Los Angeles
Home. I know where to park.
The hardest reservations: Hayato, Somni, n/naka. Book the first of the month. Plan the night around them.
Dodger Stadium on a warm evening with the San Gabriel Mountains visible past center field. I've been to opening day, postseason, and spring training. This is non-negotiable.
The Hollywood Bowl with a good bottle and no schedule after. The Orpheum for something more intimate. Hollywood Forever Cinespia from May through October, 35mm on the side of a mausoleum, bring a blanket.
The Stahl House. Pierre Koenig's 1959 Case Study House, the city below at night through glass walls. It's listed for sale. Book it now.
The Eames House in Pacific Palisades, where Charles and Ray lived and worked for decades. The house is still filled with their things.
The Vista Theater in Los Feliz. Tarantino's restored 1923 single-screen, one of four working VistaVision projectors left in the world. I love that room.
The Huntington in San Marino for a full slow morning, Japanese garden, Chinese garden, a library holding a Gutenberg Bible.
A cooking class where we actually make something and eat it after. A stunt driving day at Willow Springs, forty minutes from the city. The gun range, which is oddly meditative. A long hike with nowhere to be after. A gym session followed by a late breakfast.
An afternoon where we both bring something we're working on and exist in the same room for a few hours. These are some of my favorite days.
The fog feels like a reset. I always find a restaurant I didn't know existed.
The hardest reservations: Atelier Crenn, Saison, Californios, Birdsong. Book before you book the flight.
Oracle Park. The bay beyond right field, the garlic fries, the cold foggy nights that should feel wrong. My heart belongs to California so it belongs to both teams.
The Masonic on Nob Hill when something worth seeing is playing there.
The Legion of Honor on a bluff over the Pacific, Rodin collection, Golden Gate visible from the forecourt. Walk down to the Sutro Baths ruins after.
The Castro Theatre, reopened 2026, the original 1922 Spanish Baroque interior back and the gold proscenium arch visible for the first time. A pilgrimage if you care about buildings.
Audium: 49 seats, 176 speakers, complete darkness, Thursday through Saturday. Cannot be photographed. Lasts.
Hiking the Marin Headlands or Mount Tam. The city looks different when you've earned the perspective.
A room with a bay view, something we're each working on, the afternoon in parallel.
San Francisco
New York
I always stay longer than I planned.
The hardest reservations: Atomix, Le Veau d'Or, The Pool at the Seagram Building. Opens the first of the month. Gone in seconds.
The Frick, reopened April 2025 with the second floor of the 1914 mansion open for the first time. The Vermeer room alone.
Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, Louis Kahn's only New York building. Take the tram from 60th and Second, four minutes over the river, best at golden hour.
The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. Quiet in the way that matters.
Bemelmans at the Carlyle. The 1947 murals, head bartender Louis Cabrera at thirty-five years, jazz trio late.
Carnegie Hall if the program is right. The Village Vanguard on a Monday night.
Metrograph on Ludlow, 35mm projection, dinner upstairs at six, something good at eight.
Aire Ancient Baths in Tribeca for the afternoon that calls for slowing down.
Check into somewhere good. Spend the afternoon working. New York rewards the person who knows when to stop moving.
A few I've been. A few I intend to fix.
The paddock, wherever F1 is. I've stood in the Ferrari garage. Tell me the circuit. I'll pack.
Kyoto in November for the maples. The gardens at Ryoanji are nothing like photographs of them.
Tangier in spring. Bowles wrote The Sheltering Sky here. The light is long and you can see Spain from the cliffs.
Lisbon for the tile and the trams and the word for missing something that may never have existed. Sintra after. Byron called it a glorious Eden and he wasn't wrong.
Oaxaca. If Mexico City was the introduction, this is the deeper read.
Hydra in late May. No cars on the island. Leonard Cohen bought a house here for $1,500 in 1960. Three nights after Athens.
Buenos Aires in autumn. The best beef on earth and El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a bookstore inside a converted 1919 theater.
Marfa in spring. Judd's aluminum boxes in a decommissioned army base in the West Texas desert. One stoplight. 360 degrees of horizon.
Ready to plan something? See my Consideration page.
