I never knew I had questions about L.A. lol, but yeah this is one of the more cool threads , I wonder if anyone ever did a similar one on NYC.
Declan
Is Glendale a “happenin” kind of place? How close is it to cool places if it isn’t?
L.A. is really, really huge and spread out. It’s just not a pedestrian-friendly place. “Walking distance” is a foreign term, from a foreign language here.
OK–in what way exactly is the mile of Sunset east of Laurel Avenue not pedestrian-friendly?
No sidewalks? Unleashed attack dogs everywhere? Cars emerging from garages every few seconds? Tiger traps? Huge hills and life-threatening ravines?
Because I’m not really seeing offhand what would be so challenging about walking a mile or so in a large urban area. I’ve lived in NYC, Baltimore, Boston, Syracuse, Denver and several other large cities, in all of which “You must have a car to get around, even for short distances, even in good weather–YOU MUST HAVE A CAR” makes no sense at all. Why is this true of LA?
Oh, we have sidewalks. And there’s nothing to stop you from parking in any neighborhood and walking around for a while.
It’s just highly unlikely that your hotel, the airport, and the places you want to visit will be within walking distance of each other – for example, Sunset & Laurel Cyn is about five miles away from Beverly Hills. Mass transit is practically non-existent, and you can’t flag down a cab on any street corner. Therefore, you’ll need a car. (And parking isn’t as bad as some people are making it out to be.)
Not really.
OK, but if I’m flying out to LA to interview people in West Hollywood, I can find a hotel wihtin a mile of the area I’ll mostly be in. Getting to and from the airport, I can get a cab, no? If there’s anything like public transportation to and from the airport, I’ll take that, but if not those are pretty common cab rides in most cities. And if I want to go to Beverly Hills, I can call a cab from my hotel, right?
I am going to cheat a bit–I have a pal who’s willing to hang out with me for a day or two, to take me to Encino and other far-away spots I need to visit–even he keeps insisting strangely on advising me to get a car for the other days. The funny part is that my (fictional) protagonist (in a largely non-fictional book) is a detective from New York City who refuses to get a car at first and hoofs it around LA, so in being a stubborn east coast type, I’m also doing research. I just want to find out what I’m getting myself in for.
If you’ve got the time, there are some great places to walk around. And that particular neighborhood has some interesting things to see (I think).
It could be, however, that when the guy you’re writing about lived in that area, the street cars were still running. I assume you know the history about how they were eliminated. If you go down many L.A. streets (also in San Diego) you’ll notice these excessively wide meridians in the middle of many boulevards. These were where the street car tracks went. In the early part of the last century 90% of the people in L.A. and San Diego used them to commute, were quite happy with the service, and the street car companies were privately run and very profitable.
Anyway, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t walk around some places in L.A. In that area, walk down the Strip on a Friday or Saturday night–you might want to stop in some clubs. For the old Hollywood scene you can dine at Musso and Frank Grill. (It’s a long walk–you can take the #2 bus on Sunset to La Brea, then go one block north to Hollywood Blvd.
I guess what I’m saying is that you’re right: walking around is the best way to get to know a neighborhood. On foot, you can check out (using a day bus/subway pass to go from neighborhood to neighborhood):
The Sunset Strip on a weekend night.
The Fairfax, including the Farmer’s Market at 3rd and La Brea.
Vermont and Hollywood
The Third Street Prominade in Santa Monica.
Hollywood Blvd. (mostly cheap souvenir shops).
Echo Park and Sunset
And there are others, depending on your time. I don’t know how long you’re going to be here, but you might want to just walk around some of the time and rent a car for some other times when you have to go long distances.
I’ll take you up that. I’ve been thinking about a hotel that looks to be a mile east of Laurel, and I’ll send you their website later on. I’ve got to leave now, actually, to conduct a walking tour of lower Manhattan, by purest coincidence.
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Ha ha ha ha!..erm, sorry.
Glendale has Porto’s Bakery and that’s about it. It’s a long drive in traffic from anything interesting.
If you’re a kid you might think the Galleria is interesting.
Glendale has the Americana at Brand, a mall with apartments and condos… if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s also right next to Los Feliz, which is a pretty artsy-fartsy part of Los Angeles.
As for pseudotriton ruber ruber, nobody “hoofs” it around LA. You may want to explore the public transit angle, although spending enough time doing that would give you plenty of ideas for another book…
Actually, the Tate murders took place off of Benedict Canyon, which is several miles west of Laurel Canyon, and the LaBianca murders took place in Los Feliz, which is several miles east of Laurel Canyon. You might be thinking of the Wonderland murders, which porn star John Holmes was suspected of being involved in. That incident took place in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood.
