My Vote

Hello all, I am rather amateur at this and NEW to component building. I know almost no code but I love tinkering and learning. 
My first attempt will be a zip code based vote capture component. Ir will be rather complex as I want to use it almost like in real government.

My thinking is that first, I should import a zipcode db. How?

Next, does anyone have any recommendations or resources that they'd like to share? Videos, books etc..

OK, I decided to try to learn a little something first.
So, I created a simple "Restaurant" component. When CORRECTLY done, it will display a list of restaurants by city.. Very simple. I have experimented with one foreign key in the Genre field. Please look at these results. 
1) Why is my text not spaced properly.
2) Why is my "genre inside of the [ ] brackets?
3) Why is "Status" still displayed?
4) How do I get rid of "ID"?

Come on guys and gals, surly someone knows what I'm doing wrong. Please help.