Something else that’s special about CicLAvia is the diversity—Silverlake hipsters rub shoulders with bike clubs from South LA, East LA lowriders, and Valley suburbanites. But if you’re living downtown, you encounter that level of racial, social and economic diversity every day. Diversity isn’t something you have to seek out—it smacks you in the face every time you step out your front door.

While I don’t feel like I have to ride in every CicLAvia anymore, I’m really excited that the event has blown up so hugely (almost too hugely, really, since it was wheel-to-wheel traffic from DTLA to Venice). I think it’s signalling a huge change in our culture. People are hungry for community, for connection—the kind of connection that’s impossible when you’re flying down a road at 60 mph. I have the luxury of taking for granted something that’s become a precious commodity to the rest of the city.

Even though the area is now mostly known for its really loud concerts, it turns out there are some interesting things for downtowners to check out. We started our Sunday by sitting in on a kids’ class at the Aikido Center of Los Angeles, located at 1211 N. Main Street, just down the street from Nick’s Cafe. From the outside the dojo looks like an ordinary industrial building but you step inside and feel like you’re in Japan.

The Aikido class was great. Three instructors for about 12 kids and they were very serious but respectful of the children. Older kids are partnered with younger kids to help them through the lesson. The whole vibe was very disciplined yet supportive and calm, and the kids were clearly having a great time. I think it’s going to be perfect for my son. And at $65/month, it’s a bargain. Definitely check it out if you’re looking for a sport for your kid that’s close to home in DTLA.

After class we wandered across the street to the William Mead Homes. Even though this is a public housing project, I was struck by how clean and quiet it was. One apartment had an amazing container garden around the front door, complete with two ficus trees! The woman who lives there saw me and my son admiring her flowers and she came out to give him a lollipop. It’s very cool to meet such friendly people in LA.

After letting my son run around the Mead Homes playground, we headed across the street to LAX-C, a Thai supermarket that’s been called the Asian Costco. They cater to the restaurant trade so it’s pretty hit or miss in terms of picking up stuff for your home kitchen. But it’s great for us because my husband has celiac disease and they stock a huge variety of gluten-free flours, including rice flour, tapioca flour and potato starch. They also carry a big selection of curries, fish sauces and everything else you need to make Thai food.

CC Image courtesy of Umberto Brayj (ubrayj02) on Flickr

• You drop your kid’s blanket on the sidewalk and debate whether to wash it twice with hot water and bleach or just toss it and buy a new one.
• You have to cancel a trip to the park because of a May Day protest on Broadway.
• You keep a Laker’s schedule on your fridge not because you love basketball but so you’ll know when to stay away from LA Live.
• The owner of the local electronics store gives your kid a Christmas present each year.
• You spend $600 on a stroller not because you’re a snob but because you can open and close it with one hand while wrangling your baby on the Metro
• You take the DASH to get your kid to preschool and then a different DASH to get to work.
• Your kid knows the difference between the Red Line and the Purple Line.
• Watching fireworks on July 4th means riding the elevator to the roof of your building.
• You measure distance not in miles but in how many blocks your toddler can walk without a stroller.
• Your toddler is on a first-name basis with Ricky the Pirate.
• You never buy white sneakers for your kid.
• You can push a cart full of groceries with your left hand while pushing a stroller with your right.
• Instead of wanting to be a firefighter when he grows up, your kid tells you he wants to be a barrista at Spring for Coffee.
• Your kid gives the parking garage attendant a hug every morning
• Your kid complains that her friend at Met Lofts has a much nicer pool than your building.
• You don’t have to get a dog because your kid gets to pet a dozen pooches a day in the elevator.
• Hot summer days mean riding the Metro to Civic Center and sipping iced coffee in the shade while your kid splashes in the fountain.

Keep in mind that you will be responsible for getting your kid to school every day. Although the district will bus your child to his or her “home” school, the district does not provide transportation for students with open enrollment transfers. Luckily, there are a number of high-achieving schools within a 15 minute drive of downtown Los Angeles.

Schools you should visit include Clifford Street Elementary in Echo Park (2010 U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon School of Excellence and Academic Performance Index (API) score of 844), Dorris Place Elementary in Elysian Valley (API score jumped 32 points in 2012 to an impressive 884), Solano Avenue Elementary just north of Chinatown (API score of 922, one of the highest in the state), and Alessandro Elementary in Silverlake (API score of 832). (ETA: Alexandra Infante reminded me that Elysian Heights Elementary is another good option with an API of 825)

To locate other schools near DTLA, check out this color-coded Los Angeles School Ratings Map, (via school-ratings.com).

