The city used to pretty much end at MacArthur Park, which at the time was called Westlake Park. Then they built a causeway over the lake and extended Wilshire to meet the former Orange Street, which was re-named, and now reaches the ocean. It’s probably the busiest street in Los Angeles.
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Financial District, Westlake, Koreatown
Sunset Boulevard … been there, done that. Twenty-six miles from the river to the ocean. Los Angeles River … been there, done that. Fifty-two miles from Canoga Park to Long Beach. Santa Catalina Island … been there, done that. Twenty-six miles across the sea. Not much of a walk, but we deserved it after walking every mile of the Los Angeles River. So, what’s next? We need a project, just ... Read more »
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Wilshire Center to Norma Desmond
We’ve been having a heat wave, but we can’t let that stop us, so we have to walk either early in the morning or late in the evening. For the second day of this walk we tried the evening. It was starting to get pleasant, though you couldn’t call it cool, when we parked near the corner of Wilshire and Vermont. The first thing we encountered was a little bit of MacArthur Park here at this big ... Read more »
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The Miracle Mile!
When I lived in Oregon I’d sometimes see a bumper sticker: Don’t Californicate Oregon. I don’t think anybody with that sticker was referring to San Francisco. No, we all knew it meant Los Angeles, and the urban sprawl, car culture, clogged freeways and smog that have been LA’s trademark since the late ‘40s, or even earlier. And if I had to pick one example of what really got all that bad ... Read more »
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Beverly Hills
With the exception of Palm Beach in Florida, I don’t think there’s another town in America that says “money” quite so loudly or quite so universally as Beverly Hills. Sure, there are plenty of rich neighborhoods, but they’re mostly known by the locals. You can say “Beverly Hills” to anybody with a pulse, pretty much anywhere in the world, and they immediately form the same image: Swimming ... Read more »
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Country Clubs and Condos
We parked just down the street from the Beverly Hills “Witch’s House.” The story is that it was built in Culver City in 1921 and used in a lot of silent movies, then moved to its present location. It looked awfully big to move, but I guess it’s possible. I prefer to believe it was caught up in the same whirlwind that transported Dorothy Gale’s house from Kansas to Oz, only this house ... Read more »
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The Quick, the Slow, and the Dead
Sounds like a spaghetti western, right? I had expected today to be pretty boring, since I’d driven the route and knew we’d start the day going through the edge of the Military Cemetery and then the vast campus of the Veterans Administration. Not so boring as a golf course, I’ll grant you, but still. It just goes to show you that you never know what hidden treasures are out there until you get ... Read more »