Dear Reader,
Sure, you probably bleed blue and gold. But we’re willing to bet that you wouldn’t mind a break from the monotony of being on campus.
The Fall ‘25 Digital Press Interns are proud to present Sweet Escapes: a project that details a (by no means comprehensive) selection of our favorite hangout spots throughout Los Angeles. In it, we hope to illuminate some of the hijinks and happenings that make this city home, and give you ideas for your next off-campus excursion.
It’s time to step outside the Bruin bubble — trust us, you’ll be glad you did.
– Digi Press Interns F25 <3
Sylvia Ansley — Rocknite @ The Goldfish
For all of its events, history, and culture, the UCLA campus can get a little stuffy. If you find yourself in need of something totally new, rocknite.la is what you’re looking for. Hosted every Wednesday at The Goldfish in Highland Park, Rocknite showcases three bands, typically local ones with under 3,000 monthly Spotify listeners. DIY, small, and intimate is the vibe.
Walking into The Goldfish felt like stepping into a movie. You are immediately greeted by two pool tables with a long queue, a packed bar with the menu written in dry-erase marker on a goldfish tank, and an eerie glow emanating from the room of vintage pinball machines. If you showed up late like I did, then the music was already going and was loud enough to draw you into the stage room. A huge disco ball twirled above the crowd.
I regretfully missed the first band, Donna, but was just in time to catch Lulled, a three-piece shoegaze act that left me entranced and wanting more. Each song was ambient and spacey yet heavy at the same time. Hailing from Omaha, Nebraska, Lulled previously performed under the name Western Haiku. The sheer volume of the show had me shouting over the music to my friend that they reminded me of Duster.
The final band, Blimp, delivered a blend of indie and noise rock that was nostalgic and sweet. As the band was native to LA, it was so special for me to be able to get a glimpse of a music scene that I had previously been unaware of. The lyrics cleverly utilized repetition to build emotion and draw you even closer into the music. Their live performance of their EP Egg sounded strikingly different from their published recordings. At the venue, people in the crowd hugged each other and swayed to the music. Listening to their music as recorded, I could imagine people flailing and moshing about. This made seeing them live an even more special and unique experience.
As the show finished up, I made it a point to remember Rocknite for my next free Wednesday night. I felt excited and honored to have discovered this little slice of LA for myself. As we left The Goldfish, I looked longingly at the pool tables and promised myself to come back for them as well. So much adventure packed into one unassuming Wednesday night. Grab a friend and allow yourself to be pulled into something entirely new.
Camryn Kim — Midnight Miles: Soundtracking an After-Dark Cruise Through LA
As a commuter student constantly traversing the wide expanses of Los Angeles — you’ll rarely find me on campus or in Westwood when I don’t have class — I spend a… not insignificant amount of time in my car, like countless other Angelenos. Now, I’m not a masochist, so I won’t pretend that braving traffic during peak rush hour isn’t usually hell on Earth. But most of the time, I genuinely look forward to my daily solo drives. No, really! I do!
Amidst chaos on the freeways and cramped side streets that everyone thought would be less crowded than the freeways (“I’ll just go local!”), my car becomes a private little oasis where I can ponder — out loud, of course — recharge, and observe the world around me.
One of my simple pleasures in life? A good nighttime cruise through the city.
Driving through LA at night is an inherently cinematic experience that I can’t recommend enough, especially if you’re a professional at romanticizing your life like I am. Windows down, the wind whipping your hair into a frenzy while people and city lights rush by… it might sound cliché, but pretty sure that’s the stuff of Hollywood, no? And who doesn’t love a little bit of drama?
Of course, every good film — even if it’s just playing in your head — needs a soundtrack, which is why listening to music is a nonnegotiable during my moonlight escapades. Now, my general philosophy towards music is pretty simple: listen to whatever the hell you want, whenever you want. If you like it, play it! With that being said, I find that the distinct character of each neighborhood in LA often inspires the music I choose to listen to while driving.
As I meander past the glittering swan boats of Echo Park Lake, the painstakingly trendy bars and eateries (adored by transplants and hipsters alike) of Sunset Junction in Silverlake, and the Griffith Observatory lit up atop its perch in Los Feliz, I gravitate towards indie and alternative tunes that make me feel like I’m coming of age, A24-style. Think “Everything Hits at Once” by Spoon, “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem, and “Smog” by Indigo de Souza.
Rock ‘n’ roll and American cinema have always gone hand in hand, so I find that Hollywood naturally lends itself well to classic rock. Sparkling marquees touting “The Next Big Name” in music, neon signs that hum with electricity, the ever-expanding Walk of Fame… there’s something rather iconic about driving alongside all of those names immortalized in terrazzo pavement stars while blasting Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes” and Styx’s “Come Sail Away.”
The pilgrimage through legendary Laurel Canyon is quiet and serene. In the darkness, hills blur into the endless night sky, and if you’re lucky, you might see a star or two (thanks, light pollution). Of course, it’s only fitting to honor the folk artists who transformed Laurel Canyon into a vibrant musical hub of 1960s and ‘70s counterculture as I pass through it. “Cactus Tree” by Joni Mitchell and “4+20” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are a couple of my go-tos for the occasion. I also enjoy sneaking in modern folk tracks like “Jonathan” by Adrienne Lenker and Buck Meek, as well as a song or two that directly references the canyon, à la Lana Del Rey’s “Bartender.”