Also Look at Charter School Options
A group of downtown Los Angeles parents recently won approval to establish Metro Charter, DTLA’s first parent-run charter elementary school. Charter schools are schools that are funded through LAUSD but operate more independently than a standard public school and are open to any child who wishes to attend from any part of the state.

The founding parents say that Metro Charter will be “a model school, serving a highly diverse student body with a rigorous and balanced curriculum aligned to a college-ready standard at the earliest grades. Metro Charter will use a variety of methodologies, experiences and opportunities to engage students in learning a diversity of content, and to prepare children to be curious, critical and caring human beings.” Metro Charter is currently accepting applications for grades K-2 for the 2013-1014 academic year. Learn more at http://metrocharter.org/.

What About DTLA’s Neighborhood School?
The zoned elementary school for downtown Los Angeles is 9th Street Elementary. As I wrote in my DTLA School Report Card, 9th Street has been closed since 2010 for a $54 million campus renovation and is set to reopen in September. The school, located on 9th Street and Towne Avenue on Skid Row, was in deep trouble before the closure. In 2010, LA Weekly wrote a devastating profile of the school, describing it as among LAUSD’s worst. Even using the district’s “similar schools” ranking, in 2010 9th Street ranked 1 out of 10, making it the worst among its peers. It’s unclear how the campus renovation will impact these grim numbers. My advice: it won’t hurt to contact the school and talk to the principal, but remember, you have other options.

School Tour: What Should You Look For?
Test scores are important (any school you consider should have API scores above the statewide target of 800), but as any educator or experienced parent will tell you, scores alone won’t tell you the whole story. Scheduling school tours is absolutely essential in helping you pick out the right school for your kid.

You can learn a lot about a school just from the first phone call (beware if you can’t get the principal to speak with you on on the phone or if it’s difficult to schedule a school tour). Some other things to look for: Do the kids look happy and well-behaved? Are they interested in the lesson? Is the teacher aware of what’s going on in the entire classroom? How does the teacher handle misbehaving or inattentive students?

Below are links with additional tips to help you make the most out of your school visit:

The school visit: What to look for, what to ask (via greatschools.org)
How to Choose a Kindergarten (via wikihow.com)
School Tour Checklist (via hopechangechoices.org)

Photo courtesy of Sanj@y (Flickr)

After more than a year of planning and political advocacy, a group of downtown Los Angeles parents have won approval to establish Metro Charter, DTLA’s first parent-run charter elementary school. But even though Metro Charter isn’t slated to open until September, it’s already coming under fire from critics who say that the school will exclude downtown’s homeless population and creates a special school reserved for the affluent at the expense of poorer kids in the community.

The impetus behind Metro Charter was simple: middle-class and upper-middle class parents living in downtown’s new loft buildings didn’t want to send their kids to poorly performing schools. Up to now, downtown has been served by two elementary schools: 9th Street Elementary on Skid Row, and Para Los Niños charter school, located near the American Apparel factory. Both schools have performed poorly on statewide standardized tests, ranking 2/10 on the Academic Performance Index (API) statewide rank and 3/10 on the API similar schools rank, meaning they underperformed even when compared with schools serving kids of a similar socioeconomic status. (9th Street Elementary has been closed for the past three years for a $54 million renovation and will reopen in September)

The parents behind Metro Charter say they want better—not only for their own kids but for all children in downtown. They are committed to creating a diverse and welcoming school and plan to recruit students from poorer neighborhoods such Chinatown, Pico-Union and Skid Row. But unfortunately, despite their good intentions, I think it’s going to be very tough for them to achieve true diversity, especially economic diversity.

Let’s look at something as basic as getting your kids to school. Unlike neighborhood schools, charter schools don’t provide transportation to students. So let’s say you’re a mom living in transitional housing on Skid Row who’s interested in sending your two kids to Metro Charter. You don’t own a car and you have an income below Federal poverty level (that’s less than $19,530/year for a family of three). A Metro Pass costs $84/month for adults and $24/month for students. That’s $132 a month in transportation costs per month—more than 8% of your family income. Then there’s transportation time—a bus ride from Skid Row to South Park can easily take more than an hour round trip, making it impossible for a parent to take their kids to school and also get to work on time (and yes, many parents living on Skid Row are employed but have jobs that don’t pay well enough to cover rent). Given these factors, the logical thing for this Skid Row mother to do is give up and enroll their kid in 9th Street Elementary.

