WALKING in Los Angeles? Isn't that like ice-dancing in the Sahara? In the car
capital of the world, the locals treat their “vehicles”, as they call them,
as casually as golf buggies. They jump in the car, drive to the corner to
pick up their dry-cleaning and a cup of coffee, drive to their yoga class,
drive home. Everyone wears trainers, but nobody dreams of walking.
But the times and increasing traffic gridlock are changing LA. As a visitor,
you're ideally placed to join in this cultural revolution, treading where
Angelenos themselves no longer fear to tread...
Hollywood
From Kodak Theatre, home of the Oscars, a long staircase perfect for celebrity
posing runs down to a grand piazza, which is a re-creation of a set from
W.D. Griffith's Intolerance. Decorated elephants on top of pillars raise
their trunks while computerised fountains rise and fall randomly.
This is not a palace but LA's democratic equivalent - a shopping mall. Built
in the 1990s, the Hollywood and Highland Center was an attempt to redevelop
Hollywood gone to seed. To see if it has worked, walk a mile or so down
Hollywood Boulevard with its mix of tourist tat, tattoo parlours and gems
such as the great ornate cinema architecture of El Capitan and Grauman's
Chinese, the dark, elaborate Spanish-style interiors of the newly chic 1927
Roosevelt Hotel, Larry Edmunds Bookshop - world HQ for movie memorabilia -
and Musso and Frank, where neither decor nor the waiters has changed since
Nathaniel West and William Faulkner sipped their vodka Martinis there.
Beneath your feet is Hollywood's Walk of Fame, 2,000 star names set in brass
in twinkling pink tarmac. Come back on the first weekend of each month for
excellent, free tours of another new arrival in the area, LA's Metro
(www.metro.net/art). Each station is a work of public art by a local artist:
the railings at Hollywood and Vine station are musical notes that play
“Hooray for Hollywood”.
Rooms £60 at Highland Gardens (www.highlandgardenshotel.com).
Downtown
More walking tours, this time for a small fee, run at weekends by the LA
historic preservation people, the LA Conservancy (www.laconservancy.org).
Downtown has most of the city's history: until recently it also had most of
the city's homeless. That's all changing fast, though downtown retains an
edgy, urban-frontier feel. Gleaming skyscrapers and office plazas loom over
the loudest and liveliest Mexican shopping street outside Mexico City. Ten
minutes' walk from the amazing kitsch of the Guadalupe Wedding Chapels rise
the cutting-edge aluminium sails of Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall.
Don't miss the interiors of the grand Biltmore Hotel or the equally grand
Central Library; the Guadalupe Wedding Chapels; Broadway's real-life Mexican
fiesta (check out shop windows full of elaborate frocks for Quinceañera, the
Hispanic coming of age celebration for 15-year-old girls); and the Bradbury
Building, which has starred in more films than Clint Eastwood. Like many
human stars, it's a lot smaller than it looks on screen.
Eat great Mexican from stalls in the covered Grand Central Market. Shout for
gorditas $3 or burritos $5. This is street food too good to miss.
Rooms from £100 at Millennium Biltmore (www.thebiltmore.com).
Venice
At the other end of LA from Downtown is the cigarette mogul Abbot Kinney's
dream of Venice. His re-creation of the Italian original in the early 1900s
was the first Disneyland, but it fell into disrepair and many of Kinney's
canals were filled in. Now Venice is on a real-estate roll, high-priced
boho-chic for your hipper film stars such as Julia Roberts.
Take in Venice's mellow vibe along Abbot Kinney Boulevard, with its bijou
restaurants and organic cosmetics shops . Then retrace your steps to the
more raucous, let-it-all-hang-out parade on Venice Beach Boardwalk, where
you can hike for miles beside the Pacific, or jog, or skate.
The full carnival atmosphere gets going on summer weekends. The best lunch
spots are a couple of blocks inland on Main Street (once Coral Canal). For
an after-lunch stroll, head down Pacific Avenue to Venice Boulevard, turn
left and look for the signs to the Canal District, where Kinney's remaining
canals have evolved into a self-contained world of sun-glinted water, waving
palms, calm towpaths and handsome waterside homes.
Rooms £75 at Venice Beach House Historic Inn (www.venicebeachhouse.com).
Santa Monica
Just north of Venice, and an interesting walk up the beach, bigger, less
funky, but equally upmarket, Santa Monica is the classic California seaside
town made good. At the top of traffic-free Third Street Promenade, where the
shops run out, keep walking north and east through quiet streets such as
Washington and Colorado lined with rows of yuppie apartment buildings, neat
churches, and afternoon dog-walkers, with green all around you, the results
of irrigation.
As the sun fades, head to the ocean, either out along Santa Monica Pier to the
tip, where a group of sunset-worshippers gathers every evening, or anywhere
along the railings on Ocean Avenue overlooking Route 1 and the beach below.
As a tangerine sun sinks into the sea, the classic merry-go-round and Ferris
wheel on the pier sparkle like gems and the lights spring up around the
whole enormous circle of the bay. Better than any Hollywood special effect.
Shutters on the Beach, Santa Monica (310 458 0030, www.shuttersonthebeach.com),
from about £190.
Virgin Atlantic (www.virginatlantic.com)
flies from Heathrow to Los Angeles from £357 return.
No car, no problem
Jane Knight
THEY said it couldn't be done - a week in Los Angeles without a car, get real!
Well, a big yah-boo-sucks to you all, especially the woman at the airport
information counter whose jaw almost hit the floor when I asked about public
transport. “You need a car, honey,” she gasped. “You won't see the sights
without one.”
Wrong. Jumping on a shuttle bus to my base in Santa Monica, I found buses, the
metro and trams to take me to most of the main sights, from Hollywood and
Universal Studios to Long Beach, where the Queen Mary is moored. Only
Disneyland proved tricky to get to without a car, but even that isn't
off-limits - most hotels run their own tours.
Why drive bumper to bumper in multilane traffic, risking a crash as you gawp
at the Hollywood sign, when you can ride on the almost empty public
transport system? It's clean (no eating or drinking allowed) efficient, a
nd, yes, it's safe - I didn't feel threatened once during my daytime
wanderings.
The best thing, though, is that it's secret: just over 200,000 people use it
daily, compared with 3 million a day in London. Oh, and did I mention the
price? The metro, which since my visit has added two new lines, costs about
67p for a single journey, while a day pass on Santa Monica's excellent local
bus service, the
Big Blue Bus, costs £1.25.
www.metro.net, www.bigbluebus.com
When visiting LA, we tried to avoid driving not so much due to traffic, but due to lack of parking. Taking the bus was surprisingly efficient going in and around Hollywood.
Michael, New York, USA
I'm loathe to disagree with the natives, but as non-driving backpacker, I spent a week in LA (West Hollywood) trying to get around on buses: and it was a nightmare!
There was an average wait of 45 minutes at each stop (I soon discovered it was quicker to walk up to 3 miles than hang around).
Carly, Newcastle,
Good article. There are many of us in Los Angeles who have known this truth about the fantastic walking city this is, but only now the word is getting out. One correction, however. The ridership of the rail system is 275,000 per day, but on the bus system(s) it is well over one million.
Bert Green, Los Angeles, USA
Glad the news is finally getting out: since 1990, Los Angeles county has opened 73 miles of rail-based mass transit (17 miles subway, surface light rail for the rest) with another nearly 20 miles coming within 2 years. We also have one of newest bus fleets in North America.
Scott Mercer, Los Angeles, USA