Deborah Vankin

Pop culture is all about specifics and subsets these days (subsets of subsets and blogs devoted to blogs about subsets): You’re not just a fan of comics, you’re a die-hard collector of shojo manga, unbearably cute Japanese comics for teenage girls. You don’t just listen to hip-hop, you live for......

If you’d had two gin and tonics and squinted real hard, it could have been 1976. Patti Smith, blissful sneer and all, was onstage with longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye, laying into the mike like an angry teenager: “G. L. O. R. I. A. Glooorria!” She must be 60 now, and......

Peppermint-blue bottles and candy-striped cats; plum and bubblegum balls; frosted “chipped ice” crystal and black-licorice-streaked bowls. This isn’t Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It’s Laura Friedman’s PlanetGlass, which deals in midcentury modernist art glass ranging from the more affordable $100 pieces to rare museum-quality items worth up to $10,000. There’s no......

Here’s a good party trick: Glibly mention your imminent travel arrangements at a crowded cocktail gathering — maybe a 4 p.m. flight out of LAX — and then openly question your sense of direction. “Freeways or surface streets?” you might muse. “Slauson or Stocker? Caribbean Treehouse or Pann’s Coffee Shop......

Photos by Kevin ScanlonThe entrance to Thai Town — the six blocks of Hollywood Boulevard between Western and Normandie, according to a 1999 City Council decision — is unofficially marked by an enormous, supine hot dog the size of a submarine resting atop a bright red Thai takeout window. That’s......

Photo by Ted SoquiIf, in your quest for that perfect living-room showpiece, it’s the art of the chase that excites you — scanning Craigslist for advance garage-sale listings, verbal sparring for markdowns at bustling flea markets or racing to a Saturday-morning sample sale in the Beachwood Canyon back yard of......