Los Angeles

222 Pages·2017·13.88 MB·English

by  Rough Guides

Contents
How to use
Introduction to Los Angeles
Downtown LA
Northeast LA
East LA
Central LA
South LA
Hollywood
West LA
Santa Monica and around
Malibu and around
The South Bay
Long Beach and Santa Catalina Island
The San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys
Orange County
Arrival and departure
Getting around
Information
Accommodation
Eating
Drinking
Nightlife
Performing arts and film
LGBT LA
Shopping
Directory
California Basics
Maps
Small print
HOW TO USE THIS ROUGH
GUIDES SNAPSHOT
This Rough Guides Snapshot is one of a new generation of informative and
easy-to-use travel-guide eBooks that guarantees you make the most of your visit.
An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travel companion
when you're on the road.
Introduction to Los Angeles is a good place to start, with an overview of the
LA’s big attractions and a list of highlights. From the table of contents, you can
click straight to the main sections of the guide, which includes features on all the
major sights. You’ll find practical information on the country as a whole,
including details on flights, in California Basics. Shorter contents lists appear at
the start of every section in the guide to make chapter navigation quick and easy.
You can jump back to these by tapping the links that sit with an arrow icon.
Detailed area maps can be found in the guide and in the dedicated map section,
which also includes a full country map, accessible from the table of contents.
Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale
versions, or select different scales. There are also thumbnails below more
detailed maps - in these cases, you can opt to “zoom left/top” or “zoom
right/bottom” or view the full map. The screen-lock function on your device is
recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest
software updates, too.
Throughout the guide, we’ve flagged up our favourite places – a perfectly sited
hotel, an atmospheric café, a special restaurant – with . You can select your
own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights,
venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access
to everything you’ll need for your time away.

INTRODUCTION TO LOS
ANGELES
Highlights
Brief history
Thanks to Hollywood, most people on the planet have at least an idea of
what Los Angeles is like, though this usually involves lots of palm trees,
movie stars and glamour. The City of Angels, Tinseltown or just “La-La
Land” is the home of the world’s movie and entertainment industry, the
palaces of Beverly Hills, Sunset Strip, the original Disneyland, the Dodgers
and the Lakers and a beach culture that inspired California’s modern
surfing boom in the 1950s, the Beach Boys, the Doors and the Red Hot Chili
Peppers. Yet first-time visitors should expect some surprises, beginning
with the vast size of the place, hard to absorb until you actually get here. LA
is only America’s second biggest city in terms of population, but it’s stitched
together by an intricate network of freeways crossing a thousand square
miles of widely varying architecture, social strata and cultures.
Beyond the skyscrapers, Downtown LA actually has an historic Spanish-
Mexican heart and is a traffic-clogged sixteen miles from the hip ocean enclaves
of Santa Monica and Venice Beach – and thanks to high crime and gangster rap,
South Central LA and Compton have become bywords for violence and gangs
such as the Crips and the Bloods.
Bordered by snowcapped mountains and the Pacific Ocean, Los Angeles
spreads across a great desert basin. The entertainment industry has been hyping
the place ever since film-makers arrived a century ago, attracted by a climate
that allowed them to film outdoors year-round. Since then, the money and glitz
of Hollywood have enticed countless thousands of would-be actors, models and
other budding celebrities to cast their lot in this hard-edged glamour town, their
triumphs and failures becoming intrinsic to the city’s towering myths. Today LA
seems to be re-inventing itself again, as indie musicians, writers and designers
(many fleeing high rents in San Francisco) are colonizing neighbourhoods such
as Echo Park, Highland Park and Silver Lake, adding a bohemian and artistic
vibe to a city often stereotyped as being in thrall to celebrity and beauty. Beyond
the city proper lies the San Fernando Valley or simply “the Valley”, home to the
movie studios of Burbank and Universal City, while to the east, the San
Gabriel Valley is anchored by historic Pasadena and the lavish Huntington
Library and Gardens. To the south, Orange County features a strip of affluent
beach towns and the ever-popular Disneyland in Anaheim.

