The Brief

For one weekend only, fans of Los Angeles-made chocolate chip cookies can engage in the cookie-focused version of a bar crawl, patronizing five established cookie purveyors as part of a quest to get even more cookies.

The “1st Annual Cookie Crawl” is a partnership by Milkfarm (Eagle Rock), Proof Bakery Co-Op (Atwater Village), Friends & Family (Silver Lake), Modu Cafe (Highland Park) and Valerie (Echo Park), all independently owned businesses.

You can go to any one of those locations, pick up a punch card, get a punch for a cookie, and subsequently get punched for getting cookies from the other locations, too. Drop it off at your preferred location by Sunday afternoon for a chance to win more of that store's cookies plus gift certificates from the others.

Why we celebrate the chocolate chip

The crawl runs May 15-17. The first day is also National Chocolate Chip Day, not to be confused with National Chocolate Day in October, or National Cookie Day in December, or National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day in August.

You can appreciate chocolate chips and the cookies they’re baked into without any historical knowledge, but just in case you are curious: While LAist couldn’t find a verified origin of National Chocolate Chip Day, internet records show the day nominally celebrates Ruth Graves Wakefield, the baker behind Toll House cookies. Cookie history sleuths dispute that Wakefield actually created the modern chocolate chip, but she did popularize them. (Earlier versions of chocolate chips include chocolate-coated molasses.)

Why you should participate in a chocolate chip cookie crawl

Milkfarm owner Leah Park developed the idea for this crawl years ago after talking with Proof founder Na Young Ma about how popular each shop's cookies are. Park said she wanted to do something fun and collaborative to encourage people to go out and try new things and support small businesses.

“I was starting to get it all together. We did the prototype for the punch card,” Park said. That was in early 2020; that first cookie crawl became another opportunity stifled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“And so everything just got put on hold. And I had the prototype punchcard that I made on my corkboard in my office since 2020,” Park said. “And I just kept looking at it, and finally one day I was like, ‘OK, I just need to hurry up and do this.’ And then it launched this year. We finally did it.”

Atwater Village resident Kenneth Rudnicki filled the majority of his card Friday morning.

“I would love more punchcards in L.A.,” he said. “I think it's a really good way for other businesses to get introduced to people who maybe wouldn't know them. And … it's fun to sort of have a task like this to do.” He bought several cookies to slice apart and share with friends.

And I did that too: As the senior editor of our esteemed LAist Education Team, I invited our available education reporters — in the name of journalism, of course — to sample all the cookies I brought back. Thanks to reporters Julia Barajas and Elly Yu and engagement producer Sabrina Sanchez; you’ll see our notes in the list below.

Also, this list below isn’t a ranking; one benefit of the crawl is to show off how a baking classic can be transformed into something unique. And that means you can trade takes with other people about what makes a cookie great, but what's "best" is up to each person.

Let's eat cookies

A Proof Co-op chocolate chip cookie.

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Ross Brenneman

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Proof Bakery Co-op

Proof staff told me that they use Valrhona chocolate for a product that, as our tasters describe, is an ideal chocolate chip cookie — “crunchy on the outside, but, like, really soft and, like, buttery on the inside. The chocolate’s the right amount of sweet, and then you got the salt that's really nice.” We paired it with hot drip coffee, an excellent companion.

A Friends & Family chocolate chip cookie.

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Ross Brenneman

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Friends & Family (Silver Lake Outpost)

The original Friends & Family is in Hollywood, but this branch adjacent to Burgers Never Say Die also offers the bakery’s rye chocolate chip cookie, which staff members said is made with rich TCHO chocolate. Our tasters noted the earthiness of the rye — one said it comes across almost gingery. Despite the crinkly outside edge, it’s a bit chewy, and takes a light touch with the chocolate. We suggest pairing it with milk.

A Valerie chocolate chip cookie.

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Valerie Echo Park

Valerie is tucked into a cozy nook of Echo Park businesses set away from the bustle of Sunset Blvd. This weekend’s crawl features the Durango cookie, which our tasters describe as quite sweet (it uses milk chocolate) and nutty. This cookie will test your thoughts on texture; personally, I liked how the toasted almonds contributed to it. We also thought it might work well as a blondie.

A Milkfarm chocolate chip cookie.

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Ross Brenneman

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Milkfarm

Milkfarm owner and pastry chef-turned-cheesemonger Leah Park says her cookie was the result of a lot of trial and error when the store opened in 2014.

“How to get the oven the right temperature, and what size cookie, then the chips to use — we even taste-tested salt,” Park said. “We literally had different salt that we put side by side, and we ate salt to see what kind of salt we wanted to use on the cookie.” (They now use Jacobsen's.)

