Liz Ohanesian

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*Clockwork Couture, L.A.'s Premiere Steampunk Fashion Spot

You've reached the holiday shopping homestretch, but there's one final gift that's driving you mad. Maybe it's for your sibling, or the co-worker whose name you pulled in Secret Santa. Regardless, it's for someone whose known interests include listening to Bauhaus, reading Neil Gaiman and swooning across the dance floor. You're looking for the holiday goth gift.

Don't worry, picking up something special for the goth in your life isn't quite the intimidating task you might think it is. Below, I've compiled a list of stores in and around L.A. that cater to darker tastes. As a bonus, all of these stores are located far from the city's malls, so you can shop without the mob of procrastinators.

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Tessa Stuart

Dino eggs are nestled inside the incubator, with the extra large cans of Mastodon Chunks arranged in a neat pyramid formation beside a display of Barbarian repellent and caveman candy (looking suspiciously similar to beef jerky).

"It's been a really long last month getting everything ready," May Pescante says from behind the cash register at the Mar Vista Time Travel Mart.

The storefront, attached to the writing and tutoring center 826 L.A., officially opened Friday evening with a party hosted by Hello Giggles, the website co-founded by Zooey Deschanel. Good-looking, bespectacled people sipped beers in cyro-cozies while perusing the Time Travel Mart's offering of anachronistic novelties and the tutoring center's library.

Mar Vista's Time Travel Mart is the newest addition to the constellation of 826 centers around the country. The organization began in San Francisco, where its first center, 826 Valencia, was founded by local teacher Nínive Calegari and author Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Zeitoun); the organization has since expanded to include locations in Boston, Chicago, DC, Michigan, New York and Seattle.

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Drew Barillas

Alivia Hunter

Halloween has come and gone, but the costumes remain. If all goes according to Alivia Hunter's plan, this year's zombies and ninjas and red devils will re-emerge next year on different bodies. A go-getting former social media marketing consultant, the 42-year-old Hunter runs Los Angeles Costume Swap. Halloween, for her, has become a year-round preoccupation.

Last year, laid up in the hospital recuperating after a car accident, Hunter was casting about online for somewhere to volunteer or otherwise devote her considerable energy. She came upon the nonprofit sustainability organization Green Halloween.

A more ideal match could not have been made. Hunter is the type of person who, one year, decided to give out books to trick-or-treaters instead of candy. She owned about 300 books at the time and figured she'd get rid of every single title she could bear to part with. "Books?" people teased her. "Kids are going to egg your house." Well, kids didn't. Instead, they lined up for more. "Can I have two books?" one kid asked.

"Honey," Hunter replied, "you can have three just for asking that question."

Green Halloween recruited her to organize its costume swap event. Two hundred people showed up to the first one, in Mar Vista. It was, she says, "total chaos."

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Zach Lipp

Opening Day at CityTarget Downtown

See also:
*Fugly Buildings: Our Series on the Most Hideous Buildings in L.A.
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Our Best of L.A. issue and our Best of L.A. app

Target's new "City" store opened this week in the the sunken shopping center at the corner of 7th and Figueroa downtown. The multi-level indoor/outdoor retail center, originally designed by John Jerde Architects (famous for Horton Plaza in San Diego and the seizure-inducing light canopy in Las Vegas' downtown), sat nearly-abandoned for years, plagued by awful sight lines, practically-invisible store recognition signage for pedestrians, and a useless, teal-colored space frame structure up top.

But with Target moving in, there's hope for the sad old mall at 7th & Fig, and at the opening gala Wednesday, boosters were in high spirits. The the Mayor was there, ribbons got cut, the USC Trojan marching band played.

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Photographer: Riley Kern, Riley Kern Studio; Hair/Styling: Ivy D'Muerta; Model: Megan Renee

The cover of our fashion issue

We all talk, these days, about eating ethically -- how to fill our bellies without wasting carbon miles, poisoning the Earth or torturing animals. Restaurants boast about their organic ingredients; the best ones will even tell you where the pig you're eating came from.

