Danny Carranza

The past 12 months always feel like a blur by the time we reach the end of the year, but for our team of editors at Time Out Los Angeles, there are a handful of events, venues and timely oddities that feel like proper moments—the kind of ones we’ve kept thinking about all year long. We spent countless hours scoping out dozens of PST ART exhibitions and obsessively tracking rocket launches (and a beloved space shuttle), filling up on pastries at bakeries and tirelessly surverying the sushi scene. Amid all of that and then some—the wax museum bar visits, sopping wet log flume rides and Souplantation dupe meals—these are the 13 things that really left an impression on us. Some of our Best of the City picks are one-time events or ephemeral pop-ups that we thought deserved some recognition, but the bulk of these new restaurants, entertainment venues and attractions are spots that you can get out and see this very second—and absolutely should.

Is it the grainy texture? The spontaneous poses? The analog nostalgia? Whatever the reason, people love photo booth portraits—and no, we don’t mean digital printouts, but the old-school ones that are still shot on film. Our videographer Danny Carranza counts himself among those folks. After spotting film photo booths in Berlin and London last summer, Danny’s childhood fondness for the kiosks and professional preference for film rekindled his interest in them. When he stumbled upon one at Silver Lake’s Cha Cha Lounge, he knew there had to be more. So Danny set out to try to track down the best of L.A.’s remaining and replica vintage photo booths. First, he and a friend found Photobooth.net, a remarkably helpful site that sources submissions for photo booth locations. And then Danny put in the miles himself—darting between Long Beach, Eagle Rock, Culver City and Silver Lake—to test out which of these machines are just smeary messes and which still develop standout snapshots. (Alex’s Bar and Vidiots? Top of the class. Cha Cha Lounge and the Short Stop? Not quite.) Photograph: Danny Carranza for Time OutPhoto booth at the Short Stop Photo booths are having a bit of a moment. When Chrissy Teigen ordered one for herself in 2020, Bay Area company Photomatica’s orders spiked. But the real boom arguably arrived after go-to influencer photographer Bryant Eslava (better known simply as @bryant) set one up in 2022. His living room photo booth quickly became an essential stop for his bu