turns out Vinh Loi has been running successfully for 23 years! Even Miley Cyrus likes it, which is not one of my usual reasons for recommending a restaurant. In fact, previously I might have considered it a bad omen.

And even though, in the final analysis, I still prefer the idea of making my own meal selection, this experience served to remind me how often my choices lead me astray. Whereas the psychic meal choices of Kevin turned out to be absolutely perfect. So, after having lived through the 2024 election, it was hard not to conclude that the chance to witness someone’s good decision making skills is a real plus.

I cant wait to go back there. Which brings us to:

2. THE MUSEUM OF JURASSIC TECHNOLOGY

If you are an L.A. resident, maybe you’ve heard of this place. Or maybe, like me, you went there 30 something years ago when it opened, and then forgot what was in it or even that it existed and so never went back.

Well, it still exists and is much larger now. And it is a goddam amazement.

There it still stands, at 9341 Venice Boulevard in the Palms district of Los Angeles in the middle of an unexceptional looking block of commercial stores and fast food franchises. Except for the inscrutable name, it calls almost no attention to itself like some hidden magic shop in a classic children’s story that a couple of kids stumble into and, without warning, find themselves embarking on an unexpected adventure to another dimension.

Founded by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson in 1988, it calls itself "an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of ‘The Lower Jurassic" a term that goes unexplained and appears to have no connection at all to what is on display.

It doesn’t open til 2:00 and you have to buy a ticket in advance ($15. which gives you a specific time of entry. You can buy one online.) And they don’t allow you to take photos inside. Therefore all the photos here were culled from various sources. But the experience you are signing up for by entering is like a free-standing shrine to surrealism and the appreciation of artistic vision.

I didn’t remember much about the place from my last visit here, except that it was a dark,twisty labyrinth filled with museum exhibits, all of them offering an abstracted and surrealistic homage to unusual subject matter. The one part of my first visit that still burned brightly in my memory was of some small dioramas of haunted looking but somehow beautiful vintage mobile homes, atop museum pedestals. Thirty years later, , I sometimes found myself wondering if they really existed. But yep. There they were.

Which is not to give you the impression that this is a museum about mobile homes. Because noooo.

My guess is that the curator/creators decide on subject matter based on whatever they are taken with at that moment. In their intro movie, they mention a love for collections. They also obviously love scientific documentation via small machines and original correspondence, some of which they have posted in rooms with too little light,thus making reading impossible...a detail for which I have unlimited gratitude since most of my visits to museums leave me with the feeling that I should have stood still and read the curator’s explanations and footnotes more carefully. Here I was thrilled to have it rendered completely impossible.

Also there is no way to tell what part of what you are seeing is a complete fabrication.

I was especially fond of the section of carefully illustrated pieces of “folk wisdom.” (What used to be referred to as “Old Wive’s Tales” but considering the crazy state of information right now, maybe this stuff has been revived by RFK Jr. as standard medical fact.) Below is the exhibit about ‘Duck’s Breath’, once believed to cure thrush and said to be captured, here, in a test tube,.

Some exhibits are kind of an homage to old Coney Island , such as the microscopic sculptures of Napoleon and Pope John Paul II which fit in the eye of a needle.  And then, you walk around a dark corner and there is a lengthy display case full of disintegrating dice from the collection of the late great magician and collector of oddities, Ricky Jay.

My favorite exhibit involved a dark alcove full of illuminated manuscripts, each embellished by a small moving hologram of animals. Example: two hyenas at a watering hole that left me wishing that the Getty would add moving holograms to all their illuminated manuscripts.

The truth is that this is a difficult place to explain. My friend, the journalist and connoisseur of the arts Kristine McKenna, who went there with me, described it as “a large conceptual prank, done with love and tenderness.” I guess my own description would be to call it a rare outpost of surrealist art thinking executed in the language of museum exhibits. And speaking as someone who likes nothing more than the language of museum exhibits, I found it kind of thrilling…even though, for the second time in 35 years, I came out of there wondering what it was I just saw.

Summing up: it’s nothing less than amazing that the Museum of Jurassic Technology still exists at all, operating as it does inside of such an acute, eccentric level of observation, and artistic expression. I’ll leave you with this piece from The Paris Review which is a pretty good explanation.

And because I think it is going to be an important method for coping these next few years, I was glad to be reminded of some of the good parts of L.A.