Photos by Wendy Cheng; Cover design by Nicole Hayward

Let the tour buses take the throngs to visit Marilyn Monroe's handprints at Grauman's Chinese Theater or to press their noses up to the windows on Rodeo Drive and wander Beverly Hills like they're Julia Roberts. Despite what the entertainment industry would have you believe, the city of Los Angeles and its surrounding neighborhoods have a much richer, often conflicted history than just those landmarks -- and A People's Guide to Los Angeles, just released by UC Press, would like to make sure you don't forget it.

Researched for more than 15 years by Laura Pulido, Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng -- three Southern California natives and academics with backgrounds in ethnic studies or sociology -- and cultivated from published and personal accounts of Los Angeles' long-standing political, social and racial power struggles, the travel guide was released this month and includes 115 sites of interest for the progressive-minded explorer.

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Alissa Walker

When someone asks me if they have to rent a car when visiting L.A., I really, really, really, really want to say no. Of course you can experience L.A. without a car. I do it every day. But for me to explain all the quirks of navigating our transit-nascent city to a wide-eyed visitor, I'd pretty much have to strap them onto my back as I boarded the nearest rapid bus. Now, thankfully, I can simply hand them Nathan Landau's new book.

Where most travel books add a conciliatory line about taking transit in L.A., Landau's Car-Free Los Angeles and Southern California is a door-to-door guidebook to seeing L.A. without getting behind the wheel. From how to get from the airport (FlyAway!) to planning your route (Metro Trip Planner!) to riding the bus to the Getty (without parking, admission is free!) to getting to Disneyland by transit (it's possible!), the detailed transit directions for hundreds of Southern California destinations makes a car-less visit feel possible. And, dare I say, enjoyable.

But a revealing thing about Landau's book is that his tips and advice are almost more resonant for an L.A. resident who wants to give car-free living a shot. Landau actually proposes completely unique itineraries for experiencing Los Angeles, including a few that my transit-savvy self had not even considered. It makes the guide less like a travel book, and more like a handbook for local culture-seekers who'd like to climb out of their cars for a different kind of urban adventure. Here are some of the more compelling ideas I found in Landau's book that will work for anyone -- native or newbie -- who wants to immerse themselves in the other side of L.A.: The one without valet parking.

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Courtesy Cabazon Dinosaurs

With the temperature hovering around 65 degrees, it's safe to say it's officially winter here in L.A. And as the local climate gets cooler, the Coachella Valley is in its high season, in part because of almost-certain sunshine from December through May. But in recent years, Coachella has sadly become synonymous with just one thing: Coachella. The late-April hipster Mecca aside, we thought we'd give you 10 reasons to head east in the meantime, and not just to escape the so-called deep freeze.

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Flickr/starlet06bek

Nobody walks in L.A....or do they? Last month, Seattle-based company Walk Score released its walkability rankings and found West Hollywood to be the most walkable city in California and number four nationally, ahead of even New York City. Santa Monica and Culver City didn't fare too poorly either, coming in at numbers 12 and 20, respectively, in the national rankings.

So what exactly makes a city more or less walkable?

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Courtesy Van Alen Institute.

Without harping too much on that inconvenient thing happening on a big road somewhere in West L.A. this weekend, let us begin this modest post by agreeing that transit in L.A., in California, and in the vast majority of the US, could stand a few more efficient alternatives. As dear in our hearts as we hold the Great American Roadtrip, the idea of the Great American Drunk Train Trip sounds pretty good too. Enter the Van Alen Institute, a New York-based architectural library and think tank that apparently exists in large part to sponsor design competitions that don't necessarily wind up in realized contracts, but to help us imagine what could be.

And what could be? According to the winners and runners-up of the Van Alen's latest competition, Life at the Speed of Rail, high-speed rail as a reality in the U.S. could mean trains with disco cars and gyms, farm machinery shaped like giant animal robots and collapsed mega-regions with playfully smashed-together names like Deledo, Philiyork, Louistonati and Indibend.

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The 1998 movie Armageddon starred Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck as deep-sea oil drillers deployed by NASA and the military to embed a nuclear device 800 feet inside an asteroid heading straight for Earth. The device would split the asteroid into two parts, with both halves just narrowly missing our planet, saving us from a true armageddon.

It's one thing for the world to be destroyed -- but for the 405 to be out of service for an entire weekend takes things to a whole new level.

In that spirit, we present highlights from the screenplay for Armageddon 2: Carmageddon, the unproduced sequel, coming this weekend to a freeway near you.

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Bonjour Tristesse

It's almost July, which means its time to give up on any semblance of productivity at work and start plotting your escape. If you're half a couple, this list should guide you in your quest to make your relationship last through summer vacation. If you're single, or if, like us, your bank account balance won't get you past the 101, why not use it to plan a film festival sponsored by Netflix and located on your living room couch?

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Courtesy of Assouline

Guy, on the bottom row, second from left, with the rest of his crew in space.

Guy Laliberté has had many lives -- he's gone from fire-breathing street performer to poker shark to the multimillionaire head of Cirque du Soleil. In his latest incarnation, he's become a "space clown" and philanthropist. He headed into space in 2009 on the Soyuz spacecraft as a tourist on a mission to raise people's consciousness about global water use for his charity, One Drop.

So far, so good. What happened in space, however, was a little more unexpected. Laliberté was on TV shows, talking to people back on Earth, and videoconferenced into a giant event held in 14 cities for his charity -- all according to plan. However, he didn't expect the pictures that he was snapping quietly on the side to amount to anything apart from tourist snapshots. Instead, he found himself with thousands of beautiful, abstract prints on his return.

Now, he is publishing his pictures with Assouline press in Gaia, a luxury art book whose profits will go to support his water charity, One Drop. While you can't really fault Laliberté's philanthropic ambitions, his particularly high-scale, high-handed way of raising funds is certainly odd, and in many ways, speaks more to his own privileges than to the water scarcity he's trying to address. At any rate, we're still left with a pretty cool book.

Yesterday, LA Weekly sat down to talk to him about his adventures in space, and his plans for the future.

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What do you think, too soon?

This "I Survived" Japan's tsunami t-shirt was designed by Bill Wyatt (formerly Billy Tsangares), owner of Los Angeles t-shirt shop Y-Que Trading Post. Remember the Free Winona tee? Yup. He did that one, too.

Are the shirts poor taste? Or are they art?

Wyatt isn't clueless. "I do the shirts because it gives me something to do as a reaction to the news events like this one," he says. "But I think it is insensitive to the people who have truly been hurt and killed as a result of the tsunami and earthquake. I just can't help making low brow stuff as a strange way to document what happened."

If people ordered it he would make and ship it. But for now, the $12 "I Survived" tee is mostly for show. 

It isn't exactly flying off the shelves. "I can't tell if people really feel like they rode out a tsunami over here," Wyatt says.

How many has he sold so far? None.

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Photos by Gendy Alimurung

Why is Kobe Bryant banging on this drum?

He's the "global brand ambassador" for Turkish Airlines now. He was at the inaugural flight ceremony launch not too long ago. He appeared onstage at the Paramount Studios lot. He shook hands with the chairman of the airlines as the first flight was making its way from Los Angeles to Istanbul.

It was one of those surreal events that seem to belong more in a movie than in reality (think Bill Murray in Lost In Translation). A person from the county gave the chairman a certificate. The chairman gave the county person a gourd. The translator stumbled through the language barrier ("We hope that this will bring goodness to all of us").

They served airline food at the party.

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