Los Angeles Guide
Introduction to Los Angeles
It's almost impossible not to hold an opinion about Los Angeles, a city that's loved and scorned in equal measure. Some see it as a health, environmental, and cultural quagmire, its freeways, smog, and Hollywood drivel polluting countless bodies and minds. Others consider it the lodestar of urban America, its great diversity of peoples, culture, and geography woven into a rich tapestry that's far too complex to describe or dismiss in a few words. Indeed, despite the city's problems, for many residents there's no place in the country or world like it, a veritable crazy quilt of light, color, and energy.
Los Angeles is a model for modern city development, having traded urban centralization for suburban sprawl and high-rise corporate towers for strip malls. Although the city had a significant Spanish and Mexican presence through the mid-nineteenth century, it was only after California became an American state in 1850 that LA began to grow into a metropolis, marketing itself as a sunny arcadia full of orange groves, clean, fresh air, and wide-open space. When the film and aerospace industries were added to the mix in the early twentieth century, the place truly boomed, eventually displacing Chicago as America's second-largest city. Nowadays, LA's explosive population growth has brought a tumult of peoples and languages from nearly every corner of the earth to a freeway-draped landscape of glaring neon signs and towering palm trees.
Though there's plenty to see here, Los Angeles does not reward an attraction-oriented itinerary of dutiful trotting from one museum or exhibit to the next. While there are world-class sights on offer – the Getty Center and Sunset Strip foremost among them – the big-ticket sights tend to be separated by vast distances, and you'll doubtless spend much of your time on the freeway if you try to see them all. Rather, the best approach to the area is to experience those things that really make the area a great place to spend a week – especially the free-spirited bars, upscale restaurants, dynamic clubs, hedonistic beaches, and quirky shopping strips and boardwalks.
Surprisingly, many of these attractions cluster in fairly compact districts, from Venice to Old Pasadena, so you can leave your car in a parking lot or just use public transit to get there. To really get into the urban spirit, make sure to try a bit of unstructured wandering around the city's less glitzy zones, where you may stumble upon that perfect diner or funky shoe store, discovering hidden charms away from the theme parks and klieg lights.