Kenneth Lawenda, OD

EDIT
Effective May 08, Dr. Lawenda’s practice has been taken over by Dr. Randy Taketa. Haven’t been in yet — will post once I have. The office abruptly closed for a few weeks, and I sincerely hope nothing has happened to Dr. Lawenda.
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Dr. Lawenda & his staff are great. He is thoughtful and a very nice man (plus he has all the requisite awards and honors you want your doc to have!).
As mentioned, his frame selection is pretty good — nothing too varied, but a nice selection that should suffice for most (and satisfy even some hardcore label whores). He has decent sales on sunglasses in the summer.
Plus: great location.

A little history:
I’ve had to wear glasses since I was 4. I’ve been legally blind since, like, 7. So, I’ve had my share of eye docs.
Back to present moment:
I picked up my hard gas permeable contact lenses this morning (I lost one down the sink last week) and I can see again! All is right and now I can type the review:
— Great staff. Really nice, totally knowledgeable, really mellow, easygoing environment. Right next to Café Marco, so you can get your latte, bring it in, and read magazines if you have to wait (which you never need to do, but the magazines are good and current).
— Great equipment. They have stuff I have never seen before. Comfortable, very high tech, state of the art stuff. I guess Dr. Lawenda, in addition to being an all around cool guy, is a super pimp who is also the Chief of Clinical Services of Optometry at Cedars Sinai since 1998. He is, by far, the best optometrist I have ever had.
— They take many kinds of insurance, and, if you are a contact lense wearer, you can join their lense club (something like $ 40 for the year) and go in and get FREE contact lense solution and supplies WHENEVER you want. That’s AWESOME.
— They have a decent frame selection but it’s not super duper varied. They have all the brands you might expect and then other more fancy makes as well. They also sell a fairly decent range of sunglasses.
I basically go here because the service is so good and Dr. Lawenda is such a good optometrist. Unless I move far away, I am going to keep going here. If you are in the area, check and see if his office will take your insurance (they probably do) and swing by.
Very highly recommended for four-​eyed Unilocalers!