The water arcs over Hollywood Boulevard in mid-April, fired from a hundred plastic buckets and Super Soakers. For a single sun-bright Sunday a six-block stretch of East Hollywood stops being a street and becomes the largest Songkran celebration outside Thailand.
Two golden Apsonsi guard the entrance at Western Avenue, half-woman, half-lion, six feet tall, cast in bronze and shipped from Bangkok. Inside the gateway, Pad Kra Pao is hissing on Sapp Coffee Shop’s flat-top before nine in the morning.
Somewhere between the Metro Red Line stop and the noodle stall set up outside Silom Supermarket, you stop being in Los Angeles for a minute. You are in Thailand, or as close as 8,000 miles will allow.
This is Thai Town, the first and still only officially designated Thai Town in the United States.
Thai Town, The Place
Thai Town is a six-block strip along Hollywood Boulevard, running east from Western Avenue to Normandie Avenue in East Hollywood. It sits inside the larger East Hollywood neighbourhood, sharing a border with Little Armenia and a postcode (90027) with Los Feliz to the north. The Metro B Line (formerly the Red Line) drops you at Hollywood and Western, directly under the western Apsonsi gateway.
The architecture is mostly low-slung Hollywood vernacular: stucco mini-malls, two-storey commercial buildings, the occasional Streamline Moderne motel that has seen better decades. It is dense, walkable, and unmistakably working. Storefronts in Thai script sit beside Armenian markets, Salvadoran panaderias and Filipino diners. The neighbourhood reads, on any given afternoon, as one of the most quietly international half-miles in the western United States.
How Hollywood Became Thai
Before the Thai
East Hollywood is older than Hollywood. The area was farmland and citrus groves laid out as Prospect Park in 1887, renamed East Hollywood around 1900, and annexed by the City of Los Angeles in 1910 in exchange for piped water. By the 1920s it was a magnet for immigrants and mid-century strivers.
Armenian survivors of the 1915 genocide arrived first, building the community that would later be designated Little Armenia. Mexican families followed the citrus work. Filipino and Japanese families came in waves through the 1930s and 1940s. By the time the first Thai families arrived in the mid-1960s, East Hollywood was already a stacked palimpsest, an immigrant neighbourhood with cheap rents, transit, and nobody asking too many questions about whose grandmother was cooking what for dinner.
The Thai Arrive
Thai people had been in California in trickles since the 1950s, a few students, a handful of nurses, a small diplomatic and merchant presence. The real shift began with two laws and one war.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, often called the Hart-Celler Act, abolished the country quotas that had effectively barred Asian immigration for forty years. It came into force in 1968 and rewrote who got to come to America. At the same time, the Vietnam War was running through Thailand. American air bases at Udon Thani, Ubon, Korat and U-Tapao moved tens of thousands of US military personnel through the country. Some married Thai women and brought them home. Others sponsored Thai friends, employees and in-laws.
Between 1960 and 1970, around 5,000 Thais immigrated to the United States. Across the 1970s the figure jumped to roughly 44,000. Through the 1980s another 64,400 followed. A large share landed in Los Angeles, and within Los Angeles a disproportionate share landed in East Hollywood, drawn by cheap apartments, the new freeways, and a small but growing concentration of Thai grocers, restaurants and Buddhist monks.
The single most important anchor was Wat Thai of Los Angeles. In 1971 a small group of Thai Buddhists rented a house on Sepulveda Boulevard, invited a monk from Bangkok, and on 22 December of that year filed papers with the State of California as the Theravada Buddhist Center, Inc.
By 1972 the community had bought 2.2 acres on Cantara Street in North Hollywood. Wat Thai LA was the first Thai Buddhist temple in the United States, and it pulled chain migration with it. Each new arrival was a node in a network. Each Sunday merit-making was a roll call of new Angelenos.
Thai Town at Its Peak
By the 1980s the stretch of Hollywood Boulevard between Western and Normandie was Thai in everything but name. Restaurants opened along the strip. Jitlada, on Sunset just south of Thai Town proper, had been pouring Royal Thai Air Force pilots’ favourite curries since the late 1970s. Sapp Coffee Shop opened in a Hollywood motel kitchen in the late 1970s and quietly became the city’s most serious boat-noodle counter. Bilingual Thai-English signage spread block by block. Travel agencies, money-wiring shops, accountants, doctors and dentists who spoke central Thai filled the second-floor offices.
