Here Are McSweeney's and Airbnb's Guides to 5 LA 'Hoods

Back in the 1930s the Works Progress Administration hired writers (Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, John Steinbeck) to write guides to American cities and states, but now we have NorCal startups to do that for us. The results are a lot more precious and somewhat less informative, but these are our times. Short-term rental company Airbnb was in town for several days last week throwing some kind of marketing extravaganza based around little celebrity-hosted pop-up houses placed in notable neighborhoods and venues (James Franco in Hollywood Forever, Moby at the Viper Room, etc.). (If you didn't notice this, you probably weren't in LA--it was advertised just about everywhere, including here, we're told.) As part of it all, Airbnb collaborated with San Francisco-based artisan publisher McSweeney's on a series of "magazine" guides--one each for Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the Arts District, Abbot Kinney, the Viper Room, and The Grove (Finally a guide to the inscrutable Grove!). They look nice and feature interviews with local notables, short essays, and tales of lost hipster love, all written by actual writers (not copywriters), you know, pretty nice for an ad. See them all this way:

· Here's James Franco's "YOLO" House at Hollywood Forever [Curbed LA]