The Brief

Your children could be some of a growing number of California kids having their writing graded by software instead of a teacher.

California school districts are signing more contracts for artificial intelligence tools, from automated grading in San Diego to chatbots in central California, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

English teachers say AI tools can help them grade papers faster, get students more feedback, and improve their learning experience. But guidelines are vague and adoption by teachers and districts is spotty.

The California Department of Education can’t tell you which schools use AI or how much they pay for it. The state doesn’t track AI use by school districts, said Katherine Goyette, computer science coordinator for the California Department of Education.

While Goyette said chatbots are the most common form of AI she’s encountered in schools, more and more California teachers are using AI tools to help grade student work. That’s consistent with surveys that have found teachers use AI as often if not more than students, news that contrasts sharply with headlines about fears of students cheating with AI.

Teachers use AI to do things like personalize reading material, create lesson plans, and other tasks in order to save time and and reduce burnout. A report issued last fall in response to an AI executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom mentions opportunities to use AI for tutoring, summarization, and personalized content generation, but also labels education a risky use case. Generative AI tools have been known to create convincing but inaccurate answers to questions, and use toxic language or imagery laden with racism or sexism.

California issued guidance for how educators should use the technology last fall, one of seven states to do so. It encourages critical analysis of text and imagery created by AI models and conversations between teachers and students about what amounts to ethical or appropriate use of AI in the classroom.

But no specific mention is made of how teachers should treat AI that grades assignments. Additionally, the California education code states that guidance from the state is “merely exemplary, and that compliance with the guidelines is not mandatory.”

English teacher Jen Roberts uses Writeable, an AI platform, to grade students’ work at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Goyette said she’s waiting to see if the California Legislature passes Senate Bill 1288, which would require state Superintendent Tony Thurmond to create an AI working group to issue further guidance to local school districts on how to safely use AI. Cosponsored by Thurmond, the bill also calls for an assessment of the current state of AI in education and for the identification of forms of AI that can harm students and educators by 2026.

Nobody tracks what AI tools school districts are adopting or the policy they use to enforce standards, said Alix Gallagher, head of strategic partnerships at the Policy Analysis for California Education center at Stanford University. Since the state does not track curriculum that school districts adopt or software in use, it would be highly unusual for them to track AI contracts, she said.

Amid AI hype, Gallagher thinks people can lose sight of the fact that the technology is just a tool and it will only be as good or problematic as the decisions of the humans using that tool, which is why she repeatedly urges investments in helping teachers understand AI tools and how to be thoughtful about their use and making space for communities are given voice about how to best meet their kid’s needs.

“Some people will probably make some pretty bad decisions that are not in the best interests of kids, and some other people might find ways to use maybe even the same tools to enrich student experiences,” she said.

Teachers use AI to grade English papers

Last summer, Jen Roberts, an English teacher at Point Loma High School in San Diego, went to a training session to learn how to use Writable, an AI tool that automates grading writing assignments and gives students feedback powered by OpenAI. For the past school year, Roberts used Writable and other AI tools in the classroom, and she said it’s been the best year yet of nearly three decades of teaching. Roberts said it has made her students better writers, not because AI did the writing for them, but because automated feedback can tell her students faster than she can how to improve, which in turn allows her to hand out more writing assignments.

“At this point last year, a lot of students were still struggling to write a paragraph, let alone an essay with evidence and claims and reasoning and explanation and elaboration and all of that,” Roberts said. “This year, they’re just getting there faster.”

Roberts feels Writable is “very accurate” when grading her students of average aptitude. But, she said, there’s a downside: It sometimes assigns high-performing students lower grades than merited and struggling students higher grades. She said she routinely checks answers when the AI grades assignments, but only checks the feedback it gives students occasionally.

“In actual practicality, I do not look at the feedback it gives every single student,” she said. “That’s just not a great use of my time. But I do a lot of spot checking and I see what’s going on and if I see a student that I’m worried about get feedback, (I’m like) ‘Let me go look at what his feedback is and then go talk to him about that.’”

First: A student uses Magic School, an AI platform, to help generate ideas for a classroom writing prompt. Last: A student reads their writing out loud. Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Alex Rainey teaches English to fourth graders at Chico Country Day School in northern California. She used GPT-4, a language model made by OpenAI which costs $20 a month, to grade papers and provide feedback. After uploading her grading rubric and examples of her written feedback, she used AI to grade assignments about animal defense mechanisms, allowing GPT-4 to analyze students’ grammar and sentence structure while she focused on assessing creativity.