Even if this Skid Row mother is able to get her kids to Metro Charter, how do you create an academic environment that serves children from wildly different backgrounds? A kid coming from a home with no books and whose parents may never have finished high school and are possibly illiterate is going to need a strong grounding in the three R’s. But a kid who was read to from birth, owns a bookshelf stuffed with books and has parents with master’s degrees is already getting the basics at home. How do you teach in such a way that the poorer kids don’t get left behind and the middle-class kids aren’t bored and under-challenged?

I don’t have any answers to these questions. I do know that it’s going to take more than good intentions to make Metro Charter a truly diverse school. I think it will take a lot of hard work on the part of the entire community to break down these barriers and make a high-quality education accessible to all children in downtown LA. I’m not sure if the will exists to make this happen. But I hope it does.

After hours of research, including coming across this Web site, I started to feel reassured that there were some viable options through the open enrollment program. However, since it was mid-year, many of the good schools were not accepting new students. Luckily for us, there was a shortage of 4th graders at Dorris Place Elementary.

Dedicated Principal

It didn’t take long for me to realize there was something special about Dorris Place. When I first called the school to see about enrolling my son, I was told the principal would call me back. A few hours later, I received a phone call from the principal, Mrs. Susan Schmidt, and an invitation to visit the school. This is probably typical behavior at small charter schools, but I did not expect this from a principal at an LAUSD school.

Dorris Place is housed in a beautiful historic brick building on a quiet, tree-lined street. As I toured the school with the principal, several kids came up to her to suggest ways they could help the less fortunate. If it didn’t feel so authentic, I may have thought it was staged and that every time visitors came, Mrs. Schmidt would go to her stash of healthy goodies and give them snacks if they went along with the act. But, this has happened several times since.

Mrs. Schmidt took the time to talk to me about the school and answer my questions, which is another testament to her accessibility and how she runs the school. What I found most intriguing about Dorris Place was how it achieved an API score of 884 last year considering the demographics of the school. The school is 72% Latino, 18% Asian, and less than 1% black and white; plus 86% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. I have done my fair share of research on minorities in education to know this was unusual, so I was determined to find out how she did it. She told me that it came down to the teachers voluntarily taking classes on teaching gifted students and how the whole school was taught as if each child was gifted. I came out of my meeting with Mrs. Schmidt sold on Dorris Place and feeling like I could be a part of something revolutionary.

As an African American family, being a “minority” is not unusual for us here in Los Angeles, but at Dorris Place my son was now a minority to a minority. I have always struggled to find good schools that had a black population above 5 percent in Los Angeles and now we found ourselves in a school that had less than 1 percent. I wasn’t sure how this was going to play out with my son, but to my surprise and satisfaction, he loves it at Dorris Place. He was warmly received by the kids and immediately made friends. His teacher was even surprised at how well and fast he transitioned. The school even uses some of the same text books as his other school and was actually ahead in some subjects.

The commute is a breeze in the morning, taking only 10 minutes from downtown. The school has a valet drop-off service in the morning, which makes it very convenient for those of us that don’t live in the immediate area. Coming back is a little more challenging because of the traffic and can take up to 15 to 25 minutes.

There is an after school enrichment program called LA’s Best that we all love. My son loves it because of the fun activities the program offers such as chess, Wii, Pokemon, and sports. I love it because it’s free, they help with homework, and the program runs until 6 p.m.

Strong Parental Involvement

The school does not have a PTA but has a non-profit organization called Partners of Dorris (POD) which supports the school. I attended my first POD meeting and was impressed with its founder, Blair Lennane. She seemed to have a natural knack to lead and is very passionate about the organization’s purpose. This group has accomplished a lot in a short period of time, including reopening the school’s library after it closed due to budget cuts and purchasing musical instruments to keep the school’s music program alive.

My son’s biggest complaint is that there’s not a playground for the older kids and they are not allowed to play tag on the yard. He also complains about the lunch and insists I pack his lunch every day. Lunch at the school is only $1.50, but apparently you get what you pay for. I guess he got spoiled in Beverly Hills where lunch is $7.50 per day and apparently well worth it. Another downside is that the school’s auditorium is small and cramped, but again, we may just be spoiled.

