Angel City connects local culture to new kits with patches representing LA communities

There’s great food all over Los Angeles, an inevitability in the seething melting pot of so many cultures. The population is constantly mixing and remixing the traditional with the new. There are a million places to find an interesting meal in Los Angeles, especially in Koreatown, one of the city’s most richly diverse neighborhoods. And nestled right on the edge of the community, tucked behind an unassuming fence and a bank parking lot, sits Love Hour, a smash burger joint and the site of one of Angel City’s jersey patch creators for the 2023 NWSL season.

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ACFC’s jersey patch program is a collection of 11 unique sleeve patches which can be used to customize the 2023 away jersey. A map of LA covers most of the shirt with a small, stylized “VOLEMOS” adorning the nape of the neck, designed by Viva La Bonita streetwear founder Rachel Gomez. Each patch represents a different aspect of LA, and each one was designed by a member of the Los Angeles community. 

So you’ve got Odilia Romero and Janet Martinez, the founders of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo (CIELO), which works to bring visibility and resources to Indigenous migrant communities. There’s Evelynn Escobar of Hike Clerb, an intersectional women’s outdoor collective that brings in more BIWOC to access nature. And there’s Mike Pak and Duy Nguyen, two Asian immigrant kids who made their way to LA from Virginia and put down roots in K-town with a smash burger joint, Love Hour.

Pak and Nguyen started Love Hour as a pop-up in a parking lot in 2019. By that summer, they were turning out burgers at Coachella. Both entrepreneurs immigrated with their families to Virginia; Pak was born in Seoul while Nguyen came from Saigon. Separately, they moved to LA about