“I feel like the feedback it gave was very similar to how I grade my kids, like my brain was tapped into it,” she said.

Like Roberts she found that it saves time, transforming work that took hours into less than an hour, but also found that sometimes GPT-4 is a tougher grader than she is. She agrees that quicker feedback and the ability to dole out more writing assignments produces better writers. A teacher can assign more writing before delivering feedback but “then kids have nothing to grow from.”

Rainey said her experience grading with GPT-4 left her in agreement with Roberts, that more feedback and writing more often produces better writers. She feels strongly that teachers still need to oversee grading and feedback by AI, “but I think it’s amazing. I couldn’t go backwards now.”

The cost of using AI in the classroom

Contracts involving artificial intelligence can be lucrative.

To launch a chatbot named Ed, Los Angeles Unified School District signed a $6.2 million contract for two years with the option of renewing for three additional years. Magic School AI is used by educators in Los Angeles and costs $100 per teacher per year.

Despite repeated calls and emails over the span of roughly a month, Writable and the San Diego Unified School District declined to share pricing details with CalMatters. A district spokesperson said teachers got access to Writeable through a contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for English language learners.

QuillBot is an AI-powered writing tool for students in grades 4-12 made by the company Quill. Quill says its tool is currently used at 1,000 schools in California and has more than 13,000 student and educator users in San Diego alone. An annual Quill Premium subscription costs $80 per teacher or $1800 per school.

QuillBot does not generate writing for students like ChatGPT or grade writing assignments, but gives students feedback on their writing. Quill is a nonprofit that’s raised $20 million from groups like Google’s charitable foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation over the past 10 years.

English teacher Jen Roberts explains to her students how she uses Magic School, an AI platform, for classroom exercises and grading at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Even if a teacher or district wants to shell out for an AI tool, guidance for safe and responsible use is still getting worked out.

Governments are placing high-risk labels on forms of AI with the power to make critical decisions about whether a person gets a job or rents an apartment or receives government benefits. California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas said he hasn’t considered whether AI for grading is moderate or high risk, but “it definitely is a risk to use for grading.”

The California Federation of Teachers is a union with 120,000 members. Freitas told CalMatters he’s concerned about AI having a number of consequences in the classroom. He’s worried administrators may use it to justify increasing classroom sizes or adding to teacher workloads; he’s worried about climate change and the amount of energy needed to train and deploy AI models’ he’s worried about protecting students’ privacy, and he’s worried about automation bias.

Regulators around the world wrestling with AI praise approaches where it is used to augment human decision-making instead of replacing it. But it’s difficult for laws to account for automation bias and humans becoming placing too much trust in machines.

The American Federation of Teachers created an AI working group in October 2023 to propose guidance on how educators should use the technology or talk about it in collective bargaining contract negotiations. Freitas said those guidelines are due out in the coming weeks.

“We’re trying to provide guidelines for educators to not solely rely on (AI), he said. “It should be used as a tool, and you should not lose your critical analysis of what it’s producing for you.”

State AI guidelines for teachers

Goyette, the computer science coordinator for the education department, helped create state AI guidelines and speaks to county offices of education for in-person training on AI for educators. She also helped create an online AI training series for educators. She said the most popular online course is about workflow and efficiency, which shows teachers how to automate lesson planning and grading.

“Teachers have an incredibly important and tough job, and what’s most important is that they’re building relationships with their students,” she said. “There’s decades of research that speaks to the power of that, so if they can save time on mundane tasks so that they can spend more time with their students, that’s a win.”

English teacher Jen Roberts checks her student’s work at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024. Roberts uses AI platforms for classroom exercises and grading. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Alex Kotran, chief executive of an education nonprofit that’s supported by Google and OpenAI, said they found that it’s hard to design a language model to predictably match how a teacher grades papers.

He spoke with teachers willing to accept a model that’s accurate 80% of the time in order to reap the reward of time saved, but he thinks it’s probably safe to say that a student or parent would want to make sure an AI model used for grading is even more accurate.

Kotran of the AI Education Project thinks it makes sense for school districts to adopt a policy that says teachers should be wary any time they use AI tools that can have disparate effects on student’s lives.