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< Back to Introduction to Los Angeles
THE GETTY CENTER
Highlights
1 The Broad This futuristic shrine to Basquiat, Hirst, Johns, Koons and Warhol
is a work of art in itself.
2 Hollywood Boulevard The vaunted main strip in Hollywood is packed with
gorgeous Art Deco theatres, tacky but fun museums, the Walk of Fame and the
home of the Oscars.
3 Golden Triangle/Rodeo Drive For high-end consumers (and avid window-
shoppers), this compact section of Downtown Beverly Hills, featuring jewellery,
fashion and beauty boutiques, is the main reason to visit Los Angeles.
4 The Getty Center A colossal, Modernist arts centre, the Getty is stuffed with
treasures of the Old World and is set on a hillside providing a great view of the
metropolis.
5 Venice Beach Trawling the promenade between Santa Monica and Venice is
an LA tradition, taking in the surfers, sand, musclemen, skaters and assorted
eccentrics.
6 Magic Mountain Kids might prefer Disneyland, but thrill-seekers should skip
Mickey Mouse and make for the mother of all rollercoaster parks.
7 Musso & Frank Grill This classically dark and moody watering hole has long
been a favourite hangout for movie stars of the Golden Age and today’s brattier
celebrities.
< Back to Introduction to Los Angeles
Brief history
The LA region was settled by Chumash and Tongva peoples thousands of years
before the arrival of Spanish settlers on September 4, 1781 (a date
commemorated by the LA County Fair each year). The 44 colonists from
Mexico decided to locate their settlement six miles from the San Gabriel
Mission, and named it Los Angeles after the Spanish phrase for “Our Lady
Queen of the Angels” (ie Mary, the mother of Jesus). Due to flooding, in 1818
the town was moved to the present site of El Pueblo, and in 1821 a still tiny Los
Angeles became part of newly independent Mexico. Even after being swallowed
up by the US after the Mexican–American War in 1846, LA remained largely
insignificant. Indeed, up to the Civil War in 1861, LA was a small town
comprising white American immigrants, poor Chinese labourers and wealthy
Mexican ranchers, with a population of less than five thousand. The remaining
Native Americans, displaced from the San Gabriel Mission, were virtually
enslaved by the growing number of settlers (a real slave market operated in LA);
they were often paid in booze, if at all, a dark period that is rarely acknowledged
today. In 1871, a gang war between Chinese tongs (secret societies) in LA
resulted in the death of a police officer – a notorious massacre of at least
nineteen Chinese immigrants by a vigilante mob followed (only one of the
victims was a tong gangster).
Boomtown: the 1870s to 1920s
Between 1870 and 1900 LA’s population exploded from just over 5000 to
102,500 – by 1920 it was over half a million. The arrival of the transcontinental
railroad gave the city a massive boost in 1876, with thousands coming to live in
what was billed as a Mediterranean-style paradise for clean living and, ironically
from today’s viewpoint, healthy air. Ranches were broken up into innumerable
suburban lots, and scores of new towns, like San Pedro and Santa Monica,
sprang up, largely thanks to Collis P. Huntington, president of the Southern
Pacific Railroad Company, and his son Henry Huntington, who laid down over
one thousand miles of tram tracks throughout the region in seemingly
uninhabitable areas with no real centre (the tram lines were later entirely
replaced by highways). Land speculators did the rest, marketing an enduring
image of Los Angeles, epitomized by the family-size suburban house (with a
swimming pool and two-car garage) set amid the orange groves in a glorious
land of sunshine. Yet in the 1890s much of LA was pitted with oil wells, peaking
in around 1901 with 1150 pumping for over 200 companies (the boom was over
by the 1920s, though some oil remains today).
All this development drained the city of the one commodity essential to its
survival: water. With the Los Angeles River exhausted, Machiavellian city
officials secretly began buying land and water rights in the Owens River Valley,
about 250 miles northeast of LA; by 1913 the longest aqueduct in the world was
delivering Owens water to the hose pipes of LA (the whole sordid episode was
dramatized in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown). Meanwhile, by 1912, movie
companies such as Paramount, Warner Bros, RKO and Columbia were setting
up production near LA, and the 1920s saw Hollywood entering its golden age.
Los Angeles hosted the 1932 Summer Olympics, confirming its arrival on the
world stage.
LA’S FESTIVALS
JANUARY–MARCH
Tournament of Roses.
Chinese New Year Early to mid-Feb 213 617 0396, lachinesechamber.org. Three days of dragon-
float street parades, tasty food and cultural programmes, based in Chinatown, Monterey Park and
Alhambra.
Mardi Gras Mid-Feb. Floats, parades, costumes, and lots of singing and dancing at this Latin fun-fest,
with traditional ceremonies on Olvera St, downtown ( 213 625 7074), and campy antics in West
Hollywood ( 310 289 2525).
The Academy Awards.
St Patrick’s Day March 17 213 689 8822. Parade along Colorado Blvd in Old Town Pasadena, or in
Hermosa Beach. No parade but freely flowing green beer in the “Irish” bars along Fairfax Ave.
APRIL AND MAY
Long Beach Grand Prix Mid-April 562 981 2600, gplb.com. Some of auto-racing’s best drivers
and souped-up vehicles zoom around Shoreline Drive south of downtown in the city’s biggest annual
event.
Cinco de Mayo May 5 213 628 1274. Spirited parade along Olvera St with Latino music taking over
several downtown blocks. There are also celebrations in most LA parks.
JUNE–AUGUST
LA Pride Mid-June 323 969 8302, lapride.org. Parade on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood.
Carnival atmosphere, hundreds of vendors, and an all-male drag football cheerleading team.
Playboy Jazz Festival Mid-June 213 450 1173, hollywoodbowl.com/playboyjazz. Renowned event
held at the Hollywood Bowl, with a line-up of traditional and non-traditional musicians.
Lotus Festival First weekend after July 4 213 413 1622. An Echo Park celebration featuring pan-
Pacific food, music and, of course, the resplendent lotus blooms around the lake.