This Ugly Beatutiful City is a local’s guide to Los Angeles. It is an itinerary-focused travel site that features travel tips and guides for anyone exploring Los Angeles, from a local Angeleno to a first-time tourist who is passionate about food, art, and culture.
How This Ugly Beautiful City Came to Be
I relaunched This Ugly Beautiful City in 2019. It has been in the works in some form or another for almost a decade. After a few years of living here, I found that people were asking me for advice about things to do in Los Angeles. I often found myself in these conversations at lunch, break rooms, bars, and coffee shops. The more I thought about it, creating a blog for all of these recommendations sounded more and more like a good idea. I wanted people I didn’t know to benefit from all of my research. Whether you are an Angeleno wanting to explore your home city or a tourist who is looking for recommendations outside the typical ones, I hope you find something on this site.
I love exploring and hate routine.
This is the culmination of a decade-plus of exploring Los Angeles. I am excited to tell you about spots that I think shouldn’t be missed. This forum also allows me to explore places I have never explored. Los Angeles is an expansive city that has lots of nooks and crannies. I want you to explore and take that deep dive along with me.
I want This Ugly Beautiful City to be your local’s guide to Los Angeles.
This blog should feel like you are sitting down for a drink with a friend who lives here. We might laugh, we might get excited, and go off on little tangents. Sometimes that friend speaks in rambling run-on sentences as I do in person. Finding new places and giving you honest opinions about them has been a cornerstone of this site since the beginning. Like a friend, I will definitely tell you to skip a place if I don’t think it is worth it. There are so many ways to spend your hard-earned dollars, and you want the best experience, right?
How did this get that name?
I love Los Angeles, but many people do not. There are a lot of preconceived notions about this city. They think of the Real Housewives or other reality shows where people behave badly, but there are millions of people here who make Los Angeles great. I will talk about those small business owners here.
People think traffic and Los Angeles are synonymous, but sometimes you have to wade through ugly traffic to get to beautiful places. I will also talk about nature, one-of-a-kind museums, and other places I think you should know about that are beyond the well-known.
How did the blog get this name? Read that here.
If you want to know more about that friend you are meeting up to talk L.A. with, go to my About Me page. If I help(ed) you discover something new about Los Angeles over the course of reading this, please let me know.
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