LA toy district. HK junk heaven.

[Reaperman@home]

I was on my way to a Day of the Dead celebration in Los Angeles a few days ago, and when my exit was detoured, I happened across the most incredible sight--12 square blocks of asian toy importers, called the Los Angeles Toy District.

Naturally there was no way that I was just going to keep on driving through that... Everything was cheap and mysteriously tax and recipt free...but I mean *cheap*. For some reason there were also a lot of homeless people about, but with two cops on every corner, it's fairly safe. It's a must-visit location in LA.

Hundreds of table-sized vendors in perfect competition. They had tons of LCD games including a bunch of those fakey DS-shaped units. Mysteriously unwrapped psp units (I hope they cleaned the blood off) and games for almost any asian system you can (or can't) name. I saw more types of famiclones than I thought humanly possible including one FC-based computer (keyboard, mouse, Joysticks, gun, GUI, $20), and a complete PSone lookalike FC ($7) nearly identical right down to the joypad shape. I saw metal DDR pads, and $20 NGPC's (with game)... and that's just the video gaming...

Radio controlled cars/boats/blimps/robots... knockoff collectable games (yugioh and the like). and anime...the dvds cost what they should (~$5) and the resin figurines weren't much more. I ended up buying a knockoff electric airsoft uzi--it works great for $20 (they ranged in price from $4-38 )

toy district links:
http://www.lacclink.com/downtownguide/t ... strict.htm
http://www.downtownnews.com/dtvg/toy.html
http://www.downtownlawalks.com/?f=Toy_District

[vb_master]

How much were the PSPs?

[Reaperman@home]

I didn't ask, since I really didn't have the money, and communicating is quite a task out there. it's also one of those places where nothing is priced. They had them by both themselves and bundled with game, umd, movie and some other stuff.

but like I said, if you ever find yourself in LA, and everybody does sometime, remember to check this out. There won't be any LA tourism fliers giving it the respect it deserves. and bring cash, because they don't exactly take american express.

[FDSMAN]

well I live there, in la I mean, so even if you could buy something it would have taxes up the ass on it, if your not at the fair thing, and reaperman, is this like an all year thing? becuase i've been to little tokyko (or how ever you spell it) and they have some pretty nice things there, anime heaven as I've taken to call it, but i've never seen any psp's there, wonder if they were japanese...

[Reaperman@home]

they are permanant buildings, but with tiny tabletop and storefront vendors. hundreds of them. fortunately they charge no tax. The down side is that they take nothing but cash, and give you no recipt.

it's near little tokyo, but the area is far from japanese. it looks more chinese and korean.

the psps came with american games.

[demonofaj]

lol, my toy district is near/in Chinatown. Where they sell PSP games for 50% off. It's like the mom and pop stores, except they don't know how much the thing is ACTUALLY worth.

[G-force]

Sounds like gamer/portablizer heaven. Time for a bike ride from indiana to LA...

[soundwave]

My dad rode his bike from CT to Canada when 16, except he and friends had connections along the way, and there was hostells back in the day.

[demonofaj]

What's funny, is that I photoshop their rival websites, like post a screen shot of me on their site, and photoshop it to be a lower price. From competition they lower THEIR prices. Manupilation is SOOOO GOOD!

[MilkMonster]

Its times like these I hate bieng east coast.