Gendy Alimurung

Once you drive the winding roads to Marta Teegen’s house in Mount Washington, it’s easy to shake the city off. Inhale the steamy, earthy garden smell, then gaze upon the abundance of her front yard. In place of the usual grassy lawn, 16 types of tomatoes grow, along with five......

Consider the Chihuahua. Small. Fast. Insane. A rough estimate reveals that there are, oh, say, a billion of them here on this hot, hot Saturday in Montebello at the PETCO Unleashed regional Chihuahua races — in any case, more Chihuahuas and their worshipers than you can shake a Taco Bell......

The voyage to Little Tokyo so often begins with a craving for ramen and ends with (best-case scenario) a souvenir maneki nekko ear pick, or (worst-case scenario) an inflatable bug wrist bracelet that serves no other function than scaring the pets. You saw it. You knew you didn’t need it......

At Sunday’s SushiMasters competition for the city’s top sushi chef, taiko drums herald the arrival of bigwigs: the president of Mutual Trading Company, who brought the first edamame to America. The owner of Koda Farms, who developed the first medium-grain rice. The consul general of Japan. The inventor of the......

“Do you want a cat?” the e-mail read. I’d sent this message out, en masse, asking people if they would adopt Soy, my friend Sharon’s cat. Sharon was moving from Los Angeles to New York. People pointed out to Sharon that you can still keep cats in New York, that......

The title of Miss Hooker 2008 went up for grabs last week. The beauty pageant of the damned took place at the Dragonfly nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard, not too far away from the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, that venerable Wimbledon of hooking venues. The event was organized by......

You will pine for the raconteur days of Cyrano and d’Artagnan the moment you set trembling foot within the Los Angeles International Fencing Center. O, to settle things like gentlemen! On a misty dawn in a clearing in the woods, a trusted second by your side, ready to toss over......

On a sunny afternoon in Costa Mesa, Cassie Parmenter and a legion of girls are singing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” in the barbershop style. They are thinking, I suspect, in that teenage-girl way, about how much more awesome it is to be singing onstage with 250 of their best friends......