Los Angeles is a contradiction: a paradox of urbanites that crave the outdoors and yuppies that eat vegan. Fancy jeans, successful lunatics, poor rich people, and other oxymorons splattered across Sunset Boulevard, a street with beaches on one end and mini skyscrapers rising up on the other end. I love LA. It satisfies my needs for culture and nature simultaneously.

So when I got an email blast from the Architecture and Design Museum about an Urban Hike through downtown LA, it seemed right up my alley.

It started with a rap. Mike Sonksen, aka Mike the PoeT, begins and ends each tour prosthelytizing about Los Angeles. Along with being a 3rd generation LA native, he is a historian and museum tour guide and has recently teamed with the A + D Museum to lead these tours every other Sunday.

Los Angeles is a contradiction: a paradox of urbanites that crave the outdoors and yuppies that eat vegan. Fancy jeans, successful lunatics, poor rich people, and other oxymorons splattered across Sunset Boulevard, a street with beaches on one end and mini skyscrapers rising up on the other end. I love LA. It satisfies my needs for culture and nature simultaneously.

So when I got an email blast from the Architecture and Design Museum about an Urban Hike through downtown LA, it seemed right up my alley.

It started with a rap. Mike Sonksen, aka Mike the PoeT, begins and ends each tour prosthelytizing about Los Angeles. Along with being a 3rd generation LA native, he is a historian and museum tour guide and has recently teamed with the A + D Museum to lead these tours every other Sunday. This one took us around Bunker Hill. Did you know there is an Alexander Liberman sculpture on South Hope Street to fill the spiritual void the financial district creates? Did you know there’s a man made waterfall parallel to a set of stairs, the Bunker Hill Steps, because water is life and I guess concrete is death and in building up downtown we had to counteract. LA’s resistance to itself is what makes it spectacular.

Did you know that everything in LA means something? The psychic premonition, the coincidence, the symbolism of the shape of the building, and every waterfall. The secret to enjoying LA is discovering hidden meaning. Mike the PoeT, a historian in jeans and a baseball cap, embodies that hidden meaning. Join him next Sunday to find out more.

LEIMERT PARK > SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24 > 11AM

LITTLE TOKYO > SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14 > 11AM

EAGLE ROCK > SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5 > 11AM

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