Small Bites: Weekly Reading List (Issue No. 3)

Photo by Brad Elterman.

In this issue: Anthony Bourdain. Los Angeles. Joan Jett. The Tropicana Motel. 

1. The Tropicana Motel's Totally Rocking Heyday
This weekly list is pretty much the intersection of my favorite subjects in case that wasn't already evident from my most frequented reading material: Los Angeles, pop culture, adolescent fuck-ups turned massively successful writers like Anthony Bourdain and Bret Easton Ellis, etc. Here's a profile on another slice of Sunset Boulevard nostalgia, The Tropicana Motel. 

2. Why Everyone Loves the Alpha Girl
To this day a lot of people assume I was in a sorority and are surprised when I say I wasn't. It just happened again last Friday. Yes, I was a ~popular girl~ in high school. And then I wasn't. I really, really wasn't. I played both of those roles, the unpopular girl who shoots to popularity and tumbles back down to unpopularity (aka the 7th circle of Hell as a 17 year old) and then I walked away as neither. Being popular feels like being dragged by an undertow and is just as hard to pull yourself out of. And yet, there's something powerful about both being part of it and watching it from the outside. Why? 

3. Bret Easton Ellis Recounts His '90's-Era, Celeb-Filled Cocaine Parties
​I will drop everything for a new Bret Easton Ellis and this is the first one he has given in quite a while. After causing twitter controversy on an almost daily basis last year, he stopped tweeting and now only tweets out links to his podcast and merch. (I'm pretty sure his boyfriend, Todd, is behind the @BEES_Assistant account.) Anyways, after a low profile, Ellis drops some of the names that were ~allegedly~ at his coke-fueled NY gatherings like Candace Bushnell and...Mario Batali? 

4. What Anthony Bourdain Can't Travel Without
Anthony Bourdain travels with pretty much everything you might expect, notebooks, a concealed knife that looks like a credit card and some Jiu Jitsu uniforms. The "what's in your bag?" features never get old to me. 

5. Rediscovering LA's Lost Neighborhood Bronzeville
Another piece of Los Angeles past, this is an interesting profile of a mostly forgotten neighborhood, Bronzeville, that was frequented by jazz legend, Charlie Parker. 

6. 27 Couples You Totally Forgot Attended The Met Gala Together
Why do we care about celebrity couples? I don't care about them in the what-are-they-up-to-right-now way but it's always funny to learn when two celebrities you would never picture together used to be together. TBT to Ginnifer Goodwin and Chris Klein.