So that's about L.A., and maybe it's a problem that's especially trying in L.A., but it's a generic problem. And it's not just a problem about how a resident deals with (and hears from) his parents (or siblings/friends). It's a problem you have with yourself when you travel.
Figuring out how to provide an authentic experience that isn’t challenging for visitors who aren’t intimately familiar with this city’s quirks is a true local struggle.... For my parents' most recent stay, I wanted to switch things up, focus less on tourist attractions and more on the places I find most interesting in Los Angeles.See what I mean? When you travel, you don't know enough to get to the authentic experience (a phrase I, absurdly, feel I should put in quotes but cannot, not without creating the wrong impression, that I'm snarking on the idea of authenticity). You may wish you could just mesh with the citizenry, but you can't. Even if you wanted to avoid the tourist attractions, you're aware that you've got limited time and you feel you ought to be using it, consuming something. You can't just stay in and read one day. Every part of the day, it seems, must be optimized for getting at this place you've gotten to. If you do fill that time or some of it with the famous attractions, you can feel that you're not truly in the place, that it might even be better looking at photographs of the place, because the photographs are framed to exclude the people thronging about, the people who are not even the people of the place you came to see. They are outsiders, outsiders like you. If you want less of you, stay home, where you are the only you there.
Now that you've made it through my Paragraph of Assorted Musings, let me assure you that there's a funny enough list of "What I told them"/"What they said" items at the link. One of the items is Intelligentsia — "It’s a very nice place with kind-of annoying people and great drinks" — which is one of the places my son took me when I visited him in L.A. back in 2008. I don't remember what he told me or what I said, but I do remember taking what I think of as one of my best photographs:
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That photograph would be even better if the woman was wearing a shorter skirt.
I am Laslo.
When friends from England came to visit about six years ago, I took them through the Central Valley to see where California's real riches came from before Jerry Brown destroyed it. Then we went to Yosemite where they got excited by seeing a bear. Then we went to San Francisco and Berkeley so they could see crazies and the beautiful Bay. Then we went to the wine country and to the home of Jack London, who they had never heard of. I bought them several Jack London books before they left for London.
He is a retired RAMC colonel and has taken me many places in England, including to Westminster Abbey on Remembrance Day where I got to sit with the RAMC in front of their own window in the Abbey.
I wouldn't waste their time showing them Los Angeles.
Apropos, because Intelligentsia is a very Midwestern company. An outsider, not at all "authentic" from the perspective of L.A. But, then what is...
I've lived in L.A. and I'm don't know where to take people. See the sunset in Santa Monica? Drive up to Santa Barbara? Knott's Berry Farm? I used to say go see Jay Leno tape the Tonight Show.
Honestly, living in L.A., especially in the Valley is like living at the airport.
Glenn,
It does have a sort of massive airport feel to it. Good observation.
I've been to L.A. many many times on business and, quite frankly, I still don't know where L.A. is. I don't hate the place, but it does baffle me. The center does not hold, so to speak.
What I meant about L.A. baffling me (see above) is this. Where ever I live or where I'm visiting, I form a mental map of the place. I think everyone does this. I "pattern" the place in my heads. Dogs do this when they're riding in your car, they're looking out the window and "patterning" the landscape: which is why they have such a remarkable ability, sometimes, to find their way home when they're lost. I've never been able to do this in L.A. even though I've driven all around it. That city defies patterning, at least in me. I often have no good sense of where I am or in what direction I'm traveling. I can't "fix" a pattern.
I grew up in LA. More specifically, in the West LA area, more or less bounded by the Baldwin Hills on the south, the Santa Monica Mountains on the north and the ugly urban core on the east. I can't imagine getting lost there, but then I have the important streets and freeways pretty deeply imprinted in my brain. At the same time, there are huge areas of it I'm not familiar with, that I've never had a good reason to spend time in, and likely never will. I left when I graduated from college, and never came back except to visit family.
I understand the angst of trying to find something to do when family or friends visit, but if you can't find something in LA, you're not trying very hard, or your mind is made up that there's nothing interesting there (i.e. you're probably from New York). Try finding something exciting to do in Southern Maryland in July.
