Los Angeles – Page 7 – thosecoolkims

Mmmm…mmm…Canter’s.

It’s been way too long since we’ve been to Canter’s Deli on Fairfax, but when Carrie’s mom requested lunch there for a post-Mother’s Day celebration, we were all over it. Happy belated Mother’s Day, Mom!

Fun Canter’s facts:

Over 4,900 lbs of Pastrami are sold per month.
There are 1,500 gallons of Chicken Soup made per week.
4,000 Knishes are baked per week.
Seating capacity is 465 people.
Canter’s Delicatessen is 14,000 sq ft, making it one of the largest delicatessens in the country.

An homage to Canters, one of our favorite time warps:

The Michigan Cousins Meet Los Angeles

This week, Carrie’s cousins Parisa & Sahra came to visit during their spring break. We had an awesome time hanging out, and we had to show them Los Angeles as best we could.

We started things out first with a trip to Sprinkles in Beverly Hills for adorably delicious cupcakes. What’s more LA than paying $4 for a cupcake?

Next, we drove down Rodeo Drive to see the bling in person, and then stopped by The Standard Hollywood (one of our favorite spots) for lunch.

We decided to work off the treats with a lengthy shopping session on Melrose for some cool LA shopping, and then of course we had to hit up Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for the touristy stuff!

But … the highlight for ALL of the girls definitely was hitting up Kat Von D’s tattoo shop, High Voltage Tattoo, which is the shop on TLC’s famous TV show, L.A. Ink!

We all were pretty starstruck at the shop, despite the fact that no one on the show was actually working there that day. The shop also seemed a lot smaller in person! We did spot Kat’s sister, but that was about it. No ink for any of us, but we still left happy – Carrie & Sahra bought T-shirts and of course, we got many cheesy pics out front!

All in all, it was a good week, and we’ll be sad to see them go tomorrow. Our last hurrah tonight was at Pinkberry, for stylish frozen yogurt! Good times!

A Day in Little Tokyo

Today was a fun filled day of art and Japanese wackiness. We headed up to Little Tokyo to catch the amazing Murakami exhibit at MOCA and then on to the Giant Robot retrospective at the Japanese American National Museum. Both were fantastic and made us want to reach our goal to visit Japan sooner than later!

First things first – Murakami. Nothing can be wackier, and nothing made us happier than to see this work being featured at MOCA. The trademark Japanese anime style has infiltrated our culture and shaken things up as much today as all of the big time artists in the pop art movement did in the ’60s. Murakami’s world is a different world alright, and we like it. You feel like a child, but at times the subject matter is very adult. You can’t take pictures in the museum, but we managed to find a few out there on the good ol’ world wide web.

The space was so transformed into this crazy land that the walls in some areas were covered in eyeballs – or flowers – and bright splashes of color were everywhere. Then of course there were the sculpture pieces that looked like space age plastic cartoon characters that were adorable and disturbing all at the same time.

We loved it!

After taking in all of the Murakami madness, we decided to stop by Starbucks – after all, the red cups are here, and Carrie couldn’t be happier!

Next up was the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). We hadn’t been there before, and were glad to finally visit. Giant Robot is a magazine that we’re both big fans of. Basically, it’s an artsy magazine featuring work by edgy artists and art school students that features hip pop culture references and tongue-in-cheek humor. It’s super cool and pure eye candy to look at.

The art was awesome and we were excited that they let us take a few pictures inside.

JANM also has another really interesting exhibit going on at the moment called Common Ground and it has tons of photos, posters and objects telling the story of 130 years of Japanese American history. It was pretty amazing and we both were pretty moved by it.

As it turns out, the museum also has a super cool gift store and we know that one day in the future when there is a cool little baby Kim, we will have to buy this shirt:

All in all, it was an inspiring day – and we say if you haven’t gone out and caught an art exhibition lately – get out there and see something!

Pretty Smart!