All in all, Dorris Place has been a pretty good move for me and my family. My husband is happy he doesn’t have to get out of the car to drop our son off in the morning and my son’s happy he can play Pokemon every day. But what I like most about the school is the passion I’ve seen from the principal, teachers, and parents that make up this school. There seems to be an overwhelming sense of community and a cooperative effort to ensure the kids at this school receive a quality education. I’m excited to be a part of it and I look forward to contributing my talents and resources to make sure Dorris Place continues to exceed expectations and defy the odds.

That got me wondering what prices per square foot are for various downtown neighborhoods and how this compares with areas near downtown that families may consider moving to, such as Silverlake and Echo Park. After a couple of hours browsing through Craigslist apartment listings, I present to you my completely unscientific survey of rental prices**. I’m warning you in advance: it ain’t pretty.

Big variations in rental prices downtown

If you’re looking to live downtown, you’ll find big variations in rents depending on the neighborhood you choose. I was surprised to see that the Arts District appears to have the cheapest rents—approximately $2 a square foot. Assuming an apartment size of 900 square feet (the amount of space a typical family would require), that translates into a monthly rent of $1800. Compare this to the Historic Core ($2.16/sf = $1944/month) and Little Tokyo ($2.52/sf = $2268/month). South Park has its own quirks. While prices for average (i.e., not luxury) buildings are around $2.48 /sf, higher end buildings such as EVO can cost from $3 to $5 a square foot (yeouch!). Of course, you can’t assume any of these prices include parking, so plan on shelling out an additional $150-$200 a month per car.

Okay, so downtown is expensive. What about other neighborhoods?

Well, Silverlake is popular, plus it has good schools. But in the rental market, popular means pricey. Prices are running around $2.32/sf, aka $2088/month for that 900 sf apartment. Surprisingly, many of the apartments, even the more expensive ones, only have street parking. Unlike dog-friendly downtown, you have to work to find landlords who allow pets. And the cheaper apartments often have beige carpet, stucco ceilings and old appliances, something that can be hard to take after living in a loft apartment with Pergo floors, granite countertops and stainless steel refrigerators. Echo Park is significantly cheaper–$1.91/sf, aka $1719/month. But the units have the same issues you see in Silverlake, with the added downside of gang-related crime in certain areas.

If these rents have you feeling desperate, you could give up urban living altogether and move to South Pasadena. This Mayberry-like community features a great school system and charming downtown, as well as a stop on the Metro Gold line. Rents are much cheaper than downtown: $1.69/sf aka $1521/month for 900 square feet. Like Silverlake and Echo Park, many of the rentals are in older buildings with depressing builder’s beige carpet and walls, and they don’t allow pets. Unlike those neighborhoods, the majority of rentals come with parking.

If you really want to go all out suburban, there’s Burbank. Prices per square foot are comparable to South Pasadena, but you’ll get an entire home, a backyard and parking for that money. Apartment buildings seem to be in better shape too, with many featuring updated kitchens and bathrooms and on-site amenities like gyms and swimming pools. Of course, forget about living in a walkable community. And then there’s the commute on the 5 freeway…

So we live downtown and we just had a baby. Do we stay put or move?

That’s the Million Dollar Question (or rather the $2-$3 a square foot question). Based on price alone, it’s pretty clear that the suburbs are the winner. Suburbs also have more kid-oriented amenities like playgrounds and in places like Burbank and South Pasadena, the schools are strong as well (though that’s not true of all suburban valley areas *cough*VanNuys*cough*). But if you value walkability, access to public transit, pet ownership and a strong creative community, there isn’t a neighborhood in LA that beats downtown.

And ultimately, that’s what it comes down to in the end: what you value and how much you’re willing to pay for it. As prices rise in DTLA, it will be interesting to see how many families opt to stay put. Will the prospect of a house in Burbank be too tempting for most folks with kids in downtown? We’ll see.

**I’m not covering condos and house purchases in this article because most of the families I know downtown are renters.

It isn’t just parents who love South Park. The neighborhood was recently named the number one hottest neighborhood in the U.S. and has twice been voted Neighborhood of the Year by Curbed Los Angeles. Building occupancy rates are at an all-time high and young professionals continue to flock to the area, including many who work in DTLA’s financial and fashion districts. Pretty impressive when you consider that South Park essentially didn’t exist as a neighborhood until about ten years ago.

What’s Great About Raising Kids in South Park

South Park has an active parenting community centered around weekly Saturday morning playdates at Grand Hope Park. Unlike other communities (*cough*silverlake*cough*) where competitive child rearing is the norm and parents obsess over minutiae like cloth diapering, baby yoga and infant music classes, South Park parents are a tight-knit group who are more likely to have conversations about downtown development and the latest DLANC elections. It was a group of South Park parents who came up with the idea for Metro Charter, a downtown elementary school that they hope to launch in Fall 2013 (learn more at http://metrocharter.org/).