When we visited our son in Los Angeles, I made sure we got down to the Port of Long Beach. The giant container ships, the thousands of "boxes," the cranes and trucks and rail lines that put them on their way to just about anywhere in the U.S.A., a place where the word "globalization" becomes real. We may have passed the exact spot our TV (and half our car) passed through.
I came to LA in 1956 to go to college and it was magical place. I loved it. No more.
I would as soon live in Guadalajara. In fact, they are probably very similar.
I am edging toward Arizona if I can get my children to approve.
Musings of an agoraphobic old women.
"I made sure we got down to the Port of Long Beach. "
Owned by China.
I worked this out by not scheduling myself. I'd mosey around until I found an area I liked and then I'd stay there for a longer period of time. It helps if you are younger and/or are more open to meeting locals and stepping outside your regular identity and set of experiences in true 'travel' mode. Otherwise you end up buying stuff and eating things, which you can do anywhere.
Another approach is to have a real reason to go to your destination: to hike, to learn, to experience a certain music scene or spiritual occasion of some kind. (On that note, Emilio Estevez's "The Way" nicely captures the feeling of a pilgrimage trek through Europe. "Mile...Mile and a Half" does the same for hiking Yosemite. It always helps if you play an instrument.
It's interesting though. My sister is a big traveler and even when she's home, she's in the mode you describe: Always working to get to the next place to see what's there. She doesn't really enjoy just hanging out and reading.
Imo, LA has nothing to see for anyone over 'scene' age who isn't in the Industry, but that's just me. I'd take friends clubbing, maybe a show or an 'event,' Venice or Malibu depending, places to eat where they might spot a celeb, even to work or to see a show or video dance rehearsal - anything like that. Shopping on Rodeo or Melrose. Now, the trendier areas are further inland (Echo Park).
If Intelligentsia is first on your list of must-go-to LA destinations, you have a stunted sense of "must," "go-to," "LA," and "destination."
This is very timely since our son is on a one-year TDY in LA and we plan to visit him and maybe drive out to the Grand Canyon for a couple days. After being used to upper 80 to low 90 temperatures on the Atlantic beaches in July I'm not sure I'm up for the high of 77 predicted for Hermosa Beach today.
Wife and I have seen the La Brea tar pits. There's a wonderful museum onsite. I wonder how many people note the location -- fronting on Wilshire Blvd just a couple blocks from its intersection with Rodeo Drive -- and think it's a man-made tourist attraction?
@Roger Sweeny, I'm less interested in the container ships than in the battleship Iowa and the Queen Mary moored down by the Port of Long Beach. Did you see them? Are they worth a trip?
I had a girlfriend here in Seattle who was fascinated by serial killers. Being that the Seattle area was home to Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway it sort of makes sense.
She would take me on leisurely tours of Seattle and the surrounding areas and visit the places where Ted Bundy picked up his women and where Gary Ridgway buried HIS women.
Then she would want to have sex. Right there. On the spot. Now.
We had sex by dumpsters in the alley by where Ted Bundy had picked up one victim, she gave me a blow-job in the back pool room of Dante's Bar: some places we visited two times, three times, or more.
On one of the visits to Ridgway's sites we were having sex, with her on her hands and knees, and she suddenly got very excited -- she thought she had found a small piece of a victim's bone in the dirt. It turned out to be the remains of a small animal, but she took the bone with her, anyway, saying it was all spiritually connected.
At another site she asked me to choke her gently as we had sex by the Green River, and -- although that wasn't a favorite in my sexual repertoire -- I complied: what can I say? It made her happy. She would giggle like a small child.
Then the "what if?" games started.
"What if we took a young girl out to one of these spots and strangled her? Would that turn you on?"
"What if we took a young girl out to one of these spots and you had sex with her, and then we strangled her?"
"What if we took a young girl out to one of these spots and WE had sex with her, and then we strangled her?"
The subject made me uncomfortable, made only more so when she asked "What if it was her room-mate?"
