Yeah, unless service was REALLY awful, tip at least 15%. No one will expect you to tip more than that, but less is generally considered an insult.
I lived in downtown LA until a month ago, and I used buses and the metro for 6 months. Public transport in downtown LA is generally used by people who can’t afford cars. I rarely saw white people on buses in downtown. They’re so rare on the buses it’s noticeable.
One surprising thing fact is that many LA natives I’ve come across have never been downtown LA! Downtown LA is awful, so they usually hang out Westside.
Here’s a fun article about LA public transport:
Agreed about downtown. It had a brief moment where it became trendy to live there, but for the most part it only functions as a place for people to do business. On the other hand, there is some amazing architecture downtown and a few cool clubs and bars. I think saying that it is awful goes a bit far, but there isn’t really anything there unless you work there or go to school there, or have reason to shop in the garment district or diamond district or at the flower mart.
An interesting thing about LA that is an extension of what you mentioned, is that many people never travel outside of a 10 mile radius. It’s the largest landmass city in the country and most people only ever see a tiny portion. I personally know three people who have never been to the Valley, and at least one person who (claims) to have never left Beverly Hill other than to go to the airport.
The article about the metro system is interesting though. I really do avoid buses whenever possible.
Thanks for the non-tourist tips!
But what is LA? By which I mean, are Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Bel Air and so on borroughs like the Bronx in NY, or are they separate cities? Do they have their own “sub”-major (I know LA has a major), how is it set up?
And how big is LA (geographically)?
Beverly Hills and Santa Monica are cities unto themselves, with their own mayors and police departments. Bel Air is part of the city of Los Angeles, but likes to pretend it’s not.
The Los Angeles city limits are vast in area (about 500 thousand square miles). If you look at the map, you can see that there are several cities–in addition to Beverly Hills and Santa Monica–that are completely surrounded by the city of L.A. (well, B.H. and West Hollywood share a border). See Burbank, San Fernando, and Culver City, home of MGM and NPR’s “Los Angeles” studios.
You’ll also see that the city has an unnatural, narrow part which extends south, ending in the district of San Pedro. This was obviously districted so that L.A. could have a port, and combined with the Port of Long Beach (the two are like Siamese twins), they make the largest port in the U.S.
Then there are the unincorporated areas. Malibu and West Hollywood didn’t become cities until the last twenty years or so. Before that, they were just places in L.A. County, but not part of L.A. city. East L.A. is still unincorporated, and seems more or less happy to stay that way.
When I drove a taxi, I had to be aware of these technicalities, because the Los Angeles D.O.T. can fine a cab driver for picking up a fare in an area where he or she is not licensed to do so. (Not that they enforce the rule much.)
Hollywood is not a city. It’s just a district of L.A. Same with Venice, and the various parts of the Valley that go by their own names–Sherman Oaks, Studio City, North Hollywood, Northridge, Reseda, Canoga Park, Chatsworth (where the trains crashed recently). These Valley places like to go by these names (rather than Los Angeles) when identifying their location, as though there were much of a difference between Sherman Oaks and Reseda :rolleyes:. And you can send a letter to the “city” of Hollywood, or Northridge, and the Post Office won’t bat an eye.
An anthropologist did a study, asking teenagers from various neighborhoods in the L.A. area to draw a map of the city, and–especially in lower income areas–they rarely could map out correctly much more than their own neighborhoods.
Ever go to Frogtown, NAF?
Once I picked up a couple of passengers in Hollywood, and they said, “Take us to L.A.” I wanted to say, “You’re in L.A. now, idiot,” but just asked for an address. It turned out they meant downtown.
But for the vast majority of people outside of L.A., and often the national news media, the whole big sprawling expanse is just known as one place called “L.A.” Woody Allen movies and such don’t help, because they portray only one very small part of the city and its culture, namely the Westside, which is about all that the country sees, apart from the gangbanging areas. The city itself has only about 3.8 million people, but the metropolitan area (and from a plane at night it looks like one single city) has about 13 million people.
Thanks for the answer! Cool that LA completely surrounds other cities and lots of stuff I did not know.
But 500 k square miles? You sure you’re not off by a factor of ten or something? Cause that’s 12 times the size of Iceland, if my math ain’t all wrong. And we ain’t that small.
Yes, that was way off! Sorry. It’s 500 sq. miles. Sorry.
If you’re on the beach in say, Santa Monica and in good shape, a speedo won’t stick out.
Not only have I not been, I don’t actually know what it is? Tell me more about this Frogtown.
