Welcome to Los Angeles.

There's the LA you see in the movies, and then there's the real LA—a gritty, fantastically diverse collection of neighborhoods sprawled between ocean and mountains, each with its own distinct mood. Los Angeles spent years striving to emulate towns like New York or San Francisco, but over the last decade the city took a long hard look in the mirror, dug what it saw, and started focusing on what it does best: casual, multicultural, and effortlessly cool.

The new LA is the place everyone suddenly wants to be, where high and low converge on palm-lined sidewalks. The country's most thriving food scene is here, run by a guerilla band of ethnically diverse chefs cooking up whatever they want, wherever they want, with the best produce in the world. From the industrial warehouses east of downtown to the beachside shopping meccas of Venice, LA's cutting edge street style, art scene, and culinary chops can't be contained—the creative energy pops through the concrete like ficus roots. And just to sweeten the deal, 280-plus days of breezy sunshine form the backdrop of it all. Just don't forget your shades.