LA isn’t just home to a community of bright entrepreneurs; it’s also home to a legion of great writers and bloggers. Throughout the year, Lalawag will be chatting with some of the city’s most prominent bloggers to find out a bit more about what makes them tick.
Photo Credit: Vanessa Maldonado
Jenn Wong (@wayofthewong) is a self-proclaimed “Urban Spelunker,” specializing in unearthing unique locations and activities to do in Los Angeles. She lives and breathes our great city day in day out and shares her discoveries and adventures with the world via her blog, Way Of The Wong.
Tell us a little about your blog.
My blog tries to curate the wilds of Los Angeles into bite-sized pieces. Rather than being a blog centered on reviews of local restaurants or music or what have you, I think of it as a blog about doing. Los Angeles is not a city where you walk a lot in. (Cue the Missing Persons song, “Walking in LA”)
So whether it’s people who’ve just move here recently, or even people who’ve lived here for years, it’s difficult for anyone to just “stumble upon” a neighborhood bar or a cool hidden gem of a shop because you’re rarely just walking by anything. You kinda have to know the exact address so you can go there. That’s where I come in. Way Of The Wong is basically me opening up my rolodex and sharing some of things I have “stumbled upon” in Los Angeles.
It sounds like you’ve “stumbled upon” way too many things to do in our fair city to be purely happenstance. How did you get to know LA so well?
I moved to LA in the days of dial-up and Thomas Guides (when you had to work a little harder to find your way around) and then add to that that I’m the kinda girl who just has to know everything. So whenever I had to be somewhere, I’d actually leave an hour early, basically to get myself lost on purpose. I’d literally spend that time driving around neighborhoods just seeing what I could find.
How did you get started blogging?
Two words: Peer pressure.
So many of my girlfriends had started blogging, so I figured, why not? I’d also been gaining a reputation amongst my friends as this sort of ‘urban ninja’ who could always recommend cool stuff to do in the city, so, it just seemed like the next logical step.
What platform do you use for blog publishing? What made you decide to use it over the other choices out there?
WordPress. Mostly because I’m a control freak & a fan of open source. I need to mod my blog like I mod my browser – like I mod my everything.
Other than your own, what are the first three content sites/blogs you check when you wake up in the morning? Why?
- Lifehacker - See previous question. Control freak, open source, yadda yadda.
- NPR – I pretty much mainline public radio in the morning. I got addicted to it on my long commute to high school and now I need it in the morning or I feel lost.
- Smashing Magazine – I love design. I love tech. This blog satiates both of those cravings.
Who are the five most important people you follow on Twitter and why?
This might be cheating but I’m a freak about Twitter lists. My favorite things to check are the lists that I follow, so here’s my top five Twitter lists:
- @zagat/los-angeles-food-trucks – Because it’s too crazy to follow every LA food truck and read their millions of tweets a day. I still want to know where my NomNom Truck is when I want me some NomNom, so this list is key. Plus, @Zagat curates some great lists in general if you are a foodie.
- @mashable/social-media – Pete Cashmore of Mashable curates some amazing lists. I follow a bunch of them, but this one keeps me on the pulse of the bleeding edge of the wild west world of social media.
- @TEDchris/twitterati – Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, tech god, and rockstar in the geek-verse. TED talks inspire and motivate me and Chris’s lists are pretty great.
- @imrogb/design – I love great design (web, graphic, industrial and otherwise) and this is just a great list for it.
- @nprnews/best-of – Yes, I’m a public radio nut. It is on in my house pretty much 24-7, so this list feels like a list of my neighbors, if my neighbors were on the radio.
Say you’ve got a friend visiting LA for the first time, but only for one day. Where would you take them during that day?
That is super tough because if someone has never been to LA, you have to do the tourist thing because that’s just not fair. It’s as if you went to Paris and didn’t see the Eiffel Tower. Your friends would make fun of you when you got home. So, you would have to see the biggies. But then I would probably make them do the Los Angeles Race Fantastique (LARF) “Amazing Los Angeles Race” extreme-sight-seeing race. Because, if you’re going to see LA, you might as well race against some random strangers in the process.
What smartphone apps do you find indispensable on your home screen? Why did these apps make the cut?
Hands down my most indispensable app is Pocket Informant. I used to be a PC and now I’m a Mac, and iCal just does not cut it (on both the iPhone and on the desktop). This app gets me a little bit closer to the calendar that I love.
I use the Google Search app constantly because I can search with voice commands. Yay for hands free searching!
Special mention goes to Evernote because I use it ALL THE TIME on my iPhone and laptop. Okay, one more – I also like Hippo Remote for just being awesome.
Where do you do your best writing? (at home, starbucks, the park, etc.)
I’m not sure I have a ‘best’ place. I write everywhere, really, where and when I can. I’m on the go all the time so I have to squeeze in my blog writing whereever I can fit in. I haven’t taken my laptop to the bathroom with me yet, but I’ve thought about it!
Many people complain about how much they hate living in LA. If you got into an argument with one, how would you defend our city?
I’d tell them to go home – just kidding! I find that people who hate LA, think of it as a shallow, trendy home for wannabees – which is not inaccurate – but that is only because they themselves have only scratched the surface of LA and haven’t found all the fun enclaves of culture that exist in this city. People who “hate” LA are usually just pining over the city they left to come here. I can usually win them over by asking them what they miss most, and then turning them onto its doppelgänger here. People are always surprised by what LA has to offer if you know where to look.
What’s your best source of inspiration? Do you have a particular muse?
This city inspires me everyday. The weather. The food. The graffitti. The mix of cultures (pop culture meets historical architecture meets surfer culture meets street art meets REI fanatic meets pilates instructor) – it’s all so awesome.
Your bio page on your blog has a picture of a Batman comic where you share a panel with The Caped Crusader. How’d that come about? What comic is that from?
Ah yes, that would be “The Monolith,” a short lived DC Comic. I had the pleasure of working with Tomm Coker, who has illustrated some amazing comics, so when he needed a model for the character of TILT, I was the lucky face. I was only in a few issues, but was fortunate enough that Batman also lived in that universe so that I could forever share some screen time with him.
What helps you the most in terms of expanding your readership?
I just try to be active in social media networks and I try to stay topical. My blog is about what’s going on right now, so when I can stay ahead of the curve and keep my posts relevant and timely, my readers find me.
Photo Credit: Vanessa Maldonado
Do you have any other tips for the budding bloggers out there?
Write about what you love (insert sappy music cue). No, seriously. You have to write and keep writing regularly, so you don’t want to be writing about crap you don’t care about (unless you’re getting paid baller money – but even then it’s not always worth it). It’s hard to get past a handful of posts when you’re not motivated, so stay inspired.
You can follow Jenn on Twitter (@wayofthewong) and on Facebook here.
