GETTING THERE AND AROUND



OCTA stop in Little Seoul

Right now Little Seoul is served by's bus lines, and. The neighborhood is located just west of the old West Santa Ana Branch Line of the, which connectedtountil 1950. For the time being the closest train station is 13 kilometers east in the city ofis working on ultimately restoring rail to the neighborhood with itsproject but when that will be completed (or even begun) remains to be seen.



Vodie's Alignment & Brakes



A rare, non-linear view of Little Seoul

STAYING IN

LITTLE SEOUL







BUSINESSES

MARKETS AND THE GREAT INDOORS



Police and psychics in the streets



Lost Treasures (Found! on the roof)



Shop smart, shop H-Mart





Inside Arirang Supermarket





Shops and food court at H-Mart





Curly-haired cubist men must push their carts behind the X to their McMansions





KOREAN EATS



Han Guk Kwan (right?) where we ate lunch



Looking through the door of Past Memories (recommended by Colin)

SHOPPING IN LITTLE SEOUL and THE GARDEN GROVE GALLERIA





The no-use mixed-use Garden Grove Galleria







Quiet Koreatown Mall







Good times just around the corner at New Seoul Plaza





Hanmi Plaza





Quiet Arirang Galleria (built in 2009 and mostly empty)







NIGHTLIFE



The lushly-landscaped Frat House





Rendezvous Nightclub





Idol Karaoke







Cafeoke Ding Dong Dang







B & G Karaoke -- "Grand Reborn"





Sunday morning at 2000 Points Billiards







Hyundai Billiard or GG Billiards and Ping Pong





Liquor and Bikes -- A liquor store and Garden Grove Bicycle Shop



A liquor store with a nice, fake gas lamp (a common decoration) atop the sign

KOREAN CHURCHES





St. Anselm of Canterbury

LITTLE SEOUL ARTS SCENE



Martial Arts and Golf

Seoul Oriental Art Gallery. There are seemingly more organizations devoted to the martial arts than the creative, performing, or visual. Those institutions include Five Star Tae Kwon Do & Martial Arts, Kenpo United Karate Kung-Fu Studios, King’s Martial Arts, Musashi Martial Arts, Nam Phan Mixed Martial Arts Academy, Orange County Judo Training Center, Shaolin Warrior Academy, Shotokan Karate of Garden Grove, and Yoon Tae Kwon Do School. Little Seoul is perhaps to small to support an actual arts scene. I'm only aware of one arts-oriented space in Little Seoul,. There are seemingly more organizations devoted to the martial arts than the creative, performing, or visual. Those institutions include, and





Video Town or ghost town? Either way, they still have some copies of Six Days, Seven Nights in the back