I have lived or worked or spend large amounts of time in a lot of the city, but there is still a large area that I know almost nothing about.
I know the westside fairly well due to school and my current job. Playa vista, Palms, Venice, Santa Monica, Culver City, Century City, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Westchester, Malibu.
I have had friends or jobs that have caused me to spend a lot of time in Pasadena, Glendale, Eagle Rock, Burbank, Silver Lake.
I grew up in the Valley and know it very well. The whole valley, not just the bit down by the Hills.
And I have lived in North Hollywood, Westwood, Korea Town, Hollywood and Los Feliz.
It sounds like a lot of territory when you list it like that, but at the end of the day there is probalby more of the city that I don’t know well than there is city that I do know.
And then there is Orange County, which is sort of LA’s extended family.
Unless, of course, we’re talking about the Angels, who are no family of mine. 
My experience with LA lies mostly in growing up in South Central, and in my adult years, is basically in the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire. I do have close friends in Studio City and Sherman Oaks, and I used to spend a bit of time in Van Nuys in my youth. I’ve also spent many years working in downtown LA, both as a teenager and in my adult years. I’ve also lived and worked near Eagle Rock and Highland Park.
Though the bit by the hills is the best part. (Yes, I love owning a condo but I’m a bit bitter about having to move off the boulevard. I MISS IT SO MUCH!!)
Have you ever had an “Okie-Dog” ?
I lived in Burbank for 18 years and never dared.
I have! See my post about my favorite oddball fast food.
They aren’t bad. They aren’t good, but they aren’t bad. Very much worth trying once at least.
I left the area back in 1998, but my husband and I are considering relocating back to the SF Valley. What’s the biggest change, good or bad, that we should be prepared for?
In my mind the most redeeming quality of Los Angeles is the diversity. If there is a more diverse city in America I would like to see it.
That’s a really good question. Smoking laws have gotten fairly strict since 1998. Beverly Hill recently went smoke free. I am not quite sure that that means, but I think it means you can only legally smoke in your car or private home.
Traffic, as always, has gotten worse.
On the other hand I actually think Villarigosa (our current mayor) has, on the whole, made some improvements to the city. Things work better now in a lot of subtle ways. City Hall and the City Counsel seem to fight less, crime is down, the city feels cleaner.
If you are moving to the Valley this won’t effect you much, but Hollywood (the city not the idea) is a totally different place than it was in '98. Some for better, some for worse. It isn’t a dangerous place to hang out after dark any more, but parts of it have turned into…bland chain stores and other horrible things. I think it has lost a lot of its character, and the Hollywood and Highland complex is an aweful waste of space. I prefered the giant hole in the ground that was in it’s place when I was going to High School.
Other Angeleno’s want to help me out? I am having trouble thinking of big changes in the last 10 years, though I am sure there have been some.
Well, Hollywood, the touristy part near Mann’s Chinese Theater, is not nearly the slum it once was.
That’s funny when I lived there, 1987-2000, I found that everything I wanted was in Burbank, Glendale or Pasadena, I’m not sure if I ever went into Hollywood/LA in the last 10 years (if I could avoid it).
Bear in mind I lived in Burbank and worked in Cypress, right down the street from Disneyland. So I put my time in driving.
Depending on how far you want to extend the range of what you consider LA, there is no longer any real empty space between LA and San Bernardino. In fact, the 210 extension to San Bernardino was recently completed and opened, which has made traffic along the foothill corridor worse, amusingly enough. But it makes getting to Vegas a lot quicker if you’re coming from either Valley.
Contrary to what others have said, I think downtown LA has grown tremendously. I realize the housing market has slowed down quite a bit, but I spent a good part of this summer working very late hours, and I was often surprised by the number of people you can now find milling about after 8pm. There are many more restaurants and clubs open in the Financial District. There’s a major supermarket open at 9th and Flower, and it’s nice. The Nokia Center and related shops and housing being built across the street from the Staples Center seem promising. I wouldn’t call downtown fully revitalized yet, but it seems to be well on its way.
The Gold Line, which currently runs from downtown to Pasadena, is nearing completion on its extension into East LA. I can’t even guess what the effect of this will be ultimately, but I hope it ends up being good for public transportation as a whole. Congress recently lifted the ban on tunneling that had been preventing extending the subway out to Santa Monica, but we’ll see if anything actually comes of that.
The Gold Line will be huge I think. And I would kill puppies to get a working rail line of some sort that went from Hollywood to Santa Monica.