|
|
|
The New York Times' Critical Shopper feature visits The Grove and says today that it gets to you, even if you don't want to like it.
The first time you go to the Grove, the immensely successful and completely fabricated commercial center in Los Angeles, you will try to hate it. But then you will watch the old-fashioned trolley passing by, or the dancing fountain as it splurts jovially to the cadence of a Sinatra song, and you will drop your snobby urban integrity and walk around consuming things in a mouth-breathing stupor just like everyone else....The Grove is everything that is horrible and spectacular about our brand-saturated American lives. It’s a living version of every pretentious theory you may have read back in grad school: a facsimile of a space, a scripted zone, a generic city, a vituperative quote by Baudrillard or Deleuze. But it’s also totally great!
LAT columnist Steve Lopez this week took a tour of Rick Caruso's soon-to-open Americana at Brand, the faux Grove in Glendale.
Photo: Natasha Calzatti for The New York Times
More:
Observing Los Angeles
© 2003-2009 • About LA Observed • Email the editor
| Bev Hills billionaire Ron Burkle has $56 million in loans against his two houses. The McCourts have borrowed $28 million on their properties.
| Advice for Greenies in a Complicated World
| Steve Jones, the self-proclaimed Sire of Wilshire (a nod to the physical address of his former home at Indie 103.1 FM), is back on the air!
| She gaped at me like I was living history -- Miss Jane Pittman come to put her withered lips to the "Young Only" fountain straw of ageism.
As newspapers and television pull back from investigative reporting, foundations and other organizations are beginning to fill the void. One of the most interesting is Accountable California, a project of Local 721 of the Service Employees International Union.
Sponsors
Blogads
Get RSS Feeds
of LA Observed
of LA Observed
LA Observed publishes several Real Simple Syndication feeds for easy scanning of headlines. If you wish to subscribe to a feed, most popular RSS readers will do it for you. You can also enter the web address from the XML button below or click on a specific feed. For more help with RSS, try here or here.
