LA Weekly review

LA Weekly is a free iPhone and iPod Touch app by Village Voice Media, distributors of the LA Weekly newspaper. The LA Weekly app brings you an easy to use, comprehensive list of things to do and see in the greater Los Angeles area. This includes a concert calendar, restaurant reviews by Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold, art galleries, theater shows, special holiday events, clubs, nightlife, and many, (many) other categories.

The LA Weekly app allows you to search by date and category of events. You can also search by your current location to find out what might be going on nearby. All this is organized in an easy to navigate menu for your viewing pleasure. Running an app is expensive, time consuming work, and we all know app developers need to eat too, but free apps can often get carried away with their advertisements and really ruin functionality. The LA Weekly app has advertisements, but just barely. When you select an event for more information it shows you a brief full page advertisement while it loads, one of the briefest loading ads I’ve seen on any app.

LA Weekly is a great app, but it faces some logistical issues. One problem is there just may be too many events going on in the Los Angeles area. It’s great that LA Weekly takes the time to round up both the blockbuster acts and hole-in-the-wall gems, but it makes things a bit laborious when you end up having to scroll through an impressive but seemingly endless list of events. Granted, to help organize things there is an extensive list of categories to browse. Want me to list them all? There’s like 50 of them. No? Didn’t think so. When your long list becomes another long list within a long list you know you’ve got some problems, unless of course you are working on: A) a metaphysical brainteaser, or B) the sequel to Inception. For all my complaining I don’t really see any solution to this issue though.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are no settings options, and it was a bit of a surprise that articles can only be forwarded by e-mail or Facebook. Regardless, just rest assured: If you live anywhere near LA you should definitely have this app.