What's with Anna May Wong? One of those arrival stories produced a film pioneer. She was born in Los Angeles in 1905, the daughter of a laundryman on North Figueroa Street, and grew up between her family's business and the city's old Chinatown. She talked her way onto film sets as a teenager and by the mid-1920s was the first Chinese American movie star — then spent a career pushing against the narrow parts the studios offered her, leaving for London and Berlin in 1928 to find better ones and returning as an international name. In 1951 she became the first Asian American to lead a United States television series. In 2022 the United States Mint honored her on a quarter in the American Women Quarters Program, the first Asian American to appear on U.S. currency.
Our Los Angeles retro logo carries California's grizzly bear and lone star — the emblem of the old California Republic — set over “1850,” the year of statehood. Rendered black-and-white with the worn look of a vintage crate label or a roadside sign, it is rugged and authentic rather than glossy. The bear and star bridge the city's two stories: the adobe pueblo on the river and the state it helped build, a fitting mark for heritage worn rather than hung on a wall.
Why People Visit Los Angeles
Travelers come for the climate, the coast, and the culture, but the quietest surprise is the history: a two-hundred-and-forty-year-old pueblo tucked into the middle of a modern metropolis. History and everyday life sit side by side here in a way few American cities can match, and the founding block asks nothing but a walk.
