Customer Reviews

The Underground Guide to Los Angeles

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has chapters on music, restaurants, great places to buy clothes, see art, go to thriftstores, etc. I've lived in LA for four years and never even heard of some of these places! The chapters are all fun, too, not boring like regular guide-books. Some are like essays, most are hysterically funny, full of personality. The writers included in this collection are diverse. Some are well-known, some are poets, others, like Rob Zebrecky (of Possum Dixon) are musicians. This would be a good gift for a visitor, or even someone who lives in LA.

When one hears the word "underground", one usually thinks you are going to get the inside scoop on something or get the unusual, strange or non-ordinary. This book is anything BUT those qualilties.

This LA guide gives you the same ol' sites to see that any other tourist book would....Mann's Chinese Theatre, Universal Studios, Hollywood Walk of Fame. You might get a good reccomendation on where to eat, but that is about it. Nothing too underground about this book.

However, for a tourist book it really isnt bad. Pick it up. Just dont go in with the pre-conceived notion that you are picking up something unusual. it is as good as any other tourist book of L.A.

This book is a good idea, but even the standard Moon handbook has more hidden out of the way stuff than this one. It's more like a series of essays than a comprehensive guidebook, so you can't turn to a specific area or a specific topic, other than the essay titles. It's best as a guide to restaurants, shops, bars, and coffeehouses, but there are much better ones if that's what you are really after. Everything is treated too quickly to really give the reader a good idea what they are getting into.

I remember one thing in the Hollywood chapter they pointed out was the Pink Dot, a convienence store that delivers. I "had to" go visit it, thinking it was a famous landmark, but it is really just one of a chain of mediocre conveinence stores. I have no idea why it made it into an "underground" guidebook.

After checking out just a few of the places this guidebook recommended, I knew the authors were real experts on their city. The places they sent us were everything they said they would be. This book is a must if you want to see the real and the really exciting L.A.

While this book does include some LA basic tourist stuff, it also includes tons of record stores, thrift shops, strange history places, and Bukowski's grave site. Great dive bar recommendations and cheap eats, too. The chapter written by LA scenester Vaginal Davis is the funniest thing I've ever read in any guidebook anywhere and is itself worth the price of this book... a fun book for visitors and residents alike - loved it!