Tyler Cowen's "Los Angeles Notes"

The economist offers up some prescient observations of the city and its changing relation to the rest of the country:

Los Angeles no longer seems so superficial, perhaps because so many other parts of the country have been revealed to be the same or worse.  Their bookstores are no longer an embarrassment because now everyone’s are an embarrassment.  The city feels less glamorous and more normal, a better place to live but a more difficult place to talk about.  It remains an oddly forgotten city, overlooked in America’s love affair with Brooklyn and Silicon Valley and yes the Southeast, yet better to live in than perhaps anywhere else on this continent.  (Provided you do not have school-age children.)  The city has lost relative ground in one major way however: California no longer has such a monopoly on good Asian and Latin food.  Nor do movies exercise much of a hold on the American imagination nowadays.  It is no longer easy to identify what is essential about Los Angeles, yet no one here seems to care.

As is his wont, he also offers up ethnic dining recommendations (see the link for details).