Part of my uncomfortableness was that her room-mate was HOT. Sure, I'd like to have sex with her, but -- No -- I didn't want to strangle her in the woods and then come back a year later to look for her skull: I know the difference between Right and Wrong.
On one of our final trips we were at a Ridgway site where she pretended she was dead while I fucked her. Then she asked me to bury her a little. I said I didn't have a shovel but she replied that she had put one in the trunk of the car, so: I buried her a little.
Anyway, our relationship lost its steam once it was clear that I didn't really want to strangle her room-mate to death, and we drifted apart.
Maybe, somewhere out there, she will find the man of her Dreams who will make all her Wishes come True.
I am Laslo.
"(a phrase I, absurdly, feel I should put in quotes but cannot, not without creating the wrong impression, that I'm snarking on the idea of authenticity)"
To get the distancing suspend-judgment but non-snarky effect, I suggest you use triple quotes.
Anyway, trying to see authentic LA makes for a very short trip.
There isn't one L.A....there are dozens of them. Do you want the authentic Hispanic experience? The suburban Yuppie? South Central Black?
Also, there is no permanence in L.A. When my Dad lived in Compton, it was almost exclusively White. Then it became Black. Today Compton is dominated by Hispanics.
Well, I just got into town about an hour ago
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows
Are you a lucky little lady in the City of Light
Or just another lost angel?
City of Night, City of Night,
City of Night, City of Night, woo, c'mon
L.A. Woman, L.A. Woman
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
Drive through your suburbs
Into your blues, into your blues, yeah
Into your blue-blue Blues
Into your blues, oh, yeah
I see your hair is burnin'
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin' down your freeway
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars,
The topless bars
Never saw a woman...
So alone, so alone
So alone, so alone
Motel, money, murder, madness
Let's change the mood from glad to sadness
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Got to keep on risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Mojo Risin', gotta Mojo Risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', gotta keep on risin'
Risin', risin'
Gone risin', risin'
I'm gone risin', risin'
I gotta risin', risin'
Well, risin', risin'
I gotta, wooo, yeah, risin'
Whoa, oh yeah
"the battleship Iowa"
I've been to the Iowa with my son and grandson. That was a year ago and they keep upgrading it, as they do in San Diego with the Midway. I've not been on the Queen Mary.
"we plan to visit him and maybe drive out to the Grand Canyon for a couple days."
Catalina Island is worth while. Avalon is a zoo in the summer, however. Weekdays are OK and there are nice places to stay and to eat.The boat leaves from LA Harbor next to the Iowa. Also, another boat from Newport Beach if you happen to be in Orange County. It takes about an hour.
Since when is it my obligation to entertain guests who choose to travel to visit me?
If my parents or siblings visit me, unless there is a specific request, they do whatever the hell they want.
Why is it incumbent on the host to find all the entertainment? Even to a neophyte, it would only take a little while to put together a list of great things to do and see in LA, more than could be accomplished in a week's, or a month's, visit.
Getty Museum, worth 5 days easy (1 for each building, 1 for the grounds).
Long, Hermosa, Huntington, Manhattan, Seal, Newport beach, beach, beach, beach.
Vietnamese shopping mall in Little Saigon.
Disneyland. Don't need to be a kid.
Disney Concert Hall w/wo the LA Phil.
Rose Bowl, just to say you were there.
USC and UCLA tours.
Coast drive north up to Hearst Castle.
Coast drive south down to La Jolla.
All except Disneyland free or nearly so.
And best of all (especially for us small town visitors): Watch the planes land from the In-N-Out Burger on W 92nd St. Heaven.
@john, if you ever visit, DC, Gravelly POint.
I had mentioned here before that MiL was visiting. We took her on a road trip during July 4th weekend. We were trying to psych her up about the fireworks. She was like, 'I have seen it all,' {which is kind of the reaction from most our visitors -- maybe they don't want to appear ignorant or too overly in awe of the big old US of A}. And then we saw it (in Wheeling and not even some big city big show) and she was very impressed.
You can't get the double cheese burger, fries and medium drink for $5.95 at Gravelly Point.
