A chicken-and-waffle cupcake served from a food truck is some kind of recipe for a fatal hipster orgasm, right? I mean, I hope so. [Via]

Save the date, Los Angeles: There's a Matthew Gallaway reading on Thursday, May 19th, at 7p.m., at Book Soup, with a Q&A with Natasha Vargas-Cooper; this will be followed by drinks with everyone in the known universe at the Parlour Room.

Most frequently, people in Hollywood read a magazine article and buy the rights! In a "fun" reversal, this time book editors in New York read a magazine article about people out in L.A. and bought a book from the subject. Even though the subject—Barry Michels, shrink of the unproductive scriptwriter set—is… well, let's call him "unusual"? Looking forward to a new, darker take on pop psychology.

Across the street from Scientology's fabled Celebrity Centre, on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, there is a coffee house called The Bourgeois Pig. It is super dark in there but the coffee isn't bad, and you can sit outside. There's something like a miniature High Street atmosphere in this pleasant neighborhood; the Upright Citizens Brigade is a few doors down, and there's a good bookstore, too.

There is a pretty apartment building just to the west of the Bourgeois Pig. We met one of its residents over coffee there one day many years ago, a young hipsterish guy recently arrived in L.A. and trying to break into screenwriting, he said. [...]

Dogs met by author Jon Cotner and his girlfriend Claire Hamilton on a recent walking tour of Los Angeles include: 2 beagles, 3 boxers, 7 chihuahuas, 1 collie, 5 pit bulls, 1 rottweiler, 4 terrier mixes, and 2 other kinds of mixes.

Earlier this summer, the New York media world was rocked by the departure of Page Six reporter/mascot Neel Shah, who moved to Los Angeles to pursue a writing career with the upcoming NBC/Imagine Entertainment sitcom "Friends With Benefits." Shah's West Coast exploits have remained unreported, but now sources close to the former Postie tell us that, not content with working solely behind the camera, he is making plans to put himself in front of it.

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Spend part of every day at the beach. I sent Jeff's phone a picture of the line for cotton candy on the Santa Monica pier, all tourists from the size of them. He texted back: why don't you photograph people who aren't white? That Pacific blue-I used to run to the end of the pier and taste it. Jeff would have known what made the Atlantic greener.

My hotel was in Century City, with a mall attached. I could get from my room to Saks Fifth Avenue without my shoulders getting sun. The saleswoman said I looked lovely in a [...]

"The number of children between the ages of 5 and 9 in the county decreased by 21% from 2000 to 2010"—and demographers are panicking about how that's going to impact the local workforce in the future. But that seems a remarkably old-world way to think about population trends. This isn't Ames, Iowa, with a brain drain and nobody about to take care of aging parents! With 15 million people in the metro area, around a city where 40% of the population is foreign-born, it's not the children who are going to be doing the future working. It's a city of transience and immigration, and Los Angeles has become [...]

The Los Angeles Review of Books has come into existence, with an opening salvo from Awl pal Ben Ehrenreich, with a very recent history of the death of the book, a proposition regarding which you can imagine both author and publication are "con." It's a bit more philosophical than might readily be embraced elsewhere on the Internet, addressing as it does "bibilionecrophilia: the retreat of the print-faithful into a sort of autistic fetishization of the book-as-object—as if Jeff Bezos could be convinced to lay e-profits aside by recalling for a moment the soft, woody aroma of a yellow-paged Grove Press paperback; as if there were nothing more [...]

Proposition M! Charter Amendment G! There's so much to know to be an informed citizen today in Los Angeles, and yes, it is time for you to go vote. But look out, there's a feud between the library and the police department! (If you like something more straightforward, here's the League of Women Voters.)

Egypt: "The army also assured the 'honourable' protesters that they won't be persecuted by the army when the crisis is over."

Los Angeles: "City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is throwing the book at dozens of people arrested during recent political demonstrations…. Some of the activists arrested, including eight college students and one military veteran who took part in a Westwood rally last year in support of the DREAM Act, face up to one year in county jail." (via)

When I was a kid we'd escape the Seattle winter gloom and rain and roll down Interstate 5 to California. Descending from the Shasta National Forest into California's Central Valley, I'd always put down the window and stick my hand gleefully into the warm, rushing air. "It feels like California, mom! It feels like California!" Not long ago but many years later, I found myself traveling that same stretch of highway. Windows down, a hot and dry wind tousled my hair as I reached my hand out into the sun. It sure felt like California alright, and I couldn't help but notice that this realization had left a very [...]

This solicitation was recently received by a TV person out on the other coast. They say "leave an impression and you'll get remembered!" I suppose that works even if the impression is rather creepy. For reasons of politeness, we've obscured this actor's last name. (And to be fair, it's not like my handwriting's any good either, though it is less rapistey.) But if you're interested in hiring this young man, let us know, and we'll make contact!

How could this go wrong? Los Angeles is installing new solar-powered parking meters! They are so reliable apparently that the city is rescinding its policy of not ticketing cars at broken meters. Got it? They never break, so when they do actually break, you'll now get a ticket for parking in that space. Also they have outlawed smoking in Santa Monica on residential balconies as of today. Everyone back in the car, smoking with the windows rolled up. To your health!

Tonight! Unless you're going to The Hairpin's drink session tonight in New York, then you must be in Los Angeles, because no one lives anywhere else, and so good news!

• 7:00p.m.: Matthew Gallaway reads at Book Soup, plus a Q&A with Natasha Vargas-Cooper, 8818 Sunset, West Hollywood.

• After, like, 8:30 or so: Drinks with friends at the Parlour Room, 6423 Yucca St., Hollywood. (It's only a "ten-minute drive"! That's an LA ten minutes.) (Poster by Tully Mills!)

10. Chadaka 9. Tawanna 8. Pink Pepper 7. Poom Thai 6. Rama Thai 5. Rambutan 3. Chao Krung 3. Bangkok West (same as Chao Krung!) 2. Palms Thai 1. Tuk Tuk

Eric Spiegelman is a proprietor of Old Jews Telling Jokes.

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Feb 16, 1912: Margaret Q. Adams, LA County Sheriff's first woman officer, takes oath. Her badge, pix & obit: http://bit.ly/cJZZiKWed Feb 16 17:12:40 via webLa AngelenaLAhistory

It's very likely that you don't live in Los Angeles! So many people don't these days. But it's a fascinating city, and even nonresidents can play along with this Twitter feed of LA history. What I love about it is it tells little stories.

Save the date: February 1, in the city of Los Angeles, in the neighborhood of "Echo Park," at Taix. Awl readers are gathering to drink and discuss their feelings, beginning at 7 p.m. More info will follow in the comments.

The Ronni Chasen thing is so out of hand. It's unfortunate that her rather remarkable life—a lovely person; not a rare thing in this world, until you know that she was a Hollywood publicist—is being eclipsed by the matter of her murder. Now, two weeks on, everyone is left to chase not only the extremely bizarre shooting but now the confusing (from the outside, at least) police investigation. For those not paying attention, at a bit after midnight on November 16, at Whittier Dr. and Sunset in Beverly Hills, Chasen was shot at five times while in her car and hit three times. (Not through the windshield, but through [...]

Dear The Awl,

I was going to write an incredible piece detailing the exploits of a controversial "hipster conference" on an esteemed university campus. No other journalist would have the guts to write this because of the potential backlash from the Hipster Media Elite. This event was to be held on neutral territory to prevent "New York media gang violence."

I was going to start by detailing the crowd.