#40 Sunset Junction - A super-diverse Los Angeles street fair.

For a second, I felt like I was looking at the Sims. I saw a guy wearing a pirate-style tricorn, a fellow with a mohawk, an old lady with blue hair, a country guy in a cowboy hat, a bare chested leather daddy and a cholo enjoying the music of Skeeter Truck. It's like somebody downloaded a package of wild, new skins and slapped them over the homogenous population of the American city.

Every year the residents of Silverlake close the stretch of road where Sunset and Santa Monica converge for a weekend long party. Music, food and booze are plentiful. This year Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Pansy Division and Sleater Kinney drew larger crowds than the even had seen in previous years. Food was the major draw for me, so I showed up early and had a Mexican-style hot dog, barbecue ribs with baked beans, an ear of corn and a smoothie, before the place became too overrun. Friends who tried to check out Sonic Youth reported an impassable, hour-long pedestrian bottleneck toward the end of the evening.