Even with such a policy, teachers can still fall victim to trusting AI without question. And even if the state kept track of AI used by school districts, there’s still the possibility that teachers will purchase technology for use on their personal computers.

When teachers can’t tell if they’re cheating

Kotran said he routinely speaks with educators across the U.S. and is not aware of any systematic studies to verify the effectiveness and consistency of AI for grading English papers.

Roberts, the Point Loma High School teacher, describes herself as pro technology.

She regularly writes and speaks about AI. Her experiences have led her to the opinion that grading with AI is what’s best for her students, but she didn’t arrive at that conclusion easily.

At first she questioned whether using AI for grading and feedback could hurt her understanding of her students. Today she views using AI like the cross-country coach who rides alongside student athletes in a golf cart, like an aid that helps her assist her students better.

A student scrolls through their laptop during class at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.

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Roberts says the average high school English teacher in her district has roughly 180 students. Grading and feedback can take between five to 10 minutes per assignment she says, so between teaching, meetings, and other duties, it can take two to three weeks to get feedback back into the hands of students unless a teacher decides to give up large chunks of their weekends. With AI, it takes Roberts a day or two.

Ultimately she concluded that “if my students are growing as writers, then I don’t think I’m cheating.” She says AI reduces her fatigue, giving her more time to focus on struggling students and giving them more detailed feedback.

“My job is to make sure you grow, and that you’re a healthy, happy, literate adult by the time you graduate from high school, and I will use any tool that helps me do that, and I’m not going to get hung up on the moral aspects of that,” she said. “My job is not to spend every Saturday reading essays. Way too many English teachers work way too many hours a week because they are grading students the old-fashioned way.”

Roberts also thinks AI might be a less biased grader in some instances than human teachers who can adjust their grading for students sometimes to give them the benefit of the doubt or be punitive if they were particularly annoying in class recently.

She isn’t worried about students cheating with AI, a concern she characterizes as a moral panic. She points to a Stanford University study released last fall which found that students cheated just as much before the advent of ChatGPT as they did a year after the release of the AI.

Goyette said she understands why students question whether some AI use by teachers is like cheating. Education department AI guidelines encourage teachers and students to use the technology more. What’s essential, Goyette said, is that teachers discuss what ethical use of AI looks like in their classroom, and convey that — like using a calculator in math class — using AI is accepted or encouraged for some assignments and not others.

For the last assignment of the year, Robers has one final experiment to run: Edit an essay written entirely by AI. But they must change at least 50% of the text, make it 25% longer, write their own thesis, and add quotes from classroom reading material. The idea, she said, is to prepare them for a future where AI writes the first draft and humans edit the results to fit their needs.

“It used to be you weren’t allowed to bring a calculator into the SATs and now you’re supposed to bring your calculator so things change,” she said. “It’s just moral panic. Things change and people freak out and that’s what’s happening.”

Data center builders don’t tell the public how much water they use, according to a new report — and the industry is encroaching into water-stressed and vulnerable communities.

The report, by the think tank Next10 and researchers at Santa Clara University, finds that planned data centers — the ganglia of artificial intelligence — are spreading to regions reliant on overtapped groundwater and strained surface water, with potentially major effects in the Central and Imperial Valleys.

But, reinforcing previous studies, the researchers found that a patchwork of state, federal and local policies allows data center operators to avoid publicly disclosing their actual water use.

California lawmakers tried to address this last year, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure. Now, the legislature is trying again, with bills mandating disclosures about water use and planning.

“We have this huge build out, and we have very little data,” said Irina Raicu, who directs the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Paired with California’s precarious water supplies, Raicu said, “It’s just not a good combination.”

Shaolei Ren, an expert on the environmental impacts of AI at UC Riverside who was not involved in the study, said the findings point to a much broader problem.

“Limited publicly available information about data center water use makes it difficult for communities, water providers and researchers to have meaningful public discussions and responsibly assess power-water trade-offs,” Ren said in an email.

Murky water use 

Few environmental impact reports for California’s data centers were publicly available online, the researchers found.

Raicu and co-author Iris Stewart-Frey, a professor of environmental science, went looking for the reports, meant to assess and disclose a project’s impacts for both nature and people under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act.

They found almost none. The ones they did find were largely for facilities in the city of Santa Clara.