A video store in Koreatown Mall





Inside the above video store -- which mostly deal in VHS and sells VCRs

Luckily, Little Seoul is quite flat and therefore quite easily bikeable and walkable -- provided one is physically able and psychologically predisposed. Garden Grove Boulevard still often gives the impression of being a freeway and the lack of buffering road verges, measurable amounts of shade, benches, or even other pedestrians as well as the inward orientation of businesses and the close proximity of the sidewalks to speeding cars give off a sort of pedestrian-hostile vibe.doesn't have a figure for Little Seoul but assigns a score of just 55 out of 100 to the city of Garden Grove. If you need a bicycle, Little Seoul is home toIf you'd like to stay in Little Seoul overnight, there are several lodging options. There's the aforementioned, built in 1956 and the, built in 1955. Perhaps the best motel sign award goes to theOther nearby lodges include, andIn contrast to nearby Little Saigon, where on Sundays parking lots are packed both with men hanging out in folding chairs and bad drivers, Little Seoul proved to be decidedly quiet. Many of the parking lots were almost completely empty. Some even had improbably long gates extending across their entrances. When a car alarm sounded in the distance, it only underscored just how quiet it all was.From the sidewalk it was sometimes difficult to tell which businesses were open, which were closed, and which were completely vacant but we soon learned that within the air-conditioned environment of the great indoors, there were buzzing pockets of activity (if nothing that even approaches the level of pedestrian-dense-and-friendly Koreatown or I suspect, bigToday the number of Korean businesses in Little Seoul reportedly exceeds 1,000. Although most of people that I spotted entering and leaving the neighborhood residences seemed in most cases to be, or Vietnamese, under the roofs of the sprawling markets the clientele were almost (with the exception of ourselves) exclusively either Vietnamese or Korean.Despite its lack of accommodations for pedestrians, there are few errands that one couldn't conceivably accomplish on foot or by bicycle in Little Seoul. The neighborhood is full of dentists offices, spas, optometrists, hair salons, &c.Since I most tourists (Korean-American non-Korean alike) are drawn to Korean businesses districts for the food, I'll start there. And because they made Little Seoul possible and still prove to be the centers of human activity, I'll begin with the supermarkets.Until a couple of years ago there were three markets to which to pledge one's allegiance. Han Nam Supermarket closed and now,(A.R. Supermarket) andcompete for commerce and Yelp reviews. Meanwhile a newsits poised and ready to possibly destroy both although it's hard to imagine asupporting the food courts and various other shops that make Arirang and H Mart take on the appearance of something akin to a swap meet crossed with a town square.Korean cuisine is one of those foods that has been cautiously and only partially embraced by most Americans, who seem perfectly happy to draw the line at, and maybewhilst casting a needlessly suspicious eye at the many any varieties of, andThanks in large part to(and Buddha's vegetarianism) Korean cuisine is not as vegetarian-unfriendly as many wary vegetarians might suppose. Most restaurants can make a vegetarian bibimbap and even when the menu lists no vegetarian items, I've still never been to a Korean restaurant in Southern California where the cook wasn't capable of making a tasty and filling vegetarian dish... especially if you add alcohol to the mix.We started our day at "pariba" () albeit the location in. Later we ate in a food court at a place whose sign simply stated something like "Korean Place." In addition to the “purely” Korean restaurants, there are Korean takes on, andand, a locale kimchi manufacturer.Here's the (incomplete) list of local Korean eats:, andNon-Korean eats (but often either Korean owned-and-oriented or Vietnamese) in the neighborhood include, andConstruction of thebegan in 2005. The original design called for two levels of shops, six levels of condos, and given its size it was set to become an icon of the neighborhood. Construction halted in 2008 and in 2010, the Garden Grove Galleria suedfor a breach of contract. Two months later Cathay counter-sued for essentially the same. More suits followed and the design plans were changed -- the condos were to become apartments -- but nine years later it still stands, only partially complete and rusting.Complete and functioning (if sometimes barely) shopping centers in Little Seoul including, andBusiness hours in Little Seoul vary greatly but the nightlife seems to make its home in(not a dudebro sports bar) andas well as(noraebong), which include, andThere are also several billiard and ping-pong halls too, including(also listed as(which also has ping-pong), and(which may or may not have ping pong).There are more liquor stores than bars in the neighborhood although we ventured into none. Several have nice signage.In South Korea, only 53% of Koreans identify themselves as religious. Of those, about 29% are Christian and 23% of South Koreans self-identify as Buddhists. In the US it's a different story. In 1902, Changho Ahn and his wife established the firstand today, roughly 71% of Korean-Americans self-identify as Christian.I'm sure that some of the Korean churches in the area were built by different denominations but ones occupied by Korean denominations now include, and. Despite it being a Sunday morning and a Korean neighborhood, the churches all seemed to be oddly quiet. Only 6% of Korean-Americans identify as Buddhists and in Little Seoul there are just two temples from which to choose,andI don't know of any movies shot in Little Seoul or any actors or filmmakers from there. I don't know of any live music venues or bands from there either. There are some mom-and-pop shops, many of which sell or rent video, music, and video games. There's, (Spanish language-centric), and