Moleskine City Notebook Los Angeles [Flexibound]

I've been waiting for this one for a long time, and I am pleased with what they've done. I won't be using this moleskine as a tourist, but instead as a resident of the LA area, writing down things I need to remember (and sometimes avoid) about this great area. I have so many LA-notes in my head that I've been wanting to get down on paper, and this is the paper I've been waiting for.

That fact creates for me the only drawback to this little dude. It does not include all areas of the sprawling City of Los Angeles in its detailed sectional map. As a result, important places like Crenshaw, The Foothills, San Pedro and Chatsworth, which are within the city limits of the City of Los Angeles, do not have their own detailed section maps, unlike places like Westwood and Silver Lake which do have their own detailed section maps. Important for my own purposes, it does not include detailed section maps for places like that part of Pico between the 405 and Rancho Park, or North Hollywood, or Culver City. I can barely make out on the big map where the Museum of Jurassic Technology would be, but there is not detailed section map to show me where it actually is. And that's just within the city limits of the City of Los Angeles. While its big map covers areas outside of the City of Los Angeles like Malibu, Pamona, Long Beach, and most of Orange County, it does not provide detailed maps for those regions either.

But, had moleskine put detailed maps of all those areas into this City Guide, it would no longer be pocket-sized. Had they included detailed maps for all of those areas, it would probably weigh fifteen pounds. Such is the sprawl of this city.

Thankfully the publishers did the only thing they could reasonably do. Instead of increasing the weight to fifteen pounds by including maps for all of these areas, they have included blank pages so that I can do it myself. I shall go to AAA and get my free maps (free with membership) and cut up the detailed sections that I want and glue them onto blank pages as needed. For each little map I glue in, I'll go to the big map and make a note on it, indicating that there is a detailed section map corresponding to that area later in the City Guide.

When its all done (it'll never be all done), I will loan it to my friends who come in from out of town, so they'll know where I think they should go, and what I suggest they do. And until LA drops off into the Pacific, or burns to the ground in some riot, I'll have my favorite guide to LA-the one I wrote wrote.

I bought this because my family and I were heading to So. Cal (San Diego and Orange County). I assumed that San Diego wouldn't be in here but I figured that since LA and Orange County go together (in the mind of a tourist anyway) that the map portion would include the OC as well as LA proper. No luck and now I have a book that I'll use when I actually make a visit to LA proper, one day.