The official recognition came in 1999. After a seven-year campaign organised by the Thai Community Development Center and championed by City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on 27 October 1999 to designate the six-block stretch as Thai Town. It was, and remains, the first place in the United States to carry that name on an official sign.
The Thai CDC, founded in 1994 by Bangkok-born planner Chanchanit “Chancee” Martorell, had pushed the designation as a tool of economic development. The bet was simple. A neglected stretch of Hollywood Boulevard could be revived through cultural tourism, the way Chinatown and Little Tokyo had been. The bet largely paid off. The first Songkran Festival followed in 2004, originally a few thousand people. By the late 2010s it was drawing crowds estimated above 400,000.
The visible gateway came in two stages. In June 2007, two Apsonsi statues, gifts from the Royal Thai Government, were installed at the eastern end of the strip. Two more were installed in 2012. Each is six feet tall, cast in bronze in Thailand, flown over by Thai Airways, and bolted to a pedestal at a Hollywood Boulevard intersection. The name choice was deliberate. Both Bangkok and Los Angeles share, in their full ceremonial names, the meaning “city of angels”.
The Change
The 2010s and 2020s have been harder. East Hollywood median home prices rose by roughly half in a five-year stretch, crossing $1.25 million. One-bedroom rents climbed from around $1,600 to nearly $2,000. Several hundred rent-controlled units in the wider neighbourhood have been pulled off the market through Ellis Act conversions since 2000.
Younger Thai families have steadily moved north into North Hollywood, Studio City and across the Cahuenga Pass into the San Fernando Valley. The Thai population of Los Angeles County is now spread across the Valley, the Eastside, Long Beach, and pockets of Orange County. The cultural anchors in Thai Town remain. The residents, increasingly, do not.
The Landmarks of Thai Los Angeles
The Thai Town Gateway, Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. The two western Apsonsi were installed in June 2007, the matching pair at Normandie in 2012. They are the only public art in Los Angeles to depict a half-woman, half-lion mythological guardian from Thai folklore. Stand at the western pair on a clear afternoon and the Hollywood sign is visible over their bronze shoulders.
Wat Thai of Los Angeles, 8225 Coldwater Canyon Avenue, North Hollywood. The temple sits technically outside Thai Town, a fifteen-minute drive over the hill, but it is the cultural mothership. Founded in 1971, it remains the largest Thai Buddhist temple in the country. Its weekend food court, run by laypeople as a temple fundraiser, is the closest most Angelenos will come to a Bangkok hawker stall without a passport.
Jitlada, 5233 Sunset Boulevard. The room has not been redecorated in decades. The walls hold a famous gallery of celebrity photos. Sister-and-brother team Sarintip “Jazz” Singsanong and the late chef Suthiporn “Tui” Sungkamee took over in 2006 and rewrote the menu in the dialect and chillies of Nakhon Si Thammarat, in deep Southern Thailand. Jonathan Gold made it nationally famous. Tui died in October 2017. Jazz has kept the kitchen running in his name.
Sapp Coffee Shop, 5183 Hollywood Boulevard. Sapp opened in a motel kitchen in the late 1970s and never expanded out of it. The boat noodle soup is the dish, an inky brown broth simmered with blood, cinnamon, galangal and anise, ladled over rice noodles and beef. Jonathan Gold listed it among the meals that defined Los Angeles. Locals order it before nine in the morning without irony.
Silom Supermarket, 5321 Hollywood Boulevard. The unofficial pantry of the neighbourhood. Pandan leaves, fresh galangal, holy basil, dried prik haeng chillies, half a dozen brands of fish sauce. After five in the evening a noodle stall called Rad Na Silom sets up on the pavement outside. The plate hits the table for under ten dollars.
Thai Town Marketplace, corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. A green-built indoor-outdoor food court adjacent to the Metro station, planned by Thai CDC as a hawker-style anchor for the western gateway. Twelve stalls inside, six retail kiosks outside, and a queue at lunchtime that often spills onto the boulevard.
The Songkran Festival, Hollywood Boulevard, every April. Now in its seventeenth year, the Songkran Festival shuts down the strip on a Sunday in April and turns it into the largest Thai New Year celebration outside Thailand. Muay Thai sparring on a temporary ring. Miss Thai USA crowned on the main stage. In 2026, an organised attempt to set a Guinness World Record by selling 1,200 bowls of Pad Thai in 60 minutes. Estimated annual crowd: 400,000.
