Pro sports in LA
Baseball
The LA Dodgers play at Dodger Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Ave, near downtown; the LA Angels of Anaheim at Angel Stadium of Anaheim at 2000 Gene Autry Way, Anaheim in Orange County; seats for both $15–150.
Basketball
The Lakers (tickets $25–260, Clippers ($20–250), and women’s team Sparks ($10–55) all play at the Staples Center, 1111 S Figueroa St in Downtown LA.
Hockey
The Kings are based at Staples Center ($25–135), and Orange County’s Anaheim Ducks play at Honda Center, 2695 East Katella Ave, Anaheim ($20–175; t714 704 2500, wducks.nhl.com).
Soccer
The Galaxy ($20–125) and CD Chivas USA ($15–100) both play at the StubHub Center, 18400 Avalon Blvd, in the South Bay city of Carson.
Santa Monica
Friendly and liberal, Santa Monica is a great spot to visit, a compact, accessible bastion of oceanside charm that, incidentally, has traditionally attracted a large contingent of British expats (though many have recently left “Little Britain”, as it’s called, in search of cheaper rents).
Santa Monica reaches nearly three miles inland, but most spots of interest are within a few blocks of the Pacific Ocean, notably Palisades Park, the pleasant, cypress-tree-lined strip along the top of the bluffs that makes for striking views of the surf below. Two blocks east of Ocean Avenue, the Third Street Promenade, a pedestrianized stretch between Wilshire Boulevard and Broadway with street vendors, buskers and itinerant evangelists, is the closest LA comes to having a dynamic urban energy, and by far the best place to come for alfresco dining, beer-drinking and people-watching, especially after dark. Further south, another good stretch is Main Street, where the visitor centre is located (see p.841), and which boasts a serviceable array of fine restaurants, bars, shops and a few galleries.
South LA
South LA comprises such notable neighbourhoods as Watts, Compton and Inglewood, but beyond the USC campus and Exposition Park hardly ranks on the tourist circuit – especially since it burst onto the world’s TV screens as the focal point of the April 1992 riots. It’s better known as South Central, but LA City Council voted to change the name in 2003 in the hopes of disassociating the area with connotations of gang violence and economic depression. It’s generally a place to visit with caution or with someone who knows the area, though it’s safe enough in daytime around the main drags.
The neighbourhood of Watts provides a compelling reason to delve deeper into South LA: the fabulous, Gaudí-esque Watts Towers. Constructed from iron, stainless steel, old bedsteads and cement, and decorated with fragments of bottles and around seventy thousand crushed seashells, these seventeen striking pieces of street art were built by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia, who had no artistic training but laboured over the towers’ construction from 1921 to 1954. Once finished, he left the area, refused to talk about the towers and faded into obscurity, dying in 1965. Entry is by guided tour only, but you can still see the towers through the fence if you visit when it’s closed.
The Financial District
Until a century ago the area south of the Civic Center, Bunker Hill, was LA’s most elegant neighbourhood, but after a half-century of decay, 1960s urban renewal transformed it into the imperious Financial District, with colossal new towers. At the base of the towering Wells Fargo Center at 333 S Grand Ave sits the Wells Fargo History Museum charting the history of Wells Fargo & Co, the banking colossus that was founded in Gold Rush California, with old mining equipment, antiques, photographs, a two-pound chunk of gold, a re-created assay office from the nineteenth century and a simulated stagecoach journey from St Louis to San Francisco. Two blocks south at 633 W 5th St, the US Bank Tower (1018ft), completed in 1989, is still the tallest building on the West Coast.