In addition to being the center of DTLA family life, South Park is home to LA Live. Restaurants, a bowling alley, the Grammy Museum, a movie theater and a holiday skating rink are some of the kid-friendly activities available.

South Park is where most of downtown’s luxury housing is being built. Apartment buildings and condos include Elleven, EVO, the Met Lofts, and the Ritz-Carlton residences at LA Live. Most of these buildings feature units with actual walls and doors, a plus for parents who don’t want to figure out how to make a loft liveable with a two-year-old.

Because the neighborhood is somewhat removed from Skid Row, the number of homeless people is lower than it is in the Historic Core and Little Tokyo.

What Will Make You Call the Moving Van

Luxury housing = sky-high prices, whether you’re looking for a rental or a condo. A quick look at Craigslist shows rental prices averaging $2-$3 a square foot (some buildings, like the ultra-luxury WaterMarke Tower on 9th and Flower, rent for $5 a square foot, yeowch). That means a two-bedroom apartment will run you about $2,200-$3,200 a month, out of reach for many young couples. And rents are expected to increase as much as 6 percent in 2013.

Living in South Park puts you right next to Staples Center, Nokia Center and the convention center, which means frequent traffic jams and occasional Lakers riots (complete with cars set on fire on Figueroa Street), making it difficult or impossible for people to get in and out of their buildings.

The neighborhood is weirdly lacking in street-level activity. Aside from LA Live/Staples Center and Ralphs supermarket, there just isn’t much to walk to. There are a lot of “dead” blocks in South Park with nothing but parking lots or half-empty commercial buildings, making walking even less appealing. The area is relatively transit-poor compared with the Historic Core (though things have improved somewhat with the opening of the Metro Expo line, which has a stop at LA Live). Given that many people choose to live downtown in order to reduce their dependence on their cars, the lack of walkability and public transit are major downsides.

What else do I need to know?

The city recently approved a plan to build an NFL stadium in the neighborhood, news that will either delight or appall you depending on how much you love football (though the plans were thrown into doubt when stadium developer AEG announced the company is up for sale).

Neighborhood development continues at a blistering pace, with two groundbreakings and at least five new projects announced in 2012. It remains to be seen how many of these projects are actually completed and what affect (if any) they have on rents.

ETA: Great question from one of our commenters:

Informative article! I’m considering moving to South Park from the ‘burbs and wanted to get an idea on specific buildings that are “baby-friendly” in the area. i.e. Buildings that don’t have loud music and parties all the time where the hallways smell like weed, where the walls aren’t so thin that a crying baby will disturb every neighbor in the vicinity, and where I won’t be the only resident walking around with kids. Do you have any advice on which buildings to avoid or which to put at the top of my list? Thanks!

I put out the word to the downtown parent community and here are their replies:

I would say any of the South park condo buildings would work. Market Lofts is the only personal experience I can offer but the walls are double stud concrete (within units) so you can’t hear a thing. There are several families there, you have a pool, Grand park across the street, great management, and you’re on top of Ralphs (and pharmacy) which is perfect when you have a sick baby and need medecine ASAP.

Grand lofts on 11th and grand is family friendly. No amenities but more square footage for the buck. Been here since my kid was 4 mos and she’s 4 now. We used grand hope park and grand park regularly. We walk to LA Live often. Now that she can sit through certain movies, having the regal so close is awesome.

We are at the Mozaic. It is quiet, close to two day cares, walking distance to Alpine Rec Center, and at the back door to Union Station. Plus…lots of kids.

I live at The Met (not Met Lofts), a rental property in South Park. It’s a mixed bag. The building manager and front desk supervisor both have young children and are very welcoming to families in the building. (Front desk supervisor lives in the building.) There are a few families in the building, but there are a large number of students, young professionals, and some older people. It’s half a block from Ralphs and Grand Hope Park and has a small gym, a nice pool, courtyard, underground parking, and 24-hr security. They have lots of events in the lobby, geared to all ages (mostly student types but there are always a few young kids) & the staff have dressed as Santa and the Easter Bunny for photos. They have studios, 1BR, and 2BR/2BA. The walls must be fairly thick. There are sometimes loud parties but the only time we hear the noise inside our apartment is loud music directly next door (can’t actually hear the music, just the bass). It bothers my husband, but my daughter and I don’t really notice it. Management will ask them to turn it down if someone complains. We do sometimes hear tapping noise from upstairs like someone is moving furniture or hammering. We have lived here for 7 years or so and raised a 4-year-old… our neighbors said they never heard her cry. While we have not been bothered much by noise (and our chlid can sleep through sirens and Lakers riots), this is not the place to get away from students. They have an agreement with FIDM and provide housing, so there are A LOT of very young FIDM students and it can feel dorm-y. And ok, since you asked, sometimes the hallways smell like weed.