Through interviews with planning officials, they discovered that projects can slip through with little environmental review if they fall under certain size or water use thresholds, or if they meet a city or county’s criteria for other approval pathways. These include something called ministerial approval, which requires planning agencies to approve a project that meets local zoning and other standards.

Even for data centers that undergo more stringent environmental scrutiny, the researchers found that documentation is rarely available to the public.

In the few cases the planning documents were posted publicly, the information — on the data center’s owner or operator, size, type of cooling system, the amount of water used, whether it’s recycled or potable — was often “missing, contradictory, or vague,” the report said.

The researchers said they contacted water providers in areas where data centers cluster, seeking usage data. None responded.

A shift to vulnerable regions

California’s data centers mostly cluster in the south San Francisco Bay Area and the city of Los Angeles, with smaller concentrations in Sacramento and San Diego.

But the report noted large, planned projects in rural and less affluent regions — like in Santa Clara County’s Gilroy, as well as in the heavily agricultural Imperial Valley.

“They need a bunch of cheap land,” Raicu. “If we’re not careful, they will end up being pitched, very convincingly, to communities that have real needs — without enough attention being paid to the water part.”

Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, which has opposed bills mandating more granular water-use reporting, said in an email the industry is “committed to being a good neighbor.”

Boender argues that data centers collectively “used significantly less water than other essential industries in 2025, including the agriculture, power, food and beverage, and semiconductor sectors,” but the coalition offers no data to back that up.

Collective use matters less than local impacts in a state where each community has its own mix of water supplies and strains, according to a previous study published by a team at UC Berkeley.

Whether data centers use a lot or a little water relative to agriculture or other industries, “what matters most is the scale of new local use compared to available local supply,” the Berkeley team concluded earlier this year. “Unfortunately, this picture is clouded by data deficiencies.”

In this week’s report, the Santa Clara University team drilled into those local supplies and community vulnerabilities to anticipated expansion.

“We’re at the brink of this happening in California,” Stewart-Frey, the environmental scientist, said. Her report, she added, isn’t advocating against data centers. But “communities should know what they’re getting themselves into.”

Debates over proposed data centers are erupting in a Kern County desert community with dwindling groundwater and in the hot Imperial Valley, which draws from the strained Colorado River. 

Monterey Park residents in the San Gabriel Valley successfully opposed one data center project over environmental concerns and inadequate information and secured an upcoming vote on a citywide ban.

In a letter to city officials, a representative for the developer dismissed opponents as “rage-baiting an uninformed mob to pressure your decisionmaking.”

Raicu pushed back. “If those communities are uninformed about the issue — whose fault is that? Who should be informing the people so that you don’t have this kind of pushback, if there is no need for it?”

New laws v. Big Tech

Last year, Assemblymember Diane Papan, a Democrat from San Mateo, authored a bill requiring data center operators to report estimated or actual water use to their water supplier when seeking or renewing a business license or permit.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure amid industry pressure, saying he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details on this sector without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.”

Now, Papan is trying again with two bills. One largely reprises last year’s measure, with additional reporting required to the city and county. The other would bar local governments from approving new or expanded data centers unless the developer discloses information about their water use and plans.

It would also set other requirements — like prohibiting development in overdrafted groundwater basins in places like the San Joaquin Valley, unless state water managers OK it.

“You cannot manage what you have not and cannot measure,” Papan said. “The public likes transparency, and they should.”

Both bills cleared a key legislative chokepoint this week but face staunch opposition from the tech industry and business groups.

“If they run out of water, guess what happens? And they can’t cool their systems — are they going to succeed?” Papan said. “To which I say, help us help you.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

Founders Jenny Yang and Chris Capizzi spent seven years operating as a pop-up without a brick-and-mortar location. Opening their doors to local vendors pays homage to their own roots selling at Los Angeles markets, from the Melrose Trading Post to the Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market.

“Mega giant online sellers have the scale and the resources and the patience and the reach to capture most people,” Capizzi said. “Whereas for us, I think we have to be really creative — we have to band together.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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Yang and Capizzi’s long history of vending at markets taught them how isolating running a small business can be. At their market, they aim to build connections with each vendor and strategize the best timing and layout so everyone can succeed.

“[Amazon and Barnes & Noble] are Goliath, and we’re not even David — we’re just the ant underneath David’s foot,” Capizzi said. “I think we can do what we do and try to get as many people, at our level or even smaller, to get together.”

