I’m super-bummed that I’m several states away from the LA Street Food Fest’s Summer Tasting Event today. Not just because it requires spending the entire day consuming food, but because it includes an entire section devoted to ice cream. But some of you may have also missed out on today’s gorge-o-rama since it’s the hottest ticket in town: The event has been sold out for days. So, to satiate my own curiosity and help out those of you who can’t be there, I got an exclusive sneak peek at what frozen goods they’ll be serving today. I think of it as a long list of drool-inducing summer to-dos.

Coolhaus, my very favorite architectural ice cream sandwich truck that I’ve interviewed before: Brown Butter Candied Bacon Mini Ice Cream Sandwiches

King Kone, an amazing soft-serve truck:  Milk Chocolate Dipped Soft Serve Cones

Natura Bar, the awesome new Oaxacan juice bar in Koreatown: Flor De Piña (Pineapple Blossom), Cactus Fruit, Leche Quemada (Burnt Milk), Nuez (Walnut) Oaxacan Ice Cream

Pop Art Artisanal Popsicles, another brand-new company: Organic Pineapple Habeñero, Orange Rosewater and Mexican Hot Chocolate Popsicles

Scoops, the LA original, featuring new street food-inspired flavors curated by Matthew Kang, who is opening a second location in Mar Vista: Pistachio Cardamom, Thai Iced Tea Coconut, Mango Sweet Orange and Basil Seed, Tamarind Pear Rum Sorbet

Sweet Lucie’s, an ice cream company that serves out of a vintage truck: Organic Handmade Ice Cream including Lemon Basil Sorbet

The Good Karma Truck, run by the Silver Lake restaurant Cru: Vegan Sorbets and Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream Bon Bons

Tropical Shave Ice:  Hawaiian Shave Ice with fresh fruit, condensed milk and red bean

Vintage Longboards Ice Cream:  Oreo Cookies n’ Creme Ice Cream Bars

Best of luck today to the fabulous ladies behind the event, the lovely Sonja Rasula and Shawna Dawson. Check out their musings about the food truck economy in The Atlantic.

Working from home has many, many benefits, one of which being the fact that when you’re hungry, there’s no quandry over going out or ordering in—you simply march downstairs and make the best of the refrigerator situation. Sometimes the situation requires drastic, non-glamorous alternatives (a big bowl of stove-popped popcorn is my standby) but sometimes the fridge opens lush and overflowing like an Energy Star-rated cornucopia.

Like today, when it yielded this salad of peaches, figs, corn, carrots, green beans, arugula, cucumber, parmesan and proscuitto. I would say chop and top with your favorite dressing, but I think the secret is not to. I hardly ever put dressing on my salads anymore since the Arbequina olive oil from the Cheese Store of Silver Lake handles the job so delicately all by itself.

One day this mystery squash vine appeared in the garden, most likely as a compost heap survivor. Excited as I was about the possibility of pumpkins, I was more excited about the meals we’d be enjoying long before Halloween. Squash blossoms are a true delicacy in the sense that they require a certain level of sacrifice: For every blossom you eat, that’s one less squash you’ll be enjoying come harvest. But I assure you, they’re worth it.

I often use this tempura recipe from Wolfgang Puck which is especially light and fluffy because it uses soda water in the batter. Instead of goat cheese, we stuffed them with a mixture of farmers market feta and Laughing Cow. They were crispy and sweet and spicy and the very first thing I thought when I dropped the golden blossom into my mouth was, “Wouldn’t this be great with goat cheese ice cream?” Next time.

Almost graphically-accurate Flag Cake, recipe from Ina Garten.

It was one of those nights that started—as many summer nights do—by drinking wine on top of a hill as the sun went down.

And eventually covered four neighborhoods, four staircases and two buses—all on your own two feet.

It was one of those nights where popcorn was made just for you by a man named Ruben.

Which is, incidentally, the best dinner in Hollywood.