We lived in the Renaissance Towers which shares the space with Grand Hope Park! My daughter was there 2-4 hours every day from age 6-18 months. The rent is high, but it’s secure and convenient – late night runs to Ralphs took 2 minutes. The largest they have is a 1250 sq ft 2 bedroom.

We were in Elleven for 5 years, 1.5 with a baby. It’s a great building with nice amenities. Soundproofing is great on all sides except the hallway, but we rarely had noise issues. We only moved because of a job relocation to San Jose. Not too many multiple room units in the building though.

I live in the Grand Tower Building but on Bunker Hill, next to the new Broad, across from the MOCA. I love it.. I’d say it meets all your requirements. The only thing that makes me nervous when my nephews are visiting (12, 10 and 2) are my balconies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYhzFTzZrwI

One of my girls’ classmate live in Packard Lofts and have said many good things about it, including management.

You know what? None of this makes me feel like my kid is safer.

The Newtown shootings were a horrible tragedy and my husband and I cried along with every other parent in the country when we heard the news. But turning our schools into armed prison camps is not the solution. Tragedies like Newtown are incredibly rare. In 2012, 151 people in the United States died in mass shootings. Compare that to the 16,290 who died in traffic accidents last year. Car accidents are the number one cause of death in children under age 18, but I don’t see LAUSD spending money to make sure kids aren’t killed when their parents drive them to school.

The worst part about all this isn’t the financial waste (though I’m sure those nice police officers could be put to better use somewhere else). It’s the way it creates a climate of fear in LA schools. Instead of being welcomed to participate in their childrens’ education, parents are being treated like intruders and potential criminals. This is terrible, especially since study after study has shown that parental involvement strongly impacts student achievement.

What’s really depressing is that most of the parents I’ve talked to are completely on board with the increased security. In fact, they want more to be done. One parent wants my son’s school to invest in fence coverings so no one can look at the children when they’re playing. So what’s next? Putting chadors on our kids so they can’t be seen walking down the street?

This is not what I want for my son. One of the reasons I live in downtown Los Angeles is because I don’t want him to see life solely through a car window or to encounter other human beings only at the mall. I want him to be exposed to the diversity of life–cultural, racial, and economic. It’s true that living near skid row means we sometimes see sad, unpleasant, and depressing things. But my son also has the joy of saying hi to the shopkeepers who know him, petting neighbors’ dogs, riding his Spiderman bicycle in Ciclavia and walking to the Central Library. I do the best I can to keep him safe, but I also have to accept that I can’t protect him from every possible risk. To try to do so will impoverish his life.

Lenore Skenazy, author of the Free Range Kids blog, wrote a post on Newtown and the need to put the shootings in perspective. As she said,

The vast majority of children in America will never encounter a psychopathic mass murderer at school, and to guard them as if they will is unnecessary. Worse, it is bordering on ungrateful.

The Dish Factory
Located in the Warehouse District, this restaurant supply store has absolutely everything you need to furnish the kitchen of your dreams. Buy a dozen soup bowls for $29.99. Pick up an extra-large saute pan big enough to handle a whole fish for under $20. Feeling inspired to make creme brulee? Ramekins are $4.99/dozen. They also have a bar section that carries straws, napkins, drink mixes, strainers, pourers, openers and shakers. Class up your next party with an 8-quart wine bucket and matching stand for $21.98. You can also find mixers, food warmers, pitchers, flatware, mixing bowls, candle holders, etc., ad infinitum. They also have an eBay store where they sell mostly big items like stoves, refrigerators and commercial dishwashers.

The Dish Factory
310 S Los Angeles St
Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 687-9500, http://www.dishfactory.com
Hours: Mon-Fri 9 am – 5 pm, Sat 9 am – 4 pm

CC Image courtesy of C.M. Gonzalez via Flickr

Ross Cutlery & Sharpening Service
324 S Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 626-1897, http://www.rosscutlery.com
Hours: Mon-Sun 9 am – 6 pm