Jessica Donath

„If this was my last bite before I die, I'd be happy!" exclaimed a satisfied Harriet Brown, customer at the first ever eat my blog bake sale in West Hollywood on Saturday, December 6,  on the patio of Zeke's Smokehouse on Santa Monica Boulevard.

            Organizer Cathy Danh, who has been writing her blog since summer of 2005, recruited about 40 like minded food "nerds" who contributed their favourite treats to sell for charity. The delicious little things went for $1-3, bringing in a total of $3000 for the LA food bank.

            For Danh, writing about food was a tool of exploring the city she lived in, as well as supporting local businesses. When she started, she lived in Philadelphia.

"Food was a way for me to not only keep in touch with my family in California, but also to eat Vietnamese food and the stuff I grew up with," she explained her motivation to become a blogger.

            Among the most favorit items were interesting combinations such as bacon-walnut-fudge, which tasted extraordinarily wonderful, or peanut butter basil cake. TV producer and food lover Eric Boardman was especially impressed with all the new sensations to his taste buds.

"Whether you talk about sugar or chocolate or bacon - a bacon brownie? - how can that not be good?" Boardman and his girlfriend came back to have their box filled a second time. Danh herself contributed apricot rosemary squares. She got the recipe from a cookbook published by "Baked", a bakery in Brooklyn.

 "They have strange combinations and I like weird stuff."

            It took only a couple of month for the organizing committee to put this first event of its kind together. Danh sent out an e-mail in October to bloggers she knew to see if people were willing to contribute. At first, the event was only meant to include bloggers who had posted recipes on their websites. But then, the reaction was overwhelming.

            "I was contacted by so many people, even those who had never posted a recipe," Danh remembered. With 15 accumulated yeses, the planning moved in to the next stage. Press releases were issued and media contacts mobilized the enthusiastic food writers knew from being invited to food tastings to raise awareness for the upcoming event.

            "We met so many interesting new people who share our passion for food and thought this would be a great opportunity to make something and raise money as well," said Hong Pham, who writes a blog together with his fiancé Kim. Both have only been blogging for five month, but Hong proudly bore the burden of walking around with a gigantic sign around his neck to alert passers by that they are missing out on a great opportunity to taste great food and help people at the same time.

            The closely knit food blogging community of LA and their friends and family flocked to the tables filled with food in spite of the grey sky. The timing of the event was purpusfully chosen to fall in the three weeks leading up to Christmas and Hannukka, a time where people are traditionally prone to give to charity.

            Because of the great success organizers are thinking about making this a twice yearly reoccurring event.

Bobbie Oliver is funny. She may not be the funniest person on this planet, but she is one of the few successfully working women in stand-up comedy and one of the funniest I have met. That, among other things, make her special.

Like most comedians, she had a difficult childhood. She grew up "white-trash" in a small town in Georgia. For eight years she only spent one day a week with her husband because she was on the road as a comedian, making people laugh. She carried a gun because she was a afraid of being assaulted and raped.

Ten years ago she adopted her sister's children because she couldn't take her for them adequately. No one and nothing is safe from becoming part of her act. After moving to LA, she settled down and left the road to the other mostly male comedians. Oliver started teaching comedy in what is now the oldest comedy school in the LA area.

Now meet Bobbie Oliver

Participants in the 25th annual Aidswalk not only raised money for a good cause, they also left a huge mess behind.

Tree lined streets, tiny bistros with tables and chairs on the sidewalk, small mom and pop stores  - everything about Larchmont Village seems to say "Paris", "Prague" or "Florence". But still it is located in the middle of one of the largest metropolises in the U.S., Los Angeles.

The 2.5 blocks on Larchmont Boulevard between 3^rd Street and Beverly Boulevard are quite old by U.S. standards. The neighbourhoods around it were built in the early 20^th century to resemble British-style country living with parks and mansions. On Saturday mornings, the quiet street becomes busy.

The little cafés and bistros compete for customers.

Friends Thomas Macfarlane and John Koslauskas having lunch.

Waiting for their store to open.

Xander Mozejevski is waiting for customers.

Dogwalking.

Cars take over Larchmont Boulevard when people go home.

