Built on Carroll Avenue in the late 1880s, this is a short walk to look at these old houses. There is the Thriller house from Michael Jackson clip on the 1345 Carroll Av

Lovely food, superfriendly, good-looking space with great music.

Dries Van Noten

Located less than one mile from my home in downtown, this is the best cafe in the area. It is nestled in a corridor between two buildings on a brick path with beautiful outside seating — quite the hideaway. They have the best prosciutto sandwich and the coffee is delicious.

Salton Sea is not technically LA, but is a by-product of its history and my first-choice escape from the city: one of the world's largest inland seas and lowest spots on earth, a man-made lake in the midst of the Colorado desert, a resort area in the twenties turned in one of the worst ecological disaster of the past century.