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Wanna get rid of that breakup letter? Give it to Colin Dickey -- he'll take it to the Arctic.

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*D3, an Artist Collective That Will Destroy the '90s Mixtape Your Ex-Boyfriend Made You
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*Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament

When writer Colin Dickey goes to the Arctic this summer, he will be bringing two pairs of long underwear, insulated boots and a whole lot of misery. The misery is not his own — he has been dying to go to the Arctic for as long as he can remember — but that of others.

"The idea is if you have things you want to get rid of — break-up letters, crappy news, a terrible health diagnosis — I will take them up to the North Pole and read them out loud to the frozen, terrifying wasteland, banishing them forever," Dickey says.

Dickey, 35, is participating in a residency called the Arctic Circle, which takes 12 scientists and artists up to the Svalbard Peninsula, a small cluster of islands 10 degrees shy of the North Pole. In exchange for help with banishment, people are giving Dickey money to fund his trip.

A week after launching his Kickstarter campaign, he is sitting in a nice, warm café in sunny Los Feliz thinking cold thoughts. Not only will he banish things into the snow, he will preserve them. "It's the opposite," he says, "but practically speaking it's the same thing." He will read a piece of good news, a love letter or anything else you'd like "locked away in a frozen time capsule."

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Ceci N'est Pas

Alexandra Grant's work in the window of Here is Elsewhere gallery opening night of "Ma Prochain La Vie", a three-location show Isabelle Le Normand curated with Jon Bernad

Last week, New York-based, French artist Davide Balula picked the lock of Hammer curatorial associate Elizabeth Cline's house while a small crowd stood by. Paris-based artist Michel Blazy, or his proxies, cut the lawn of L.A. collector Danny First and affixed the loose, cut-off grass to the wall of a small room at First's house. In addition, seven Paris galleries, most of which had never exhibited there, had booths at Art Los Angeles Contemporary, the fair at Barker Hangar.

All of this fell under the umbrella of Ceci N'est Pas, a five-month initiative organized by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., funded by the Institut Francais (the French government's cultural arm) and meant to bring Paris and Los Angeles artists together. French curator Isabelle Le Normand, who has spent the last five years finding and sometimes creating Paris-L.A. convergences, had a hand in at least a third of the week's events.

Le Normand came to Los Angeles for the first time in 2007, looking for an art internship. She had reserved a rental car. But spread-out, segmented LAX confused her, and since she never found the car, she took the bus instead. Because she did, she met Jon Bernad, who noticed her putting a twenty dollar bill into the unsophisticated Metro ticket dispenser and advised she use smaller bills in the future.

A recent college graduate, he had just moved to L.A. to live in a traveling movie producer's back house and care for two French bulldogs (an arrangement that was supposed to last two months but ended up lasting six years). "I had all this free time, " he remembers. He had been using it to explore the city. "I wanted to share the experience." He helped Le Normand navigate on that first visit and then again on visits to come.

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PHOTO BY PAUL T. BRADLEY

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*50 Reasons Los Angeles Is the Best Effing City in America
*Why Does Everyone in L.A. Drive Drunk All the Time?
*I Was Sick of L.A. Traffic So I Took a Plane to Work

I once dreamed of being a transportation planner: fast-roping into jungles, skirting ancient booby traps to snag gilded idols, natives and Nazi occultists in hot pursuit. Sadly, urban planners do none of those things. The most daring thing most of them will ever do is Sharpie "Fuck you, Robert Moses!" onto their Trapper Keepers. I'm not cut out for that.

While I'll never get to write scintillating reports on Arterial Levels of Service, I can still appreciate the bureaucratic ballet that produces public transportation. I even like riding trains occasionally.

The thing is, I rarely ride them. I barely touch the Metro. Most of the time it's too complicated to get from, say, Silver Lake to Santa Monica, Red to Expo to bus, a buck fifty per line and nearly three hours shot. Why bother when you have a perfectly decent car?

And yet there is that whole $5 day pass thing — you can ride any train, and any bus, in the entire metropolitan system, with just one pass. Which got me thinking: How far could you stretch it? You could ride from one end of L.A. County to another in a single day. Other than hustling chess at the library, it might be the cheapest way to kill a day in Los Angeles — and potentially much more interesting.

I decided to give it a try.

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Sam Bartolone

The entrance to Adobe Guadalupe

See also:
*Anthony Bourdain's Baja Episode of No Reservations Will Make You Want to Cross the Border Immediately.
*OC Weekly's column Tijuana Sí!.

In our column First Person, L.A. writers tackle the good, the bad and the funny about life as they know it.

Anthony Bourdain made it look so great. "Baja's like Tuscany!" he'd proclaimed to the media. And right in L.A.'s backyard. I'd never been, nor had my best friend, so we booked hotel rooms for ourselves and our boyfriends in Mexico's nearby wine country. We exchanged dozens of emails and Gchats in the weeks that followed, twittering back and forth about the fun we'd have and the feasts we'd devour.

Until one week before we were scheduled to leave. That's when her boyfriend balked.

"He just refuses to go," she told me, tears welling up in her eyes. Some friends had gotten in his ear about the danger that awaited us across the border -- narco-violence, kidnappings, beheadings, certain doom. He insisted the two back out.

"But we'll be fine," I protested. How could they doubt Bourdain? Or Andrew Zimmern or Chicago chef Rick Bayless, all of whom had made recent visits to Baja with TV cameras in tow, lauding the incredible food and gorgeous scenery?

It was to no avail. They were out, leaving Sam and me just a twosome in our Mexican adventure. Still, we packed up my hatchback. "We'll be fine," I said. "... Right?"

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Tanja M. Laden

The Kansas

Los Angeles Union Station isn't just a mass-transport hub. It's also a semi-retirement home for a cluster of vintage railroad cars that occupy the station's annex, also known as "the garden." Most of the trains won't move. A few get lucky and land the occasional film permit, scoring a cameo in a scene that calls for an old-timey train. Others, like the garden's newest residents, get facelifts and hit the tracks.

The American Railway Explorer is a group of three train cars, each named after a U.S. state: Kansas, Utah and California. They were originally part of the Ski Train, a 14-car passenger railway shuttle that transported Denver residents (mostly kids) 56 miles to the Winter Park Resort. The Ski Train ran from the 1940s until 2009, when the Canadian National Railway bought most of its cars, except these. Now, each of the three vehicles is available for charter at a rate of $5000 a day, not including Amtrak charges, liquor and food by the American Railway Explorer's exclusive caterer, Wolfgang Puck. Still, it seems like a decent price to travel back in time to the golden age of travel, if you have the money.

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Jay Berkowitz

Splash by Hilja Keading, one of 17 artists who created videos for the installation "See Change"

People don't normally think of the airport as a place to see art, but Los Angeles International Airport has an ambitious program of rotating works, which change every four to six months. Here are some to look for as you rush to catch your flight:

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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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