Summer in LA doesn’t arrive in June. It sneaks in after Labor Day, when everyone else has packed up their chairs and umbrellas and gone home. Our summer months go something like this - May Gray, June Gloom, No-Sky July, Fogust. But September and October? That’s when LA sparkles and glows.

The mornings start soft, sunrise brushing warm and gold across the mountains, a little peek of snow, it rained a bit last week and that makes for an extra bit of glow. By midday the LA basin hums with heat, shimmer rising off the pavement. And the in evenings, the sunsets are operas. Pink, orange, lavender, electric blue. Every color fighting for their turn in the sky.

My current trip has me nostalgic. Everything that built me is here. Lifeguard Station 25, the stretch of Santa Monica Bay where the funniest parts of my teenage self live. Baseball boys, volleyball boys, good boys, bad boys. The summer I turned pretty. First kiss, first heartbreak, first cigarette. All of it, still suspended in that sea air in Santa Monica.

We’d roll down the coast in my friend’s dad’s Jaguar, heading fast on Vista Del Mar to Dockweiler State Beach for a thrill, sneaking past curfews and pretending we weren’t babies. Occasionally we’d make it to Manhattan Beach, to watch beach volleyball, and it went off. Los Angeles in the 80’s was rad. Celebrities were civilians. Blue-collar kids hung out with movie stars’ kids. Private school, public school, it was all the same sunburned scene.

Now? I don’t think it’s only me, but LA lost its grit and gained too much gloss somewhere between The Hills and the Kardashians. The magic didn’t vanish, it got way too filtered and filled.

Still, my years on the south side of the bay, in Manhattan Beach, remind me that the soul of this place is intact if you know where to look.

Here are the places I hit up this time around:
Fishing With Dynamite for oysters and crisp white wine

The Arthur J for old-school steakhouse swagger

Un Caffe Alturamura for the perfect espresso and best breakfast and/or lunch in Manhattan Beach

Love & Salt and Esperanza for coastal Italian and modern Mexican done very right

Atta Girl where my favorite local chef Alice Mai cooks up Mediterranean classics

Good Boy Bob and Verve for caffeine highs and the absolute best people watching

Pages my forever-favorite indie bookstore

And American Martyrs Church, where the quiet hum of ritual always feels like home

When you make it to LA, skip the clichés and start here. Or better yet, let me plan your holiday, showing our hidden corners, and the kinds of meals and moments that will help you fall back in love with Southern California.

This is Robinson & Roam, signing off from home turf. How about those Dodgers???!!!