It’s 9 p.m. on a Sunday evening. Westwood Boulevard is quiet, the hustle and bustle of the day a distant memory. At first glance, the Naab Café – a popular hotspot with the locals – seems equally desolate. But walk through the terrace, and the air comes alive with laughter, smoke and drifts of Farsi-laden conversation. There isn’t a single non-Persian in the place. “It’s like a scene from Iran,” Anahita Aminpour says. “Or at least, how I imagine it.”

At 25 years old, Aminpour belongs to a new generation of L.A.’s Persians. Her parents, like many of those from the community, made the move from Iran to Los Angeles in the 1970s following the Islamic Revolution of Iran. L.A. is now home to around 600,000 Persians, the largest diaspora in the world. In 2010, the city of Los Angeles officially designated Westwood Boulevard as “Persian Square.” It’s also known as “Tehrangeles” on Google Maps – a portmanteau of Tehran and Los Angeles.

The Persian community are known for their distinctive values: family, loyalty, hard work, entrepreneurship and respect. They’re fiercely proud of their culture and view the preservation of that culture as an important part of their identity. The Iranian immigrants brought this mindset with them in the ‘70s and ‘80s and have passed it on to their children.

For many of these children, their culture represents a country they can never visit. They long for a land they can only experience through words and photographs.

“Of course, I’d like to visit Iran, but I can’t.” Aminpour says. “My dad did go back once and they arrested him…I don’t remember why, some claims of spying or something.” The point stands, though - once Iranian citizens make the leap into “enemy territory,” they’re headed down a one-way street. They can’t go back to Iran, and neither can their children. “I’ve never visited. I wish I could, but they probably have my whole family’s name on a list somewhere. It’s not worth the risk.”

For Aminpour, a Muslim, the risk is tied to her father’s outspokenness against the government and decision to leave. But for many of L.A.’s Persians, they can’t go back for the simple reason of their religion. Iran is now 99.5% Muslim. Religious persecution was rampant following the Revolution, causing huge swathes of Persian Jews and Persian Bahai’s to flee to L.A.

Persian Square in Westwood, Los Angeles

According to Sephardic Los Angeles, Iranian minorities are over-represented in L.A. compared to their proportionate demographics in Iran, with a sizable Persian Jewish community in Beverly Hills in particular. Research from Professor Kevan Harris from the Sociology department at UCLA indicates that this might be because the first Iranian immigrants to the U.S. in the early 20th century were mostly members of Iran’s religious minorities. "Iranians in the US have disproportionately high shares of religious minorities - Jewish, Armenian, and Assyrians mostly - which in Iran itself are very small groups, at 1% or less of the overall population," he says. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, American immigration law gave precedence to family members of citizens already settled in the U.S. In this way, the Persian Jewish and Persian Armenian communities in particular continued to grow.

And why L.A.?

Well, the climate and terrain are similar. Both countries enjoy warm weather virtually year-round, a mountainous landscape and a car culture.

For the L.A. Persian youth, their lives are very different from their parents. Their parents fled war, corruption and persecution, while they have been fortunate enough to lead privileged and lavish lifestyles in some of the most affluent parts of the city. Much of the Persian community is clustered around Westwood Boulevard, or Tehrangeles, which is right next to Beverly Hills, where over a quarter of the population are Persian and Jimmy Delshad became the first Persian mayor in 2007. “Obviously most of the people with money came here, but some of them didn’t have much. One thing I can say is every Persian I know works hard.” Seb Noori, a server at the Naab Café, shares. “Look around you. They’re all business owners.”

There is a stereotype around L.A.’s young Persians, no doubt perpetuated in part by the reality TV show, “Shahs of Sunset,” that aired on the Bravo network. If you’d only watched that show, you could be fooled into thinking the Persian youth simply live off their parents’ money.