And as I fly down PCH, past the Barbenheimer beachhouses, the Santa Monica Pier glowing like a vision in the ink black ocean, shoegaze and dream pop float through my car speakers. At 2 a.m., the surfers are sound asleep and will rise in a few hours with the sun and the waves. But me? I’m breathing in the salt air while Lush’s “I Have the Moon,” Cocteau Twins’ “Sea, Swallow Me,” and Panda Bear’s “Tropic of Cancer” play on.
This mix of music — and it’s always changing, given that I listen to most genres — is certainly eclectic, but then again, so is Los Angeles. And that’s one of the many reasons why I love LA so. Driving through my city towards another unforgettable night, I embody de Souza’s sentiment in “Smog”:
“I come alive in the nighttime /
When everybody else is done“
And maybe you do, too.
Lauren Kim — Sunset Boulevard is the Silverlake Express
Move over, Rachel Sennott. I loved LA first.
I love UCLA, but I try to leave Westwood whenever possible.
When I first started university, I thought the campus would drown me. I thought it’d be too easy to slip through the cracks and fall into the shadows of anonymity. Coast through four years as a wallflower.
Turns out, once you nestle yourself into the social niche of your choosing, UCLA will shrink from thirty thousand undergraduates to maybe 16 students. Suddenly, strangers are friends-of-friends and everyone shares at least six Instagram mutuals. I’ve grown quite comfortable in this fashion-art-music bubble, which is stimulating at best and stifling at worst.
To escape the interpersonal drama of various artistically-inclined students, I’ve resolved to leave the Westside whenever I can. My weekly pilgrimage to Silverlake/Echo Park/Los Feliz serves as a reminder that UCLA drama is really never that serious.
Given there’s traffic on the 405/10/110/101 from eight to ten and again from three to eight, Sunset Boulevard has become my default escape route. The billboard-filled horizon is my first taste of freedom.
When I’m not thinking about how capitalism has caused us to put TV and underwear advertisements in the sky, Sunset Boulevard fills me with a weird sense of Los Angeles patriotism. Since its debut on the silver screen in 1950, Sunset has cemented itself as a cultural landmark, immortalized in Lana Del Rey lyrics and Selling Sunset episodes.
In comparison, Westwood has little history. It belonged to the Tongva; we seized that land, now it’s a university. Sunset Boulevard — 22 miles of hedonistic oasis — is a reminder that when you finally venture off campus, there’s so much richness to Los Angeles. Sunset will forever be a safe haven for mobsters, queers, and rock stars alike, the place to be to find talent bubbling beneath the mainstream.
Going out east reminds me of high school. Walking to the Los Feliz flea with my best friends. Giggling, driving over the Shakespeare bridge. Getting Maru Coffee in the heat of summer. Sharing our contempt when they discontinued the cream top.
It also reminds me of driving home after a night at Boardner’s. Staring out the window, watching the streetlights blur together. Trying not to make myself sicker. Or getting on the 2 bus the morning after a series of bad decisions, mascara smudged below my eyes. Each billboard is a checkpoint, a reminder I’m getting closer to home. The Beverly Hills Hotel cheers me on, urging me, You’re nearly there.
Last spring, Z and I would spend each Tuesday afternoon together. Daylight savings had just begun, and we were determined to make the most of the extra sunlight. On one of those days, she agreed to brave the 3 o’clock traffic so we could get coffee in Silverlake. We bonded over our shared resolve to move out east when we finished school, living in beautiful Spanish revival bungalows, our rent mysteriously paid. It seems that once you graduate from the fashion-art-music UCLA bubble, you move to Silverlake and do that shit full time.
Our outing only lasted a couple of hours, because the cafe closed at 4 — of course it did; we were in Silverlake, not Koreatown. We spent nearly an hour driving, shared an hour-long coffee break, and were now bracing for an hour’s journey back. Despite the tedious round trip, the gas money we’d blown through, and the fact that my eight-dollar matcha was served in a mouthwash cup, even the briefest taste of life outside Westwood was the highlight of our week.
We listened to “California Dream Girl” on the way home. The Hellp is probably one of the most annoying bands of all time, but I can begrudgingly agree that they are often ahead of the curve. The LA-based duo is easy to caricaturize, slotting neatly into the pretentious gentrifier archetype. They look like the kind of people who are somehow free on Tuesday afternoons to grab an artisan coffee at the hottest third-wave cafe — skinny cigarettes, leather jackets, puzzlingly lucrative career in creative direction.
The track is an easy, feel-good song — the preceding single to their album LL, which they regularly refer to as a cheap attempt at making pop hits. The upbeat instrumental feels like the sun hitting your face on the way home. “California Dream Girl” is the anthem I sing when I pledge my lifelong allegiance to LA:
california dreaaaam girl /
you know what i mean / you know what i mean?
The pounding bass makes the traffic go by faster. It’s an ode to growing up spotting Emma Chamberlain at the local mall. Recognizing the sets in Modern Family. Forcing my mom to drive me to the Glossier store on Melrose.
It’s also an ode to tanning on Janss. The backlot on Landfair. Convincing people to split the Uber to Silverlake, because it’s always worth the journey.
As I watch the billboards whiz past me, I know I’m coming home.
