How to know a place as large as L.A. County, five thousand square miles and population eleven million, if not through triangulation? Not even New York incites the amount of block- and channel-angst on Are.na that Los Angeles does. Something about the city’s simultaneous utopian and dystopian affects inspires hardlines; something about the city’s sprawling size and connected microcultures gives off a sense of unknowability. When summed up, it is only through contradictions, an attempt to make opposing terms capture a thing through the space between them. “The L.A. vibe is wrinkles caulked with make-up, fading high-budget marketing for something no one saw, no one bought, black SUVs gliding away from a distant sound of gunshots, the cookout smell of roasting corn, a sixteen-year-old vomiting on gleaming travertine,” one block reads.

Pseudo Nim’s “Offbeat LA” acts as a “behind-the-scenes travel guide” with hidden histories, self-guided tours, and info on navigating Los Angeles by bus.