It's probably why Anahita can afford to wear Dior shoes, a Cartier bracelet and drive a Mercedes-Benz despite, on paper, struggling. “It took me ages to find a job,” she bemoans. “I have a bachelors in engineering and a master's in chemical engineering but I was looking for a job for more than a year. Now I work and it’s okay but I’m still not in a senior role yet and that’s frustrating.” She admits that while she doesn’t need to rely on her career, hard work is still important to the Persian youth – an aspect that “Shahs of Sunset” and similar stereotypes fail to recognize. “My parents want me to have something of my own. That’s important. I inherited some of their work ethic.”

This strong work ethic can also be attributed to why L.A.’s Persian community is amongst the most successful minority groups in the United States today, as evidenced by their levels of high education and residence in some of the city's most affluent zipcodes. A strong work ethic is ingrained into their culture, seemingly borne from the need to escape Iran and establish a new life for themselves in the USA. For many of L.A.’s successful Persians, they’re keen to ensure their children don’t take their comfortable lives for granted. As a result, the reality is often very different from the stereotype.

Taylor, 28, at first glance looks like a rather unassuming guy. He’s wearing a simple outfit, not a designer label in sight. He wakes up at 6:30 every morning, drives 40 minutes to reach his office by 8 and works until 6 p.m., sometimes 6:30. You wouldn’t think that he went to a prestigious K-12 school, with annual tuition of $50,000 and classmates who were the children of celebrities, or that he lives in the grounds of his father’s $18-million estate in Beverly Hills. Not to mention that at only 28 years old he’s the VP of the company his father founded.

“Yes, it’s my dad’s company, but I work hard! You can ask anyone on the team – they wouldn’t disagree with that.” He insists. His father moved to Los Angeles from Iran over 40 years ago and established a successful crockery and homewares business. As Persian Jews, Taylor doesn’t feel a desire to visit Iran and doubts he ever will, despite it being his father’s homeland. But the Persian values of hard work and supporting family are still very much present in the way he lives his life now.

After college, he moved into his father’s 90210 property, despite clearly having the means to buy his own place should he want to. “But then my dad would just be living here all alone.” He says, “Why would I do that to him?” Taylor's mother is no longer around and his siblings are all older, living outside of LA with families of their own. The buck was passed to Taylor to step up and support his dad, both in his business and his home life. “Family is the most important thing.” He says.

Aminpour agrees. “Family and also community are important to Persians.”

It’s probably why Tehrangeles feels so tight-knit. “You see the same people every week,” Noori says, “You show me ten people who come [to the Naab cafè] regularly and I’ll be able to tell you which day of the week they each visit.”

"Iranians are more likely to know other Iranians here," Kevan Harris says. "It's because of the density of networks in certain places and spaces in this town."

And this sense of community has also provided a beacon of support for Persians who might otherwise feel like outsiders in the US.

“Look, I’ll be honest. I know I have it easy. I have an older sister, she went to school in Nashville, and she said there was a bit of racism and hostility there, but I’ve lived in L.A. my whole life, so I’ve never experienced anything,” Aminpour says.

Does she ever desire to live anywhere else?

“No way. I want to send my kids to a school full of other Persians, so they never feel like they’re the odd one out. Okay, I’ve never been to Iran, and I know I can never go there but it doesn’t matter. Everyone here was raised the same way, the servers all speak to us in Farsi, the families all know each other, it’s as Persian as you can get.”

Identity is the one point of contention among L.A.’s young Persian population. Do they feel American? Persian? Both? Neither?

When surveying the animated faces at the Naab Café, the groups of young people talking and laughing, it’s likely that each would have a different answer to this question.

“I’m definitely Persian.” Aminpour says confidently.

But for Taylor, it’s another story. “I feel more American than anything, so I’d say American first.”

Maybe religion plays a part – the Persian Muslim diaspora perhaps still feel some sense of connection to Iran whilst the Persian Jews feel exiled and cut off.

Kevan Harris believes that fewer Persians think of themselves as a "typical American" compared to other second generation migrant groups such as Mexican or Asian Americans. But that's nothing particularly remarkable, as he states, "While some Iranians might claim to be exceptional in the US, claiming exceptional outcomes for one's own migration story is quite, well, unexceptional among migrants from many different origins."