Lunch with CAM

On Friday afternoon, I went back to the Chinese American Museum to claim the lunch that was promised to me after moderating last month's Arthur Dong talk and screening of Hollywood Chinese. Yes, free meals are excellent, but only if the people giving them are cool, too. Below: Dora, Linh, and Pauline are exceptionally nice, super dedicated, and quite interesting people.


The museum is in the middle of Downtown L.A.'s historic Plaza District, and surrounded by good places to eat. We went to Authentic Thai--perhaps because I'm a vegetarian and they had a lot of meatless options. (They mentioned that the smokehouse across the street is good, too.) Right in front, Pauline spotted these tomatoes as well as some herbs in a sidewalk planter. Nice!


Like the guerrilla garden, the museum isn't obvious to passersby. It's located in a courtyard where neither car traffic nor pedestrians can see it. Luckily, Dora was actually lugging the fold-up sign out into the clearing the first time I visited. The spot is actually quite nice, as you can see Union Station in the background.


In the museum, Arthur Dong's Hollywood Chinese exhibit is still going strong. The artifacts and displays illustrate and expand on the documentary to recount Hollywood's treatment of Chinese in its movies over the years, and also provide a small peak into the award-winning filmmaker's childhood obsession with movies that grew into a topic of study and then a movie itself.


Outside, I saw a ton of folks from Alabama and Texas that were in town for the previous evening's BCS game at the Rose Bowl. Along with Farmer's Market on Third and Fairfax, Olvera Street is one of the more interesting traps for tourists to check out. Hopefully, the crimson- and burnt orange-clad visitors checked out CAM while they were there.