Los Angeles

My husband and I are lovers of the grape, so we rarely indulge in hard alcohol, especially since it’s usually more costly and the bars in Los Angeles don’t exactly cater to our age range. It’s hard to find a place with a classy atmosphere that’s not blaring hip-hop and filled with half-exposed 20-year-olds.  How they find the money to buy $12 martinis all night is a mystery to me.

Dave would be content to never leave our house and watch ESPN all night, but I work from home and every once in awhile, I need to get away from my computer and experience the real world. Being a compulsive planner, I always have a few places I’ve found from my Internet travels I’d like to indulge in. Enlisting the excitement of a friend, I recently convinced Dave to take us to the Edison Bar in downtown Los Angeles. Usually, this would be a wholly unacceptable destination on a weeknight, but because we could take the subway – which cut our travel time in half and allowed him to drink – he agreed to the excursion.

Not only were we celebrating our nation’s birthday this past weekend, but the birthdays of two of our closest friends as well, one born on the 4th, one on the 5th. Since nothing says summer like burgers and hot dogs, we all rendezvous'd to "The Stand" in Encino to get our grilling fix with no preparation or clean-up necessary on our part.

This modern diner/burger joint is so right up our alley we couldn’t believe we’d never heard of it before, especially since it’s only 15 minutes from our house in Studio City. My husband has an uncanny knack for sniffing out any establishment that serves a true Chicago-style hotdog, so perhaps its location on the west side of the always-congested 405 Freeway has something to do with his failure to find this place. I think the constant traffic must have jammed his radar.

The Kogi Taco Truck made me miss being in my twenties. Especially over the last couple of months, since I started following their Twitter updates on my cell phone. Late at night I’d be in bed reading a book, and have to stop so I could see the incoming Twitter text: “10PM-2AM@The Brig – Abbot Kinney and Palm in Venice”. I couldn’t stop wondering, “Who ARE these people partying EVERY night of the week, chasing down the Kogi taco truck at 2AM?

After a screening of the frightening (and somewhat hilarious) Paranormal Activity my pals and I wanted to grab a drink and maybe some chow. Three of us, on separate occasions, by different people, had Baby Blues BBQ recommended to us.

This is a place with a great vibe and some pretty delicious BBQ. We all chatted and laughed over a few beers, some sloppy ribs and crumbly delicious cornbread.

I opted for The Deuce, which is a platter consisting of 1/2 a rack of Memphis style ribs, 5 of their BBQ shrimp (which were recommended to our table by some random cook who came out for no reason other than to tell us we should order the shrimp - they were delicious), cornbread and my choice of two from an extensive list of "fixins". It reads like a who's who of barbeque: collard greens, potato salad, baked beans, mac 'n' cheese, okra - fried and sauteed, mashed potatoes, stewed tomatoes, pork 'n' beans, etc. I opted for cole slaw and fried okra. At $22.95 this wasn't such a bad deal.