It was one of those nights where you somehow end up in a carpeted, stained-glass cathedral to debauchery, its interior swirling with smoke. A little slice of Vegas on Temple Street.

Where the band played a song that you had dialed into the jukebox at the last bar, and for a moment it felt like the whole world was tuned in to one cosmic playlist.

Yeah, it was one of those nights. (If this is you, I’m sorry. Really sorry.)

It was one of those nights where you ran into your oldest friends completely accidentally and realized that LA is indeed very small.

So small, in fact, that when you step out of that carpeted, stained-glass room, you realize you’re closer to where you started than you thought. Close enough to walk home, down your favorite street of Victorians, up some more staircases, past still-sizzling taco trucks.

So you do.

I’m still buzzing from the amazing response to last weekend’s City Listening II (and the success of the Dwell on Design conference, and the fun of emceeing the LABC’s Los Angeles Architectural Awards…I’m telling you, it was quite a week!). We’ll have a full recap of the evening, including photos, very soon, until then, you can read this review by Mike Neal at Architizer.

But before all that, I just wanted to show you this beautiful photo by Monica Orozco, which was taken at the very end of the night, and take a quick moment to thank my two lovely co-hosts—or as you can see from this photo, maybe three lovely co-hosts—Marissa Gluck and Haily Zaki. These ladies are two of the smartest, hardest-working, most creative forces of nature in this city. Over the last two years they have organized and strategized and materialized dozens of events with huge smiles on their faces and strong cocktails in their hands (except, you know, when Haily got knocked up). And in the process, they’ve also become two of my dearest friends. I can’t wait to see what the future will bring! And on that note, here’s what I read at the event to open it up:  Our de LaB manifesto, in rhyme, of course.

The de LaB Manifesto

We were tired of PowerPoints and panels and pretense
Sick of working the room at lame-ass design events
Tired of the stodginess that came with such happenings
We wanted to know what our neighbors were making

La Brea was picked as an arbitrary line,
But we knew wherever we drew it someone would mind
We welcome the Westsiders, they’re not ostracized
As long as they don’t lie about not crossing the 405

What began as a drinking club quickly turned civic
Our visions for the city became more optimistic
Don’t get me wrong, we still like the drinking
Alcohol is liquid innovation to fuel design thinking

de Lab gets people out of cars and into their city
Introduces neighbors and promotes collaborativity
I know that’s not a word, I invented it myself
de LaB is DIY: We do it ourselves

For design in LA we will walk and ride bikes
We take buses and trains and take LA River hikes
We’re a committed gang of creators who can make a difference
We’re raising a new generation of Los Angeles urbanists

Your support has been amazing for the events we’ve had before
There’s a whole LA out there we haven’t begun to explore
All we need is your support…
…actually, no, we really need your money

By drawing a line through the city, divided
We ended up making it feel more united
We love LA so much it makes us feel giddy
Now sit back, have a drink (that part is important!) and listen to your city

Thanks to everyone for coming and for supporting de LaB!

Update: In all the fabulosity of Saturday night, I screwed up and neglected to post the winning raffle tickets for our eight door prizes. If you were at City Listening and had a raffle ticket, check here to see if you won and email us if you did!

It’s going to be a big, fat, designy weekend here in LA and I hope that you can join me for as much of it as you can muster! First up, Friday, Saturday and Sunday is Dwell on Design, the West Coast’s largest design show and one of my favorite conferences of all time.

For the last few weeks I’ve been writing over at Dwell about all the highlights, including a beautiful tile collaboration between Heath Ceramics and Dwell, a free design clinic hosted by my friends at Architizer, Project H’s GreenAid seed bomb vending machines, David Thompson’s lovely Larchmont Village house, the announcement of a new Cleantech Corridor competition for LA, and an exciting collaboration between Dwell and Arkitip on 10 prints of 10 Dwell houses by 10 artists, including this piece by Andrew Holder (who I was thrilled to interview!). Plus, I got to go to Ed Begley, Jr.’s supergreen house—he’s talking Sunday—and we chatted about riding the bus. He does it!