Harry Houdini may or may not have lived on Laurel Canyon
The perspective of a non-LA resident on walking vs renting a car.
I recently visited LA, I got there once a year but live in the Bay Area. On a Sunday afternoon I took an hour’s walk on Melrose and up residential streets just off of Melrose (near Urth, where I was meeting a friend) and I was the only person on the streets except for a dog-walker or two.
Then another morning I took a walk on Sunset, just west of Laurel Canyon. Monday morning 11 am, again I was nearly the only person on the street.
People looked at me funny. From their cars as they drove past me.
Walking LA is a great way to stop and get a look at a specific neighborhood. I really enjoyed my walks and I got a chance to have a look around. Especially near Melrose there were some very cute houses.
But as a means of getting around I don’t recommend it…to get from my friends house in Um…somewhere…over to Hollywood where we went out to dinner took at least 20 min. And then when the next morning we went to Santa Monica for breakfast, it was another 20 min drive.
As someone used to MUNI, which may be slow but goes absolutely everywhere, the public transportation situation in LA is appalling. If you want to do more than walk a few blocks, I think I have to agree, renting a car makes sense. I don’t think your friends are trying to thwart your research, just that they have experience with getting around LA and how to do it with the most convenience and least hassle.
If you want to get to know one particular neighborhood, walking can be fine. Some neighborhoods in L.A. are very nice to walk in. Some have already been mentioned. Another is Studio City, in the southeast corner of the Valley.
However, if you want to be able to go from one neighborhood to another – that is, you don’t want to feel trapped in a single neighborhood for your entire stay – then you need a car.
Ed
Exactly. My neighborhood in Westwood is totally walkable. I’m 5-10 minutes away on foot from a whole variety of grocery stores, cleaners, restaurants, book stores, etc. But nothing in my neighborhood is particularly noteworthy. If you’re coming to L.A. and want to see more than just some average houses and average shops, then you need to a car.
I’m a walker. I walk to local stores (within a mile) rather than drive. But I have to recommend that you rent a car.
The problem is that there is very little within walking distance, wherever you are. And unless you already know where you’re going, walking will be an exercise in (uh) exercise. There are certainly many places where you’ll want to explore on foot, but you need to drive to get there.
If you really want to explore LA in detail, rent a car. Explore by driving around. When you find some area interesting, get out and walk. Parking is not hard in most neighborhoods.
Exactly this. As others have said, individual neighborhoods are walkable. The Fairfax District, Westwood, Los Feliz (pronounced feel-is, I don’t know why), large sections of Hollywood, Culver City, parts of Santa Monica, Venice, much of Pasadena. All are walkable and all have lots of good stuff to see walking around and exploring. But Pasadena is about 30 miles away from Santa Monica and has some serious mountain ranges and other stuff in between. Santa Monica to Downtown is just as far (Downtown has all the good architecture).
And so, while someone might want to see, say, the Huntington Library, the Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach, The Farmers Market, The Chinese Theater, The Getty Center, and take an arcitectural tour of Downtown (a good trip to LA I would say, and all doable in a long weekend) if you don’t have a car or a willingness to spend hours on a bus or hundreds of dollars in cab fare, you can only do one or two of those things. And then you leave LA thinking that it is a cultural wasteland with nothing to offer the world, when the reality is, you just couldn’t get to enough of it.
LA is big. REALLY REALLY big, and public transport here sucks. You really should rent a car.
What part are y’all getting about the fact that the OP isn’t interested in touring LA per se, but rather is interested in spending a lot of time in a very small geographic section?
You don’t need a car. That’s just a typical Californian’s response to everything.
I not missing that point, I am saying that it is a mistake to only spend your time in a walkable distance around Sunset and Laurel. Unless he wants to do nothing but hang out at bars or with the Hassidim, there isn’t really much to do right there that is in walking distance. Beverly Hills is about 5 miles away from where he planned to be in West Hollywood, and while it is walkable, there isn’t a whole lot to see or do in those 5 miles. It’s a long walk with a lot of nothing between the destination points.
And where exactly did you discern that OP is concerned about touring a small geographic section of LA? Because nothing in the actual OP asks anything about touring LA at all. What I see in the OP are general questions about the topography and location of various neighborhoods and cities.
Perhaps you are confusing OP with pseudotriton ruber ruber, who purports to be doing research on a detective “hoofing” it around LA, which is without a doubt a farcical proposition.