And that effort shines through: Milkfarm was a hit with our tasters (and several other colleagues who managed to snag a piece) — crispy edges, ample salt, thick ("but it's not cakey"), and just the right amount of chocolate (Ghirardelli). I haven't been a regular at this shop, but thanks to this crawl, I suspect it will be a new favorite stop on the way to work.

Park suggested pairing the cookie with a versatile cheese, many of which are also available from Milkfarm.

A Modu black sesame dark chocolate chip cookie.

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Modu Cafe

I usually stroll Highland Park for the compact array of shops on York Blvd. stretching from Kumquat on the west end to The Hermosillo bar on the east end. But head a little farther east to reach Modu, a bright, spacious pastry shop featuring flavors popular in Korean cooking.

Their soft, black sesame dark chocolate cookie stood out to our tasters for how the sesame brings a nutty complement; it's not packed with chocolate, so our crew recommends taking big bites to guarantee you get the full range of flavor. Pair it with the first-rate Modu Latte.

You can hit all five stops in under an hour, but budget some extra time to walk around a bit and enjoy what else the neighborhoods offer.

Also, while this particular crawl has been in the works for quite some time, it inspired another option this weekend in West L.A.:

• Clementine, 1751 Ensley Avenue, Century City
• Fat + Flour, 11739 W. Washington Boulevard, Culver City
• Lei’d Cookies, 8588 Washington Boulevard, Culver City
• Petitgrain Boulangerie, 1209 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica 
• The Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World, 2625 South Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles

Reporters Julia Barajas and Elly Yu and engagement producer Sabrina Sanchez contributed to this story.

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory may run the second-longest study of  individually identifiable mammals in the world, but they’re not afraid of trying something new.

The lab is launching a bracket-style competition, Fat Marmot Week, for people all over the world to vote for their favorite chunky ground squirrel.

The UCLA researchers who work there have faced a loss of federal funding in recent years, so they’re now pursuing creative fundraising efforts, including a (G-rated) OnlyFans account for marmot content called OnlyMarms and a meme coin created by supporters of the project.

Where the idea came from

Dan Blumstein, a UCLA ecology and evolutionary biology professor who came up with OnlyMarms, said he’s wanted to do a Fat Marmot Week ever since the success of Fat Bear Week, in which the public votes on grizzly bears bulking up for the winter in Alaska. But it took two of his graduate researchers, Katie Adler and Emily Renkey, along with another volunteer who helps with logistics, to see it to fruition.

“ Science isn't just writing the papers, it's also the communication side of things,” said Adler, who’s also the lab’s field team leader.

Like bears, marmots prepare for the winter by fattening up, with some more than doubling in weight from about 5.5 pounds to as much as 13. But unlike bears, marmots are true hibernators. For months, their body temperature drops very low, and they breathe and have a heartbeat about once a minute. (Blumstein described a hibernating marmot as “sort of a fuzzy stone.”)

These two specimens are called Dawn and Dan's Hat.

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Courtesy Dan Blumstein/UCLA

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 Adler, who's on her third year of marmot field observations, said the individual marmots are consistent enough that she can "see what they're doing a little bit and then know exactly who it is."

“I think it’s fun to think of this from an outside perspective – why do we like marmots and how can we share that with other people?” Renkey said.

About the marmots

The marmots are all given names to help tell them apart based on markings the researchers dye on their fur.

Their names range from Dawn, who is reportedly a “a very special boy who enjoys the taste of rocks,” to a “proud mama” named 1 and a “girl boss” with no mate named Open Kite.

“Our parties are quite boring to other people because all we do is talk about the marmots,” Blumstein said. “It's a soap opera.”

Funding troubles

Faced with federal funding cuts, Blumstein realized he had to get creative, starting with the OnlyMarms account.

But he said he wasn’t expecting the “extraordinary” response – the $OnlyMarms meme coin has made more than $100,000 in transaction fees, though it’s still short of the $225,000 to $300,000 they need to fundraise to bring in more graduate student research.

Blumstein said while all funding is welcome, including the OnlyMarms subscriptions, it’s much easier for them to accept direct donations for tax purposes. The money will go to support researchers like Renkey and Adler’s contributions to the nearly 65 years of marmot research at the lab.

The tournament

Eight competitors will face off — five females and three males. There’ll also be a “true” winner announced at the end based on the lab’s measurements on which marmot gained the most weight this spring and summer.

The first round of voting will be Monday, Aug. 24, followed by the semifinals on Wednesday, Aug. 26, and the final showdown on Friday, Aug. 28. Voting runs from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT.

“Everyone should vote. It's very exciting,” Renkey said. “They're huge this summer.”

The younger bald eagle that Shadow has been seen hanging out with around Big Bear’s famous nest lately has a new name.