All good. But we rarely talk about dressing ethically. Where did the T-shirt you're wearing come from? How were conditions for the workers who made it? And before that, what went into producing the fabric? How many pesticides were used? How many dyes were poured? How long before you get sick of it and it ends up in a landfill?

This year's Fashion Issue aims to talk about all of that.

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Jesse Fiorino, courtesy of Buttons and Bows

See also:
*10 Places in L.A. to Draw Nude Models
*10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying
*50 Reasons Los Angeles Is the Best City in America

Whether you're looking for 1960s Peggy Moffitt mod couture or 1980s stonewashed denim castaways from the Valley, Los Angeles has a vintage and second-hand shopping scene that's bursting at the old-school seams. In a city known for making old things look fresher than they really are, it's no surprise that L.A. yields some of the best vintage in the country. So whether you're cruising the red carpet, taking road trips to the desert or ordering your third cup of Intelligentsia, retro always rocks.

Here are our picks for the 10 best vintage and second-hand boutiques in L.A.

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Kevin Scanlon

Two of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

The first conversation Uglydoll creators David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim ever had was about the meaning of the word "ugly." Ugly means unique, interesting, different. Ugly, they decided, is good.

They were in design school at Parsons at the time. He thought she was cute and made a point to sit next to her in illustration class. They shared the same vision, it turns out: to tell a narrative through products -- toys in particular.

Inklings of the "uglyverse" became apparent when Kim's student visa expired. She moved to Korea, leaving Horvath behind in the United States. By then a couple, they wrote each other letters. He signed one with a cartoon drawing of a googly-eyed little guy with big paws, a big head, a serving apron and a mouth set in a grim, determined line. Deciding he was a hardworking guy, they named him Wage.

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Courtesy of Dan and Laura Dotson

Dan and Laura Dotson

Creatives is a new recurring column about creative people in L.A. following their passions.

If one man's trash is another man's treasure, then Dan and Laura Dotson are the guides who bring it all together.

The married team of licensed auctioneers owns American Auctioneers in Riverside. Dan Dotson learned the business from his grandfather, a cattle and farm auctioneer from the Ozarks. He fell in love with Laura after they exchanged smiles at -- where else -- auction houses. (She'd come to bid on restaurant equipment.) He trained her, and now they travel the country, hosting about 3,000 auctions a year. They also monitor storage auctions through their website, StorageTreasures.com.

But to reality TV aficionados, Dan and Laura, 49 and 43, respectively, are the good-natured, fast-talking folks who keep things moving on A&E's Storage Wars.

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Tanja Stark

David Bowie mannequin by Tanja Stark

There's no shortage of toys and merchandise based on celebrities floating around the Internet, but some are a bit more unusual than others. In the designer toy and art toy world, artists turn recognizable figures into vinyl characters and mash them up with other pop culture references into amazing sculpts. Inspired by a recent trip to Melrose Avenue shop Toy Art Gallery, here's a smattering of toys that go far beyond the classic celebrity Barbies.

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Courtesy of Marianne Williams Photography

Meaghan Monster models Dapper Cadaver

See also "10 Oddball L.A. Museums Worth Seeing"

Looking for a book about the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society? Perhaps you need a Jolly Roger doormat for the house. Maybe you just want to pick up some time-travel-sickness pills, a spray bottle of barbarian repellant or a few fresh dinosaur eggs before you blast to the past. Whatever your needs, Los Angeles is definitely not lacking in the quirky-shop department.

Our city's diverse population and its reputation as an arts metropolis give local merchants plenty of opportunity to sell unusual goods. Since many stores are independently owned, most of them don't just reflect unique tastes -- they are physical manifestations of someone's life work.

Like the Eagle Rock Rock and Eagle Shop, some stores are temporary pop-ups, while others, such as the L.A. County Coroner's Skeletons in the Closet and the Bodhi Tree metaphysical bookstore, have packed up and moved online (though Bodhi Tree's new owners plan to open a new location).

But a few brick-and-mortar gems continue to offer a selection of weird material, affording Angelenos a kind of public-art experience while promoting an overall creative mission. Here are 10 of our favorite strange boutiques.

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