Growing up in Los Angeles, I didn’t have a very accurate perspective on the city’s culture, but after many trips that took me out of the state I now realize that LA has an unusually large variety of cultures and unique areas. Olvera Street, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and even LA-specific places from West Hollywood to The Hollywood Bowl, there are an unlimited amount of places to go. Not to mention, some of the best tacos in the country.

Over the summer, I took a road trip from LA to Denver, Colorado. Along the trip, I learned that the value of originality was a hard thing to find and that my city happens to have it. From bland Mexican food, to most everyone looking the same; the parts of Arizona I saw were just some examples with little to no perspective on singularity or cultural difference.

My family’s annual traditions take us all over the city. They include visiting the LA County Museum of Art in the summer, the Japanese New Year’s Festival, and even Pink’s Hot Dogs during the Christmas season.  My favorite event in LA is probably the Japanese New Year’s festival in Little Tokyo. It is full of performances, activities, and rich food.

From the traditional festivals and performances, to the one man band with a home-made PVC keyboard, Little Tokyo is full of different aspects of Japanese culture. The food varies: modern takes on the sushi-ya, ramen shops hidden in alleys with the best recipe in town, and curry donuts… curry donuts? The Japanese American museum displays history of WWII and earlier Japanese people in America that not many people know.

Probably one of the most well-known culture niches in LA is Chinatown. The shops, food, and street vendors are what make it. Every small shop has a different atmosphere; you could start at the beginning of a shop thinking that you’re in a clothing store, and end up in a section full of butterfly knives, jewelry, and model cars. Other shops have 800$ bags of tea, strange giant root herbs, and dried sea-cucumbers.

In LA, you don’t have to be anywhere specific to find individuality. You can easily find people on the street who stand out from the crowd. In costume, strange wardrobe, or being excessively loud about the private conversation on their phone, they’re all singularities in the city. I’ve seen a homeless guy constantly in Chi Town, with a camping stove and an undersized pan that he cooks things in. Not that I know what the hell he’s cooking, but it smells good. People in sub- par Spider Man and Batman costumes line Hollywood Blvd along with people in cardboard Transformer armor and limp, felt, pizza-looking mascot suits covered in stains somebody forgot to clean.

Many people who don’t live in Los Angeles think of stars, Hollywood Boulevard, and a city with a monotonous, tasteless culture, but truthfully, it is a vibrant city with a varied and near unlimited amount of cultures, opinions, and personalities. Homogenization is caused by the fear of being unique. In LA, people aren’t afraid of being different. They aren’t afraid of standing out in a crowd and being themselves.