Ed’s loved the little Smart car that’s been available in Europe for years and has been extremely excited about the Smart finally coming to the US soon. Anyways, the day draws nearer and they’ve set up a temporary space in Venice that showcases the car in this amazing modern house on Abbot Kinney. We don’t know what blew us away more…the house or the car!

The Smart House is located at 1319 Abbot-Kinney. It’s three stories, very modern and very open. There was a Smart downstairs (and ones you could actually drive out in back…more on that later). We were both dying over the honeycomb screen and chairs.

The next two floors included the main living room and kitchen, as well as additional chill areas. All in white!

And finally, the best looking espresso machine ever…

The space is being used as a Smart art gallery as well. Lots of cool and witty pieces, mostly Smart related.

However – on to the car itself. It’s tiny and meant for really congested urban areas. You see them everywhere in European cities. It’s no “toy” car though…Smart is a sub-brand of Mercedes-Benz and is meant to survive crashes as well as any normal-sized car. Anyways, it was smart (knee slapper, we know) to locate this temporary Smart space in Venice on Abbot Kinney…one of the most congested and hip areas of LA.

The Smart is not only efficient (averages well over 40mpg), but it’s a very fashionable and stylish little piece, with body panels that are removable should you want to change colors on a whim. And inside, you’re met with cool shapes and fabric patterns, and it’s huge given the tiny exterior. Basically, this is a car as a fashion accessory as much as it’s a mode of transportation.

Driving it shows it’s a real car…it doesn’t feel unsafe and in fact feels particularly solid. Here’s Ed about to take it for a spin.

Anyways, we hope this car does well. We like everything the car stands for – the efficiency, frugality, and high style. Heck, it’s the only car that has a permanent place in MoMA’s collection for its design! And props to the Smart House too – the presentation of it all totally successfully communicated the Smart “lifestyle”. For more modern greatness, see the pics here.

And, another draw is you might even have a celebrity sighting while you’re there like we did…Jessica Biel was there today checking out the Smart House with a few sidekicks. Go check it out!

We love a great restaurant…

We made plans to finally have a long overdue dinner with Carrie’s best friend, Carrie and her husband, John. She suggested Ketchup, and as soon as we saw the pics, we were IN! Besides the fact that Carrie is a complete ketchup addict, this place was all white and red – and very modern! We couldn’t wait to check this place out. Here are a few pics from their website:

(We sat right about where this picture was taken from)

The restaurant didn’t disappoint, although it was quite a scene. Ketchup is located right on the Sunset Strip. Ed kept sayin’ that he half expected the paparazzi to show up because it seemed like some celebrity was bound to appear. No celeb sightings for us though…

The place wasn’t just pretty, either. The food was pretty good. We ordered some fun stuff – the Ketchup Fries, which were basically 3 different types of French Fries with 5 different ketchups. The Fire Fries were Ed’s fave, the Sweet Potato fries were surprisingly Carrie’s fave, and the Parmesan Fries weren’t bad either. We can’t quite remember all 5 ketchup types, but they were pretty delicious. We know there was a classic, a chipotle, a mango and one with ranch. We also ordered mini Kobe beef chili dogs to share between the four of us. The two dogs came out and they were the funniest little miniature dogs we’d ever seen. They were literally “bite-size”. That was fine by us though, as we needed to save room for the main course…seafood plates served with lobster mashed potatoes. The meal was some serious over-indulgence, but it was worth it!

Next, we were off to the L.A. County Museum of Art for a Muse event. Carrie used to work at the museum, so lucky for us, she was able to hook us up with free tickets. (Thanks, Carrie!)

The event was featuring some 60s & 70s SoCal art from their permanent collection, along with some colonial Latin American art. It was okay – we all agreed we’d seen better there, but Ed was excited because one of his favorite bands, Los Abandoned played. They also had art projects that you could make on site. We love those LACMA events!

All in all, we thought it was an excellent night!!!