Weekly markets at A Good Used Book have captivated the neighborhood since its opening in October 2023, with charming names like “Sunday Funday,” “Saturday School” and “Hi-Fi Friday Night,” plus hand-drawn flyers by well-known artist Noah Harmon. Now, it’s become a weekly occurrence where LA pop-ups can display their own crafts, allowing local readers to indulge in a little more than a pocket paperback.

Each week holds a Pandora’s box of niche snacks, crafts or trinkets you didn’t know you needed, ranging from Southeast Asian-inspired trail mix to natural incense sticks to vintage Japanese audio equipment. One week you might be enticed to adopt a kitten from a rescue booth outside, another week you might impulsively get a stick-and-poke tattoo in the back of the store.

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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On one sunny Sunday afternoon, Brandon Stanciell hand-tossed fresh pizza dough on the sidewalk outside the bookstore. His 2-year-old pop-up, Pizza Ananda, which he named after his daughter, is an homage to her and to Italian cooking, a hobby he started during paternity leave. An hour before the market closed, Stanciell had already sold out and garnished his last pepperoni-and-hot-honey pie for one lucky customer.

“I love that places like this allow us all to meet at once to share what we have and give it to the community around us,” Stanciell said.

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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For the owners, building a community market is about deepening relationships with the people who walk through their doors. In an increasingly digital landscape, it is also a reciprocal partnership among local businesses.

“A lot of people talk about community building nowadays as a marketing strategy,” Capizzi said. “But I think the actual community building comes from talking to each vendor and each customer and being a consistent presence in the neighborhood.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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While customers browsed for unique titles, Gerin del Carmen worked her booth of ceramic dishware, oyster-shaped trinket holders and vases resembling miniature boxes. As a ceramicist, del Carmen draws from her Filipino heritage, including the Balikbayan boxes that represent immigrants sending gifts to family in the Philippines.

“Sharing the community and your space is such a big deal. This is not a huge, gigantic Barnes & Noble store,” del Carmen said. “It has so much foot traffic, and the fact that [the owners] are setting up and sharing the space once or twice a week with other vendors and other artists is huge.”

Yang and Capizzi may think of themselves as an “ant underneath David’s foot,” but A Good Used Book is building a colony of vendors, rooted in community.

Whether you and your friends are looking for a brunch spot to cater to everyone's palates, or taking a trip to the historic Grand Central Market, food halls make for an easy, affordable place to satisfy cravings — especially in SoCal, where diverse selections of dishes reign supreme.

But these spaces fill a void much deeper than our appetites. They bring new life to old storefronts, factories or even airfields (see list below), and can offer a way to keep dollars within the community by becoming a hub for local businesses.

With that said, here's a short list of food halls where you'll get more than just a killer meal.

For good vibes

BLVD MRKT food hall on the corner of 6th Street and Whittier Boulevard in downtown Montebello.

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BLVD MRKT is an open-air food hall in downtown Montebello that feels like a party. The 8,500-square-foot space currently has five eateries, or "concepts" as they're known in the restaurant industry, and hosts live DJs every Friday night and Sunday during brunch. They also host Open Vinyl Night on the second and forth Tuesday of every month, where patrons get $2 off beers and margaritas from Alchemy Craft if they bring a vinyl record to be played in the BLVD courtyard.

The space is pet-friendly and has growing concepts like Los Taquero Mucho, which offers classic al pastor, grilled chicken and slow-cooked carnitas tacos, as well as specialty flavors like vegan tacos with whiskil sautéed in coconut milk, and Pork Belly Cochinita Pibil Tacos, perfect for those who crave crispy, slow-roasted pork with a hint of sweetness.

Los Taquero Mucho participates in BLVD's incubator program, run by co-founders Barney and Evelyn Santos. The program offers mentorship to local entrepreneurs until they can set up shop permanently.

Pork Belly Cochinita Pibil Tacos with salsa from Los Taquero Mucho at BLVD MRKT in Montebello.

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Audrey Ngo

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BLVD MRKT is part of the couple's commercial real estate development firm, Gentefy. Its mission is to invest in retail and hospitality projects that ignite economic development and revitalization in Black and brown neighborhoods.