Where the LA Thai Came From
The Thai diaspora in Los Angeles is more layered than any single regional accent can hold. The majority of the first big wave came from Bangkok and the central plains, urban, educated, and often Sino-Thai by descent. The Bangkok-born sent their children to UCLA and USC and reshaped the central Thai accent of Hollywood Boulevard’s signs and storefronts.
The Northern Thai presence, from Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Lampang, threads through the kitchens that serve khao soi and sai ua. Northeastern Thais from the vast Isan plateau, culturally and linguistically close to Lao, brought larb, som tam and the sticky rice that no Thai restaurant in Los Angeles can quite do without. Southern Thais from Hat Yai, Phuket, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Songkhla, including significant Muslim Thai communities, brought the deeply spiced curries that made Jitlada famous.
Almost every layer is also partly Chinese. Sino-Thais, mostly Teochew in ancestry, have run a disproportionate share of Bangkok’s restaurant and rice trade for generations, and many of the family-run businesses on Hollywood Boulevard carry that double inheritance, surnames adapted into Thai, cooking traditions that nod to Chaozhou and Bangkok in the same breath.
Thai Town Today
Thai Town in 2026 is busy, contested, and still recognisably itself. The strip is a cultural and culinary destination for the wider city in a way it never was at its 1990s peak. Diners drive in from Pasadena, Long Beach and Orange County for boat noodles and crab curry. Tour buses occasionally stop at the Apsonsi gateway. Yelp has done what Yelp does.
And many of the Thai families who built it have moved on. North Hollywood, Studio City, Reseda and Van Nuys hold more Thai households today than the official Thai Town does. The community has done what immigrant communities everywhere eventually do: spread out, buy houses with driveways, raise the next generation a little further from the original landing pad.
What remains in East Hollywood is the institutional spine. Thai CDC still operates from the neighbourhood. The temples in Thai Town and in the Valley still keep the religious calendar. The restaurants, supermarkets, festivals and the four bronze Apsonsi are still where they were placed. The first Thai Town in America is, depending on the hour, either a neighbourhood, a marketplace, a stage set or a memorial. It is mostly all four at once.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Thai immigrants settle in Hollywood?
Thai immigrants began arriving in East Hollywood in the late 1960s, drawn by cheap apartments, the freeway and bus network, and a growing concentration of Thai grocers, restaurants and Buddhist monks. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act opened the door, and the Vietnam War brought Thai families through US military and student channels. The Thai in Thai Town, Los Angeles built their community on Hollywood Boulevard because the rents were affordable and the neighbours were already used to newcomers.
Is Thai Town still Thai today?
Thai Town is still the cultural and commercial heart of the Thai community in Los Angeles, but most Thai families have moved north to North Hollywood, Studio City and the San Fernando Valley. The restaurants, supermarkets, the Thai Community Development Center and the Songkran Festival remain anchored in East Hollywood, even as the residential population has dispersed.
What are the most famous Thai landmarks in Los Angeles?
The most famous landmarks of the Thai in Thai Town, Los Angeles are the four Apsonsi gateway statues at Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue, Wat Thai of Los Angeles in North Hollywood (founded in 1971 and the oldest Thai Buddhist temple in the US), Jitlada on Sunset Boulevard, Sapp Coffee Shop on Hollywood Boulevard, Silom Supermarket, and the annual Songkran Festival.
Where in Thailand did the LA Thai come from?
The Thai community in Los Angeles came from across Thailand: Bangkok and the central plains supplied the largest urban share, Chiang Mai and the north brought northern food and culture, Isan in the northeast brought sticky rice and larb, and Southern Thailand sent the deeply spiced cooking that made Jitlada famous. A significant portion of the community is Sino-Thai, with Teochew Chinese ancestry.
When did Thai immigrants first arrive in Los Angeles?
The first significant wave of Thai immigration to Los Angeles began after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act took effect in 1968, accelerated by US military ties to Thailand during the Vietnam War. Roughly 5,000 Thais arrived in the United States during the 1960s, jumping to 44,000 in the 1970s and 64,400 in the 1980s. The Wat Thai of Los Angeles, founded in 1971, marks the first institutional anchor of the community.
If your family’s story passed through Thai Town, Hollywood Boulevard, or any of the places the Thai have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village outside Chiang Mai or a shophouse in Bangkok, to a Hollywood Boulevard apartment, to wherever you sit reading this.