Tree lined streets, tiny bistros with tables and chairs on the sidewalk, small mom and pop stores, fathers pushing their kids in strollers - everything about Larchmont Village seems to say Paris, Prague or Florence. But still it is located in the middle of one of the largest metropolises in the U.S., Los Angeles.

The 2.5 blocks on Larchmont Boulevard between 3^rd Street and Beverly Boulevard are quite old by U.S. standards. The neighbourhoods around it were built in the early 20^th century to resemble British-style country living with parks and mansions.

 

Today the main street attracts families, young people who enjoy shopping in the small stores, and anybody who prefers strolling around while shopping or people watching instead of going to the mall.

 

Some of the places on Larchmont Blvd. are always packed.

Some appeal to sugar-loving gourmets among Angelinos with famous Belgian chocolates.

The French bistro "Café du village" is owned and run by French people who serve customers with and accent you don't hear that often in LA.

This is how one can always know that Larchmont Village is not in Paris, Prague or Florence. Since the boulevard is not connected to any other attraction on LA, one has to drive there, pay for parking and then enjoy strolling down the 2.5 blocks of Europe. In any of the above mentioned cities, a place like this would be pretty much in the city center or old town. It would be banned for cars, pedestrian only and easily accessible by public transportation.

Weekly events like the Sunday farmers market attract locals much more than tourists. This is a pleasent difference to similar European places where tourists would occupy the sidewalk tables.

Nicholas D. Kristof is a one-man awareness-creating-machine. Weather it is the refugee crisis in Darfur, or articles against the Iraq war, Kristof is involved.

He gets to do what he does partly because he works for the New York Times. But the rest is jus him, his aura and the issues he deems necessary to drag to the surface.

            The experienced journalist didn't have to look far for his first worthy topic. He grew up on a cherry and sheep farm in Yamhill, Oregon, as the son of a Rumanian-Armenian Professor at Oregon State University. Calling the genocide committed by the Turks to the Armenian by its appropriate name was one of Kristof's first chances to put his finger on the wound.

            Kristof joined the New York Times in 1984, covering the economy. He worked his way through the ranks and  become the paper's associate managing editor for the Sunday edition. In 2001 he started the first blog on the NYT homepage, breaking ground for online journalism at the Times.

            Before I started this "investigation" in to the life of a guinea pig-journalist about

whom I wanted to find out as much as possible for this blog, I just knew that my "victim" was an op-ed columnist at the New York Times, my favourite newspaper.

I had quoted him for a piece on health care reform and liked his writing style as well as his opinion. In part I chose him because I thought he might fall under the "famous-enough-to-find-something-but-not-too-famous-everyone-already-knows-everything-about-him"- category. I was wrong!

Nicholas D. Kristof won two Pulitzer prizes, one of them together with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, for their joint coverage of the democracy movement in China. The other one he got for outstanding commentary. I gather that I am not the only one who likes reading Kristof.

The more I learned about him as a journalist, a husband and father of three kids (two boys and one girl), the more I was intrigued by what he did with his talent. Not only was he one of the first people to say the Iraq war was a bad idea - I lived in a part of Europe former defnese secretary Rummsfeld called "old Europe" and didn't need anyone from the U.S.  to tell me what was right and wrong (so I felt at least) - he also picked issues such as the Darfur crisis in parts of the world that were under-reported and put them, almost single-handedly, on the agenda.

He pushes his selected issue forward through the op-ed youtube channel the New York Times operates, a facebook fan page, through books he mostly co-writes with his wife, public speaking (dates for appearances are on the homepage for the book "half the sky"), and his column he writes twice a week.

Oh, and this year Kristof got to "star" in his own movie, a documentary about his journeys as a reporter by Eric Daniel Metzgar. The filmmaker followed the protagonist to Africa were Kristof travelled with young aspiring journalists that won the trip in an essay contest.

At first I was almost disappointed when I found out that my chosen subject is much more famous than I had known. I expected to not like him anymore (because I am not really in to famous people in general and think journalists should report stories, not become the story) or at least be annoyed and fed-up by his omnipresence.

 But neither happened. The more youtube videos I watched and op-ed columns I read, the more I liked him. Somehow Nicholas D. Kristof manages to come across as a really nice guy.

For somebody who won as many journalism awards and who promotes his own political agenda to still give the impression of a humble and nice person that you would like to travel with, is an achievement in it self.