You Can Thank the Suburbs for the Trendy Ramen Burritos Downtown

Growing Up on the Outskirts of L.A. and Marrying a Guy From the Outskirts of São Paulo Taught Me How the Urban Fringes Can Spice Up a City's Core

After I married a Brazilian, I learned the Brazilian concept of vira-lata: flipping over the can. Vira-lata (trash-can tipper) is the name for mixed-breed dogs without owners who knock over trash cans in search of food. Vira-lata has become shorthand for what Brazil calls its “mongrel complex” of being a mixed-race nation dining on the scraps of the establishment, always skirting the edges of power.

I relate to the concept because I, too, grew up on the edge. I used to say that I’m “from L.A.,” even though I’m not …

I Heart N.J.

Call It Smelly. Call It Sleazy. Call It the Armpit of America. To Me, It's Home.

I’m sitting in a circle during the second week of my freshman year of college, listening to everyone perform the introductions that have become comically commonplace: name, hometown, dorm. It’s …

Suburban Eclogue

Volgar succede … (Leopardi)

Again, the streets empty this early hour,
Sunday evening, except those two
Walking their pugs before the work week starts,
There in the middle of the widened …

Larry Sultan’s Visions of Suburbia

Finding Distorted Glamour Among California's Tract Homes and Strip Malls

Photographer Larry Sultan grew up in Los Angeles’ quintessentially suburban San Fernando Valley, surrounded by tract homes and strip malls. What might appear bland to others, though, was transformed through …

Irvine, I Love You

My Hometown May Be Sterile and Boring, But It Made Me Hungry to Experience the Wider World

I am Irvine.

I grew up in Westpark, the neighborhood between Culver and Warner avenues a few miles north of where the 5 and 405 freeways meet. My first-grade classroom and …