Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Some L.A. non-food blogs we love

Franklin Ave.'s 200th Rate-a-restaurant lunch at Pacific Dining Car, from another great blog, LAisMyBeat.

I just wanted to give a little shout-out to a few blogs that take on other subjects besides food, gasp!, but are still integral to enjoying life in L.A.

Jesus Sanchez has been doing the Eastsider L.A. blog for only a little over eight months, but he's ramped up to an amazing nearly 100 posts a month in some months. I've never meet Sanchez, who this week is taking it a little easier to attend to his actual life, but he does a great job of infusing news of the real Eastside and the near-Eastside with local flavor and balance.

Congratulations to Variety colleague and fellow L.A. blogger Mike Schneider on his 200th Rate a Restaurant review for FranklinAvenue. Schneider no longer lives on Franklin Ave., but he and his wife Maria have been blogging for longer than most everyone at this point, and their blog combines restaurant reviews, TV and radio musings and local color like personalized license plates and freeway sign observations in a uniquely L.A. way.

I love neighborhood blogs, because no one else reports the details that only nearby residents really care about. Two of my favorites are:

Blackburn and Sweetzer -- Tasha Nita Adams goes heavy on the shopping news, as befitting her stylish Third St. neighborhood, but also scoops plenty of restaurant info in this fast-evolving neighborhood; and
The Atwater Village Newbie is no longer a newbie at all -- he's now got a stylish blog nameplate and more than three years of neighborhood blogging behind him, but he's still going strong with news of a neighborhood that is continuing to deal with crime while being in the throes of gentrification.
There's plenty of other fascinating blogs that focus on local topics, such as transit issues, Downtown L.A., and Highland Park. Most of these bloggers make either no money at all or just a few pennies from blog ads, so let's thank them for providing the news that hopefully someday we'll all get paid for reporting. Do you have any favorites I haven't covered?

3 comments:

Ellen Bloom said...

Thanks for the photo-credit shout-out, Pat! We had fun at the PDC on Saturday! Missed you, but I know that you were up to a "golden" tasting opportunity!

Jeff Massie said...

Good post, thanks for all the leads to local blogs.

FYI, the Atwater Village Newbie blog is here (you repeated the Blackburn & Sweetzer URL in the link above).

Anonymous said...

Hey Pat--I just saw that the locksmith next to Fred on Vermont has gone out of business and the space is being reworked...any idea if Fred is expanding into the space?