Putting L.A. on the Map

It’s character building to know how others see us, and that goes for cities, too. Take “Los Angeles,” a pocket-sized travel guide that debuted several months ago in the United Kingdom-based DK Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides series (www.dk.com). For those unfamiliar with the DK brand, its general interest books map out everything from “Star Wars” minutiae to archeological wonders in classy, handsomely designed volumes that make it easy to forget you’re essentially reading an upscale idiot’s guide, while the compact-edition travel guides use “top 10” lists to introduce a city. They start with an overall top 10 must-see list, then cover categories such as shopping, day trips, restaurants and “Weird & Wacky.” “The myth, the velocity, the edginess in creative and technological fields--this is Los Angeles, where the multicultural future that awaits the rest of the country is already a firm reality,” reads the introduction to the L.A. entry. “In little more than 200 years, L.A. has grown from a dusty Spanish outpost into one of the world’s largest and most complex cities, offering top venues for everything from archeology and the arts to food. The birthplace of Mickey Mouse and Hollywood, L.A. has shaped the imaginations of millions.” The big top-10 list includes no-brainers along with a few arguables: the Sunset Strip, Hollywood Boulevard, the Getty Center, LACMA, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, Universal Studios Hollywood, Griffith Park, the Disneyland Resort, Catalina Island and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. We kind of favor Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village, but then, our imagination has been shaped by Mickey Mouse.