I live a short walk from downtown Culver City. I like this. There’s some good restaurants, a large Trader Joe’s, a weekly farmer’s market, a few movie theaters, a couple of theaters, SportEve (my GU supplier and host of a Tuesday evening running group), an affordable place to get massages (Massage Garage) and a few bars. Soon Metro will open up the Venice/Robertson station for the Expo line and I’ll be able to get to downtown LA by rail. Pretty neat.
When I first moved to Palms in 2000, I hardly ever ventured to Culver City. There wasn’t much to do. But with development and gentrification, it’s attracted my dollars and interest in more recent years. I’m in downtown Culver City about once a week. As my friend Will once said, “gentrification worked for me!” (He’s from Chicago’s Logan Square.)
Anyway, I noticed a new restaurant opened up recently when Sean and I had gone out to see Super 8 (we both liked it). I giggled at the sign the same way I did when I saw “loco moco” listed on a Hawaiian restaurant menu. After friends explained to me that the dish did not include any boogers, I ordered it for the novelty. This may have been how I came to be known as Crazy Booger senior year in college.
I’m not interested in visiting MoKo, which I found out is short for Modern Korean. I get what they’re doing, but I’m still not drawn in. I’ll stick to S&W Country Diner for those weekend mornings when I want an indulgent breakfast.
Lotería Chicana 
I love stuff like this!! Moco is a particularly great word, it gets “misused” a lot and always makes me laugh. Here in SD we have a lot of Pho restaurants, which are places that serve vietnamese soup, but it’s pronounced like “FUH” instead of “FO” which is how it looks to English speakers. There’s one place by my dad’s house called “Pho King” – so if you say it properly… 😉
This place is great for happy hour!
That’s a good one! When I lived in Japan I knew a guy named Ben, which is an unfortunate name there since it can be slang for toilet. My friends also chuckle at the Toyota Venza, which sounds like toilet seat.
I saw another MOCO reference, but this one was intended. It was a hair gel at the store called “Moco De Goriila” and it caught my attention. I was interested by the packaging/name and actually bought it. WOW! does it look like snot, and WOW! does it work good! Here’s a link to the website http://www.mocodegorila.net/