"Blvd Mrkt is our first project," Barney Santos wrote in a text message. "It was our social proof to prove to banks, investors and cities that a socially conscious business model could exist in a traditionally overlooked area."

VCHOS Pupuseria Moderna also has a spot in the BLVD courtyard, offering handmade pupusas with filling choices such as shrimp with spinach and cheese, and tender beef birria with a side of consommé, onions and cilantro. Coffee lovers can get an Oaxacan Mocha at Cafe Santo, or stop by Cold Pizza for a wood-fired slice.

For eclectic tastes

Rodeo 39 Public Market in Stanton.

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An O.C. favorite, Rodeo 39 Public Market lives on Highway 39, also known as Beach Boulevard, in Stanton. This 40,000-square-foot space is an eclectic mix of more than 20 food and drink concepts and retailers. There are three outdoor patios and five murals, plus an arcade, tattoo shop and photo booth. Food options cover everything from Lil' Breezy's adobo breakfast burritos to Cajun crab fries at The Crawfish Hut.

Mural by artist David Flores outside of Joystix arcade at Rodeo 39 Public Market.

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Rodeo's menu choices make it well-suited for a casual weekend brunch. At its entrance sits Here & There, where you can grab a coffee or matcha latte, or try one of their signature drinks like the Iced Vienna, a combination of milk with caramelly demerara sugar and your choice of matcha or espresso, topped with sweet cream and garnished with sea salt. The result is a drink that's smooth and not too sweet.

Eggyo bulgogi egg sandwich with spicy mayo at Rodeo 39 Public Market.

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Eggyo, a recent addition to Rodeo, offers Korean corn dogs and fluffy egg sandwiches on crispy, house-baked milk bread. Try the bulgogi option with spicy mayo for a savory kick. If you crave a cocktail, venture over to CAPO, which also serves craft beer. Or just sit on one of their sun-filled patios while you decide what to try.

For a page from history

The Hangar in Long Beach.

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The Hangar is a 17,000-square-foot food hall that pays homage to Long Beach's aviation history. It sits on former Boeing Co. land where military and commercial aircraft were built. Today, it serves as a dining destination at the Long Beach Exchange Shopping Center, or LBX, neighboring the city's international airport.

This space currently has a mix of 14 food concepts and two retail shops. Patrons can enjoy local favorites outside their flagship locations, like the Joe's Special bagel sandwich from Cassidy's Corner Cafe, with bacon, egg and the star of the show — tangy jalapeño cream cheese. Fans of spice can try Jay Bird's Nashville Hot Chicken, which offers chicken sandwiches and tenders, and Blazin' Fries, all with six levels of heat.

Historic aviation photos are displayed above food concepts at The Hangar food hall at LBX in Long Beach

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LAist

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Inside, there are vintage pictures of aircraft that were built at the site, and a wall of clocks showing the time in cities named Long Beach across the country.

A Pan Am Hawaii travel poster (left) and a TWA Spain travel poster (right) at the patio of The Hangar food hall.

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Outside, you'll find patio seating with umbrellas where you can sit and watch the occasional plane fly overhead. Or sit and enjoy the adjacent display of towering Pan Am and TWA posters promoting travel to Hawaii, Spain and Paris.

For fun and work

Mercado La Paloma on Grand Avenue in South L.A.

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Open since 2001, the approximately 34,000-square-foot Mercado La Paloma sits in the Figueroa corridor of South L.A., and is known for its focus on community, art and culture. From rotating art exhibits to colorful tiled tabletops, this space feels like it was made to nurture creativity.

Interior of Mercado La Paloma.

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There are meeting rooms to rent starting at $25 an hour. It's a space where locals can bring their laptop to work or study, or have a long conversation with a friend, with bites from six acclaimed restaurants.

Holbox's Erizo dish at Mercado La Paloma.

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At the Mercado, visit Holbox for Michelin-starred seafood dishes like Erizo — velvety sea urchin laid atop a bed of tender scallop ceviche. The combination is fresh, flavorful and oceanic. Tip: If you can swing it, come on a weekday to avoid a long line, or order ahead.

For something sweet, walk over to Oaxacacalifornia Cafe & Juice Bar for a Spicy Pineapple Juice with a gingery kick, or go for the classic pairing of Hot Oaxacan Chocolate, made with your choice of water or milk, and light-as-air conchas crowned with a solid layer of vanilla or chocolate streusel.