Nitpick: Los Angeles just means “The Angels”. The city part is implied.
Howdy, neighbor! 
Yes and no… it used to be completely off the radar. Now everybody knows that Feb. 14 is when “The World” celebrates “Love Day,” but it’s still not a Very Big Deal (but gradually becoming a Little Deal.) I predict that in 10 years we’ll be as Valentine crazy as the rest of the world.
… And of course we’ll keep Tu B’Av – the beauty of it is we keep co-opting world holidays of which we already have our own version, ending up celebrating everything twice a year! 
Then we’re one up on ya.
Fascinating. Are these girls underage? Is that why the “love police” are out to stop them, or are these girls/boys of age but the government thinks it’s setting some kind of bad precedent/example and they want to stamp it out?
They’re underage and their boyfriends are underage, so no statutory-rape charges. This is not a case of sex tourism, but rather one of horny hormone-raging teens. The government says this is not how “proper Buddhists” are supposed to act and so futiley tries to squash it. They always have the police stake out a few short-time hotels on Valentine’s Day, but they just don’t have the manpower to cover them all. (There IS other stuff for them to take care of.) The number of short-time love hotels in Bangkok very possibly numbers in the hundreds, and the proprietors couldn’t care less how old anyone is.
Funny. And to think that in Thailand, girls choose Valentine’s Day based on a perception of it’s meaning to choose to give their virginity to their boyfriends, and here in the Colonies we have Hallmark forcing this day down our throats, forcing us married male subspecies to take a stab at being creative in order to get laid (for once).
This is pretty much the subject of the second Valentine’s day political cartoon in the link in my previous post, the street sweeper sweeping up hearts left lying in the gutter in front of a short-time hotel. In the cartoon, the hotel is called the Penthouse 66, which people living here would understand. The Penthouse and the Playboy are two of the better-known short-time hotels, and many others are simply numbered, like 66 Hotel, 22 Hotel etc. (I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a 69 Hotel out there somewhere, but I think my attention would have been drawn to it by now.)
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
This is pretty much the subject of the second Valentine’s day political cartoon in the link in my previous post, the street sweeper sweeping up hearts left lying in the gutter in front of a short-time hotel. In the cartoon, the hotel is called the Penthouse 66, which people living here would understand. The Penthouse and the Playboy are two of the better-known short-time hotels, and many others are simply numbered, like 66 Hotel, 22 Hotel etc. (I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a 69 Hotel out there somewhere, but I think my attention would have been drawn to it by now.
That sounds very much like a South Park episode…
Living here is often like living in a South Park episode. That’s why I love it!
The time Mr. Garrison takes his class to the planetarium and admonishes them, “This is a planetarium, not a Bangkok brothel, so let’s behave ourselves,” still leaves me rolling.