Downtown
Surrounded by freeways -- with I-5 on the east and the
San Diego Freeway (I-405) to the west -- the downtown
business area contains the L.A. versions of Japantown,
Koreatown and Chinatown. This is where the Music
Center offers both music and drama at the Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion and the Mark Taper Forum. Exposition
Park features several notable museums and galleries,
including the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
County, the California Museum of Science and Industry,
the California Afro-American Museum, in addition to the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the L.A. Sports
Arena.
There's a Garment District and a Jewelry District. Add
to all this the Los Angeles Children's Museum, the
Museum of Contemporary Art and the Southwest
Museum, the Wells Fargo Museum, the
Japanese American National Museum and El Pueblo
de Los Angeles Historic Park, and you have not one
but several days of activity without leaving the main and
not-so-mean streets of downtown L.A.
Olivera Street, the Spanish birthplace of the
area, is a cobblestone avenue which features cafes with
outdoor areas and a Mexican shopping district. The
historic park is here -- a reminder of the sleepy little
outpost of Mexico which was the original "City of the
Angels." It's a tribute to the architects and builders of
the downtown skyscrapers that the buildings survived the
1994 Northridge earthquake. The social and business life
of L.A. continued without a skipped beat.
Hollywood
Hollywood can no longer be called the "Entertainment
Capital of the World." Much of the L.A. show-business
interests have moved or built new studios in the west and
northeast valleys. But there is enough in Hollywood to
give you a good warm feeling about being in the historic
boomtown of the movie industry. The row of stars
stretches down Hollywood Boulevard. Mann's Chinese
Theater still shows its eccentric design. You can
take in a concert at the Greek Theater or at the
Hollywood Bowl, which just isn't the same without
Carmen Dragon but is still a thrilling outdoor concert
hall.
The most popular attraction in the L.A. area is
Universal Studios -- the studio and the theme park --
constantly inaugurating new rides and shows. One of the
most interesting and more bizarre additions is the
Universal CityWalk, a fantasized Hollywood
streetscape -- antiseptically clean, with polished
colors, fountains (soda and otherwise) and thousands of
tourists who come to people-watch. Only Hollywood would
know how to turn a street into a theme park where the
main attraction is the horde of visitors looking at one
another. Oh, and don't forget the fabled kitsch:
Frederick's of Hollywood, the Wax Museum,
and the Hollywood Palace.
One way to get away from the artificial streetscapes
and frenetic theme parks is to drive to Griffith
Park, the green oasis which is home to the Los
Angeles Zoo, Griffith Park Observatory, the
Hollywood Bowl and the Gene Autry National
Center. A lesser-known but fascinating attraction in
the park is Forrest Ackerman's Sci-Film & Monster
Mansion, with 18 rooms devoted to such artifacts as
models from the 1933 version of King Kong and life masks
of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Even if you don't enter
any of these attractions, the park offers oportunities
for walking, biking and picnicking among gardens and
greenery. The park is located south of Interstate 5 and
north of Highway 101.
West Side
The celebrities work in Hollywood and the western part
of L.A. and many of them live and shop on the west side.
Westwood, near U.C.L.A., is the newer, hipper part of
town with outdoor cafes and shops catering to younger
people. Beverly Hills is synonymous with Rodeo
Drive, the most famous shopping blocks in the world. This
is where you pick up a map on the street corner for your
celebrity home tour and, if you wish, catch a scheduled
bus tour of the more prominent homes. The former back lot
for 20th Century Fox is now a large outdoor shopping
center: Century City Marketplace.
The cultural attractions in this community include the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Beit
Hashoa Museum of Tolerance and the Armand Hammer
Museum and Cultural Center in Westwood.
The Broad Contemporary Art Museum is a new building at
the L.A. County Museum of Art, funded by a huge donation
by L.A. developer Eli Broad and his wife, and designed by
architect Lorenzo Piano. The museum features modern
paintings, sculpture and photographs. The Los Angeles
County Museum of Art is at 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los
Angeles. For inforation, call 323-857-6000 or go
here.
The Getty Center is a splendid art museum and
much more. The spectacular 110-acre site is perched atop
the Brentwood Hills. The former Getty museum, in Malibu,
has become a new art museum with a smaller specialized
collection installed in the famous old villa.
The Valleys
Mission San Fernando is a far cry from the
cultural invasion of the Valley Girl cult of the 1980s.
It's a serene link to the beginnings of settlement in
what was (and still is) a dry, high desert between the
San Gabriel Mountains and the Santa Monica Mountains of
the coast range.
Pasadena is the largest city in the valley
area, and an old wealthy community that was the region's
foremost desert resort of the early 1900s. It's the scene
of the annual Rose Bowl game and parade, with a
rich cultural scene. Here, you'll find the Huntington
Botanical Gardens and Library, and inside is an
astounding collection of artwork from the railroad
family, including Gainsborough's Blue Boy. The gardens
are not only beautiful for their plantings, but are
filled with statues. Pasadena is also home to the
Norton Simon Museum, which contains one of the
finest French Immpressionist art collections outside
France. With all the recent interest in explorations of
nearby planets, you might like to schedule a tour of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the space
probes are monitored. It's located in nearby La Canada,
and tours are arranged in advance.
Burbank is home to the NBC Studios where
visitors to the Tonight Show start lining up very early
in the morning. Tours of the studios are given daily,
taking visitors backstage to see special effects
demonstrations, to visit a soap opera set (with the hope
of maybe catching some soap opera stars on the set), to
walk through a working newsroom and to view the Tonight
Show in rehearsal. The Natural History Museum of L.A.
County is located in Media City Center in Burbank.
This 12,000-square-foot museum features a hands-on
Discovery Center and has room for an ongoing series of
traveling exhibits.
Six Flags Magic Mountain is the region's
largest amusement park, located off Interstate 5 in the
Santa Clarita Valley, near the epicenter of the
Northridge earthquake. This place has more roller
coasters per square mile than any theme park in the
cosmos.
Beaches
Los Angeles County has 72 miles of Pacific shoreline,
much of it beaches. From Malibu, in the north, to
Rancho Palos Verdes and Cabrillo Beach (San
Pedro), in the south, are the famous beaches which are as
famous as the Hollywood stars.
To the south of Santa Monica and Venice are Playa
del Rey, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa
Beach, Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes
Estates. Manhattan Beach, in particular, offers miles
of long, sweeping beaches with picnic areas.
Cabrillo Marine Museum is located next to the
beach in San Pedro -- a part of Ports O'Call Village, a
chic seaside shopping district. Marina Del Rey,
just south of Venice, is the largest man-made small boat
harbor and includes Fisherman's Village, a
reproduction of a New England whaling village. The
northern beaches are covered in the Malibu,
and Santa Monica/Venice
on-line pages.
