The Grove

Tajja Isen reminisces on the extra-retail therapies of childhood trips to The Grove in the newest installment of I Come Here Often, from LARB Quarterly no. 46: “Alien.”

By Tajja IsenSeptember 29, 2025

• LARB Lit

• Memoir & Essay

This essay, from the ongoing print column I Come Here Often, is a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 46: Alien. Become a member for more fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, and art from this issue—plus the next four issues of the Quarterly in print.

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AS A CHILD growing up in Canada, I knew of only two American cities: Orlando and Los Angeles. Orlando was for family vacations, L.A. for work. Trips out west were quick and humbling. My dad and I would regularly fly in for a few days to attend award shows for young actors. Usually these would all go the same way: I would stand on a carpet so red it embarrassed me; be told by a man behind a camera that I was “cute, for a voice actor”; and maybe—if I was lucky—hear my name mangled from the stage, before I wobbled across it in ill-fitting heels.

It was grim but I adored it—the anxiety, the competition, all that being-measured-and-found-wanting. But the peak of these trips wasn’t the awards show, even when I won. The real highlight was the giant outdoor mall, the Edenic-sounding complex that would have been impossible in Toronto’s density and climate: The Grove. It opened in 2002 and my first visit was that same year, soon to be the first of many. Every time we visited Los Angeles, I requested a stop at The Grove. In my mind, the soaring Art Deco storefronts were metonymic for the city. It felt the way I imagined being in a film, or even fame itself, should feel—glittering, visible, not entirely real. I loved the central fountain, which is larger than it should reasonably be. The sidewalks paved with brick rather than plain concrete. The open-air, double-decker trolley that rattled from the shops to the Farmers Market. These details made magical what were otherwise the same fast-fashion stores I could find at my local mall. I took this to mean that we were doing it wrong. These people, I thought, knew how to live.

I saved my best self for these trips, including a very particular outfit: an olive green crochet hoodie, a John Lennon New York City T-shirt, and a pair of checkered Vans sneakers. I was simply more myself under the Farmers Market awning, clutching a paper coffee cup, than I was anywhere else. The mall felt like someone had turned the dial up on life, which, back then, was exactly how I thought life should feel.

I now live in Las Vegas, a city that—now that I think about it—bears some of The Grove’s hallmarks: ornate facades inspired by old architecture; crowds of guileless tourists; a famous, even bigger fountain designed by the same company. It is warm; there are palm trees and the ever-present sense that this place is not, or shouldn’t be, entirely real. It’s as if my 12-year-old self clicked those wobbly heels and made a wish—There’s no place like The Grove, there’s no place like The Grove. And somewhere, a witch—good or wicked?—rubbed her palms together, smirked, and said, Wish granted.

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Featured image: Prayitno. THE GROVE Los Angeles, April 17, 2010. CC BY-SA 2.0, wikimedia.org. Accessed September 25, 2025. Image has been cropped.