Los Angeles has the most photographed sign on earth and it is a real estate ad.
In 1923 a development syndicate that included the publisher of the Los Angeles Times put up thirteen letters on a ridge above Beachwood Canyon to sell hillside lots. It read HOLLYWOODLAND. It cost twenty-one thousand dollars, it was wired with four thousand bulbs that flashed HOLLY, then WOOD, then LAND, and it was built to stand for eighteen months. The lots sold. Nobody took it down. The last four letters came off in 1949 and the city has spent the seventy-seven years since treating the leftover half of a billboard as its civic soul.
The rest of the pitch runs on the same principle. The tour goes past gates. The map leads to driveways. The stars on the sidewalk are paid for by the people standing on them. Los Angeles is the only city in America that sells visitors an industry they are not permitted to enter, then sells them a photograph of the building they were not allowed into. It works. That is the irritating part.
THE FIRST RESTAURANT CRITIC TO WIN A PULITZER DID IT WRITING ABOUT STRIP MALLS
Here is where the joke turns on us.
In 2007 Jonathan Gold won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, the first restaurant critic ever to take one. He was not at a glossy. He was at LA Weekly, a free alt-weekly, and the citation praised his zestful reviews and the delight of an erudite eater. What he was eating was the San Gabriel Valley. The documentary made about him opens with him driving a green pickup through Alhambra and Monterey Park pointing at parking lots. Twelve miles east of the sign, a critic proved the thing Los Angeles is actually best at, and Los Angeles kept selling the billboard.
FOUR ADDRESSES IN THE VALLEY, AND NOT ONE OF THEM WITHIN REACH OF A TOUR BUS
So skip the hills. Get on the 10 and go east.
Golden Deli, 815 W Las Tunas Drive, San Gabriel. Pho, spring rolls, broken rice with pork chop. It has been feeding the valley for decades and the line outside is not a marketing decision. Closed Wednesdays.
Newport Seafood, 518 W Las Tunas Drive, San Gabriel. The house special lobster with jalapeno and green onion is the reason to come and the reason people book the big round tables. Bring people. Closed Tuesdays.
Chengdu Taste, 828 W Valley Boulevard, Alhambra. Sichuan, and the room that reset what Los Angeles expected from it. Go at an odd hour or wait.
Beijing Pie House, 846 E Garvey Avenue, Monterey Park. Meat pies straight out of the pan, dumplings, scallion pancakes. Order a pie and the corn porridge comes free.
Four addresses. All four in the same valley. Not one of them in Hollywood, not one on a tour route, and not one of them with a sign anybody flies in to photograph.
Los Angeles, the problem is not that you market yourself. Every city does. The problem is that you have spent a century marketing a subdivision advertisement while the best argument you have sits in a strip mall off Valley Boulevard, and a man in a pickup truck had to win a Pulitzer before anyone would say it out loud.
Keep the sign. The valley never needed one.
SOURCING
LA Conservancy, on the 1923 Hollywoodland sign as a twenty-one thousand dollar temporary billboard, its funding syndicate including Harry Chandler, and the 1944 transfer to the City of Los Angeles. laconservancy.org
Hollywood Sign Trust, on the sign's original construction, the four thousand bulbs, and the sequence they flashed. hollywoodsign.org
Smithsonian Magazine, on the sign's origins as an advertisement for the Hollywoodland development rather than a civic landmark. smithsonianmag.com
The Pulitzer Prizes, on Jonathan Gold's 2007 award for Criticism and the citation text. pulitzer.org
NPR, on Gold as the first food critic to win a Pulitzer and the San Gabriel Valley footage in the documentary made about him. npr.org
Operator addresses, closure days, and current operating status confirmed August 17, 2026.