The bird, which is believed to be a female, is banded as KD1. Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs the popular YouTube livestream, has dubbed her Kaydee.

The organization generally doesn’t name visiting eagles, but Kaydee is sticking around so far and could become a new online star after Shadow’s long-time mate Jackie died last week.

So, who is this new eagle in the nest?

One expert told LAist that Kaydee is more than 4 years old and was probably wandering much further than Big Bear before it was spotted on camera.

“This is kind of the banders dream, right? You put bands on a bird so that you can possibly get … a one-off observation of where it is at some point in its life, and we're getting way, way more than that,” said Jenna Carpenter, a field biologist and environmental specialist with the Orange County Water District.

“In this instance, we're getting 24/7 views and people are so tuned into it that they're keeping really good track of where KD1 is, and it's really awesome.”

Meet Kaydee

Kaydee was first recorded on the livestream cameras in the Big Bear habitat on Aug. 6 — a few days before Jackie died — according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The nonprofit said the eagle started to perch by Shadow in several trees, which it has continued to do in the weeks since. The group recently referred to Kaydee as Shadow’s “shadow.”

Kaydee is from the Prado Basin area, where its parents Ricky and Lucy nest nearby. Carpenter said Ricky and Lucy have raised around a dozen eaglets since 2021, when they first started setting up shop in the area.

The eagle wears two bracelet-like bands on its legs, including a lavender-colored one, which can be used to track Kaydee in different areas.

“If someone sees [the color band] with a scope or binoculars or a zoom camera, it can be reported and put into a research database, which adds to the opportunity to progress conservation for raptors and eagles,” Carpenter said.

You can learn more about reporting a bird with a federal band or color marker here.

Will Kaydee stick with Shadow?

Kaydee is what's known as a subadult eagle, a stage in which Carpenter said raptors are still trying to figure out what they want to do and where they want to be.

“Big Bear’s a nice habitat, obviously they've been visiting this nest, you know, there's some interest there whatever it may be,” she said. “So it's possible that they stick around and find a mate, whether that be Shadow or another adult eagle.”

But it’s also possible Kaydee moves onto another habitat after the off-season. Whatever happens, Carpenter said us humans get to go along for the ride through the livestream, which she described as a privilege.

“We get this chance to witness something that we would not normally get to witness, because we know exactly who this bird is and we happen to have cameras in the area,” she said. “It might be everything and it might be nothing, and either way, I think that's really exciting that we get to have a little peek into this world.”

The Esquivel family opened their first taqueria at Playas de Tijuana 15 years ago, with a focus on individually crafted tacos, each with its own pairing of salsa.

Since then, Taqueria Tijuanero — formerly Tijuanazo — has become an increasingly popular SoCal taco chain.

Owner Aria Esquivel sat down with AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross to talk about how it all started from a humble Tijuana brick-and-mortar and how they stay true to their distinct North Mexican menu.

The art of the taco

Esquivel’s father and mastermind behind Taqueria Tijuanero, Antonio Esquivel, began working in kitchens when he was 16 years old, working his way up from dishwasher to cook at French restaurants in Beverly Hills.

“What he really loved about the taco and the art of the taco in Tijuana is how these ingredients mesh so well together,” Esquivel said.

That’s when the family opened up their own restaurant in Playas de Tijuana in 2011.

Mexico's taco diversity

Because of Mexico’s diverse landscape of crops, history and even weather patterns, taco styles can actually vary quite a bit depending on where you are in the country.

“ The tacos in Mexico City are different," Esquivel said. "The tacos in Sonora are different. The Tijuana tacos are different."

Fresh al pastor

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(Courtesy Taqueria Tijuanero

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Al pastor taco

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Courtesy Taqueria Tijuanero

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Bill Esparza, the James Beard Award-winning food writer who's spent the last two decades chronicling L.A.'s taco scene, helped curate Taqueando After Dark, a new food festival that will feature eight L.A. taco vendors, including Taqueria Tijuanero.

“When I see theirs, I see what I see in Mexico,” Esparza said of Taqueria Tijuanero’s tacos, adding, “It’s a taco that really has a lot of intentionality behind it.”

How to experience Taqueando After Dark festival

Taqueando After Dark takes over Level 8 for two nights, Aug. 27 and 28. (Courtesy of Level 8)

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Courtesy Taqueando After Dark

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Read more: LA taqueros meet Baja’s best for two-night DTLA taco festival

New location coming:

• The family is in the process of opening its third SoCal location in Echo Park.

How to visit:

• Address: 355 S Atlantic Blvd., East Los Angeles
• Hours: Closed on Mondays | Tuesday-Sunday, open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• Costs: Tacos are $3.95 each