If all that wasn’t a reason to come out, I’ll be speaking there, too, and I hope you can come by and say hi! Saturday at 12:30pm on the Sustainability stage I’m moderating a panel called Improvising and Improving LA Transit, showcasing how three Angelenos have taken a DIY approach to making the city’s transportation better. On my panel are three of my transit heroes: Dan Koeppel, founder of the 35-mile stairwalk named THE BIG PARADE, which I just wrote about here; Richard Ankrom, the artist who took it upon himself to improve an Los Angeles freeway sign (which I wrote about over at GOOD); and Joseph Prichard, a graphic designer who is improving bike signage, and whose Better Bikeways series I edit at GOOD.

And then at 5pm, same day, same stage, I’m moderating another panel, Watts House Project: Architecture, Art, and Sustainability, about one of the most exciting public art projects in the country, the Watts House Project, featuring Edgar Arceneaux, John Umbanhowar and Frank Escher.

And because I love you so much for reading this blog, I’d like to offer you a special discount on the Dwell conference. You’ll receive $15 off the Dwell Exhibition Plus Ticket (50% off the two-day Weekend Pass) if you purchase tickets online before Friday with the code: DWELL8B

But wait, there’s more! Saturday night, after my last panel at Dwell on Design, I’ll be scurrying up Spring Street to the Spring Arts Tower for our very first de LaB fundraiser: City Listening II.

We’ve got a killer lineup of design writers who are all going to be reading stories about LA, including Frances Anderton on “Living With Gehry,” John Chase ruminating about fun-size Twix bars, Sam Lubell reading bible verses, Tibby Rothman with an amazing (and true) art world story, Nick Adams on LA’s “subway,” Chris Nichols from Los Angeles Magazine, LA Creek Freak Joe Linton, LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, Rico Gagliano from the PRI show The Dinner Party Download, Brooke Hodge, Adrian Glick Kudler, Tom Marble, Marissa Gluck, and letters to LA from 826LA students. And yes, I’ll be reading my annual poem about design in LA. Plus, anyone who arrives by bike or transit receives a very special walking-themed door prize!

We couldn’t have done any of this without our amazing de LaB community. The event decor is currently being laser-etched by Crimson Collective (the same designers who built that giant bird nesting in the center of this year’s Coachella festival), and we’ll have a silent auction featuring items ranging from beautiful custom-built “barchitecture” by Jason King of Somewhere Something, to a walking tour of West Hollywood’s art and urban design with John Chase, to an amazing airplant sculpture by Kara Bartlet’s toHOLD. Plus, I can’t forget the tireless work of our most valuable de LaB community member: Derrick Schultz, who built our website and designed all the beautiful graphics.

We’ll also have delectable Asian-French eats by Flying Pig courtesy of The Architect’s Newspaper, vegan truffles by Nicobella, our well-named de LaB cocktails, and wine courtesy of FORM. And yes, there will be gelato, well, ice cream—did you really think I could throw a party without it? My good friends at Coolhaus will be serving up mini ice cream sandwiches with a very east-of-La Brea flavor: Horchata!

And because if you’ve read this far I really love you, I want to offer you a discount on City Listening tickets as well, if you purchase online before Saturday. Just use delab to get $5 off regular tickets, which include drinks, food and admission to the show; or delabVIP to get $10 off de LaB Groupie Tickets, which include drinks, food and show plus a guerrilla gardening kit from GreenAid, a very good chance at winning great door prizes, and an after party at the Crocker Club, conveniently located below the venue.

Bonus: If you make it to the after party, you just might get to see me collapse after this overload of awesomeness. Hope to see you there!

Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again! This weekend is the BIG PARADE, the kinda-crazy, outrageously-fun, 35-mile, 100+ stairway walk from Angels Flight to the Hollywood sign that includes camping—yes, camping, in LA—at the Silverlake Rec Center on Saturday night. The BIG PARADE site has timetables, departure locations and all relevant information for you to join us for five minutes or five miles. And I’ll be reprising my duties as Official Twitterer over at @BIGPARADELA if you want to follow along at home or meet us along the way.

To get you in the mood, check out this story by Ryan Bradley who recently walked across LA and back for his Walking in LA series on GOOD. He went along on one of the practice walks led by Dan, and gives a shout out to me as “GOOD’s in-house walking expert, the aptly named Alissa Walker.” Nice!

You can also read my story about last year’s BIG PARADE and check out the photos from the Silver Lake practice walk that I led, where we checked out the Neutra, Lautner and Lakers-colored houses (actually, there are two Lakers-colored houses on the route), and climbed the world’s shortest staircase (above). Hope to see you out there this weekend!

Back, way back, in ye olde 2008, we held a very special de LaB as part of GOOD December where we asked local design and architecture writers to read pieces about LA. I read a poem about LA’s design culture facing a downturn, Christopher Hawthorne read about wildfires, Frances Anderton read about LA’s mythical status to architects, Josh Williams and Marissa Gluck presented horrifying interiors from real estate sites, Jade Chang and Sam Lubell both read about malls, and John Chase read something…unpublishable. But man, was it funny.

We’ve always wanted to do an event like City Listening again, and at the same time we’ve come up with some plans for growing de LaB. If you look at the kinds of events we’ve been throwing for the past two (almost three!) years, our attendance and ambition has grown in leaps and bounds since that first let’s-all-meet-at-a-bar event we had at the Edison in 2007. If you had told me back then that de LaB would eventually evolve into a day of biking through Chinatown with 50 of my new best friends, I would have called you crazy.

So, we’re proud to announce our first-ever de LaB fundraiser, City Listening II! On Saturday, June 26, de LaB and a fantastic roster of collaborators will present an evening of stories about Los Angeles read once again by your favorite design, architecture and art writers from both sides of La Brea! The event will also feature a silent auction with art and design work from members of the de LaB community, fantastic food and drinks (of course), and plenty of surprises and special guests, all at the beautiful Spring Arts Tower in downtown LA.

Early bird pricing ends June 10, so buy your tickets now! And I hope to see you at City Listening II!

It’s that time of year again. The birds are chirping. The flowers are blooming. And the students are not sleeping. Yes, it’s the annual Spring Show at the Academy of Art University, where students from architecture to animation proudly display the brilliant work that only the finest sleep deprivation can provide. And I’m back in San Francisco with a repeat performance of the popular live-blogging, student-interviewing, photo-snapping, social-mediating, ice cream-eating experience that covers it all: Spring Show with Gelatobaby.

This year’s Spring Show kicks off Thursday, May 27 at 11am PST. From then until the wee hours of 7pm I’ll be posting highlights to Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter, all of which will be collected on this pretty little site here. You can peek at last year’s show to get a pretty good idea of how this will work.

I’m excited to announce that we also have a Very Special Event planned for 5-7pm. You’re all invited, but you’re going to have to stay tuned here or follow me at @gelatobaby to find out exactly how and where this specialness will occur.

Meanwhile, a group of people I like to call my “A Team” (but without the extra-prickly whiskers) is back in action and they are even more fabulous than before. We have superwomen-in-heels Pam Williams and Kim Rogala from Williams + House. The indefatigable Randy J. Hunt and his Citizen Scholar, without whom none of this (none of this) would be possible. We also have key support once again from the trio of awesome at the Academy’s school of graphic design: Mary Scott, Phil Hamlett and Hunter Wimmer (who designed the Spring Show’s identity). And a big thanks to Elisa Stephens and everyone at the Academy of Art University who brought us back again this year.

Right now I’ve got to go fire up my Flip cam and practice my Tweeting stance. We’ll see you back here Thursday!