Downtown Life, Part Deaux
Today I went out to get an oversized get-well card at lunch for a co-worker struck with appendicitis. This took me out of my little bubble in the "Historic Core" and put me in the Bunker Hill area. Bunker Hill originally was the first suburb of LA, filled with grand mansions (some of which have been moved to Heritage Square off the Pasadena Freeway) of the elite of Los Angeles, the owners of the buildings in the business area down the hill. By the thirties and forties, most of these places were either gone or chopped up into rooming houses (rent "Kiss Me Deadly" or "Dead Ringer" for a pretty good look at what it was like back in the day..) and in the sixties the city decided that the area was ripe for revitalisation. This meant a lot of very sterile new towers plonked in very sterile plazas, some of which were very nice examples of that they are, some of which were awful: completely turning away from the street, creating blocks and blocks that to this day are about as inviting as death valley. There are attractions, MoCA, The Disney Concert Hall, The Los Angeles Music Center, to name a few, as well as some restaurants that range from pretty good (Ciudad, Cicada) to IMHO massively overrated (anything Patina Group). The mall I went to was the one featured in "Earthquake", a depressing 70's affair, mostly underground. I got the card and a really indifferent Fettuccine Alfredo.
One of the big new things in downtown is the "adaptive reuse" of office buildings. It started in the area I work in, and has moved into the Bunker Hill/ Financial district. The Standard Hotel opened a branch of it's tragically hip chain in an old office building on Flower, practically right next to Pegasus Lofts, in the old Mobil Oil building. Personally, If I want to pay through the nose for a dinky apartment in a noisy, overcrowded area close to skid row, I'll move back to New York, but that's what 20 years in BH will do to you...
I have to admit, this is not my favorite part of the city, but it's certainly worth a look.....
Monday, August 21, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Thanks for the continued tour and the links. BH doesn't seem enormously appealing for a walking tour destination, but I definitely do want to get to MoCA. A good LA friend has spoken highly of Ciudad.
BTW, I checked on the net to see what the Lesbian Capital of the US could be. I sort of thought it might be Durham, NC where I went to undergrad, but the first site I found said it's North Hampton, MA. Yes?
You're sleuthy!
Yes, it is Northampton. Frankly, although I live here, Beverly Hills is not great for a walking tour; it's actually rather disappointing. The shopping part of Rodeo is only 3 blocks long, and if you've been anywhere at all, how great can a Pradaa store be? It's lost all of the BH-only stores it had either to closure (Giorgio) or having moved (Carroll & Co). The rest of the shops are pretty much what you'd see anywhere else in the world: Gap, Pottery Barn, etc. There are some nice restaurants, it's very clean and there are more Rolls and Lamborghini's on the street than you'll ever see in your life. I'd rather spend the day doing MoCa (both- there's the one in Grand and the one on 1st St in Little Tokyo), shopping Santee Alley for perfumes and getting lunch in Chinatown. I'm sure you Starbucks and Saks at home...
Although there is a killer Farmer's Market on Sunday...
Betw/ grad school and then DH's gypsy prof. years, we moved one hell of a lot. I had only lived in two places in the US before that (Durham for undergrad and then NYC), but I came to realize my litmus test for whether or not I would like a place was how many book stores it had, how large its gay or lesbian community was and how much I could get away w/ minimal driving (I'm a lousy driver). We're stuck in NC now, but I continue to hope against hope that we can escape to a place that fits those criteria. My ideal is NYC, but I'm afraid it's not DH's and it's prohibitively expensive now. I now plan on checking out Northampton.
The reason I have yet to visit LA is because the amount of driving that would be required gives me pause. I like being able to walk everywhere, or at least take a subway. But there are a fair number of things I want to see in and around LA (mostly involving art and architecture...and SIP) so it remains on my "must visit soon" list.
Actually, a lot of LA is surprisingly walkable, once you are in the neighborhood that you want to get to, and the public transportation is much better than it's reputed to be. It's not as good as New York, but it's not bad.
Northampton is lovely, but it's not cheap, and the liberal part of it is just the surface. But I am glad I grew up there.
My friends in LA do keep insisting there are walkable neighborhoods and say they'll drive me around, so my reasons for not going are diminishing.
Northampton sounds like Chapel Hill - a liberal veneer that doesn't go too deep. I'd like to move abroad, but in the US my two current locations of choice are Ashland, OR and Miami. But if I ever ditch DH (I won't), NYC would be my only choice.
That's Northampton, all right.
LA is a great big buffet. If you don't like one neighborhood, you can go two miles down the road and be in a different world. Within walking distance of me is hip, star-studded Robertson Blvd, Touristy-tacky Rodeo, and nexus of the Gay West Hollywood Santa Monica strip. Dowtown is a 40 minute bus ride, Santa Monica is about 45 minutes (and no, I normally don't drive to either- not just the price of gas, but I don't have to worry about parking or traffic.
You should come to LA, at least once. It's a city whose beauty is not immediately accessible in the way that NY is, but it's strange rhythms are wonderful on their own.
Post a Comment