I spend close to 40 nights a year at the lax Hilton and venture away from there too infrequently. But on a recent stay we ventured on a quick strike up to Griffith Park and Observatory with great views of the entire basin and a short side trip to the nearby Bronson caves. On our return we headed downtown and had french dipped sandwiches at Phillipe. The mustard is to die for..That place rates a 10 P L U S .
@john, I second what pm317 wrote about Gravelly Point. The only way you'll get closer to a passenger jet landing or taking off is at the beach in St. Maarten.
And thanks for the good suggestion regarding the Rose Bowl. That's the only way an Illinois alum like me will ever get there is as a tourist.
:-(
"All except Disneyland free or nearly so."
Gas at $4.50 a gallon in LA.
Catalina Island was fun when we visited it fifteen years ago. Wow, time flies.
"french dipped sandwiches at Phillipe. "
Phillipe's is great. I have been going there for 50 years. The owner lives in Mission Viejo, of all places.
An interesting place for dinner is The Pacific Dining Car which I go to for dinner after football games. It is open 24 hours a day 7 days a week and you can get a filet there at 4 AM. Just bring money. Some of the other famous restaurants in LA are gone but not that one.
When my mom came to visit us when we lived in Washington DC, we did two things: (1) we let her sit around and read to her heart's content; and (2) we took an overnight trip to NYC to see the city and go see "Spamalot" (the original production). A great time was had by all.
Big Mike, I commute by Gravelly Point to work and one particular flight path (all others follow the river) goes right over your head as you drive on GW and very low. It is so exciting to see that every time.
My MiL, visiting here for the 4th time and perhaps for the last time, in her 80th year was so in awe of the pilots (I liked that she noticed that).
Haven't been to the Queen Mary in a few years but on it's own it's not much. You should include a Ghosts and Legends tour or the Scorpion submarine. They had the Titanic exhibit there a few years ago and it was pretty interesting. The last stop on the tour put you on a platform at the rear of the ship at water level looking at one of the huge propellers, which was lit up by an underwater light.
The absolute scariest thing I've ever seen in my life!
Some of the other famous restaurants in LA are gone but not that one.
I miss Ships. We used to go there in the early morning, and eat and BS for hours until the regular morning crowd started to show up and they needed the table.
Unlike NYC, the LA area is a great place to live, but not so much to visit. Venice/Venice Beach, Marina del Rey, Santa Monica, the hipsterdom of Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Westchester (on the way to LAX flanked by Playa Vista & Culver City, Burbank, to north, Playa del Rey to the West, it contains Loyloa University on the bluffs, a VERY exclusive subdivision adjacent, The Howard Hughes Center across Sepulvada with Peperdine Univ West--all next to the San Diego Freeway, and of course at the other end of Sepulvada, LAX) or the Echo Park area, an area under hipster--all-dressed in NYC black hipster gentrification in mid 2000s, but now fighting a rearguard action against Mexican gang intrusions. Or the Arcadia (Home to Santa Anita racetrack) and Glendale area, or along the beach
(Redondo, Hermoso, Manhatten Beach, Torrance, Palos Verdes, Rancho PV--downtown, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air--you name it. And I've only scratched the surface.
In short, the LA area is to be lived in and experienced, not "visited." Just too vast and varied..
Was it Gertrude Stein who said of Oakland, there is no there there? It applies to LA. One of the most blank cities in the world. LA doesn't even try to be unique or interesting.
Some of the beach towns, until at least the early 70's, were interesting. but now its all a large parking lot, or just an extension of LAX.
I grew-up in SCal. and LA smells like evil. Bad vibes, corruption and nothing more.
Great place for car salesman, serial killers, and oh yes, Hollywood stars.
If you want to see the REAL LA, go to Tommy's on Beverly and Rampart at 2:00 A.M. on a Saturday night.
You'll see everybody that is part of the greater LA culture...cops, several different types of gangbangers, rich kids in Limos, college kids from USC and UCLA, ... you name it, they're there. It is one of the few truly neutral territories in LA. Everybody likes it, so nobody causes trouble and screws it up for everybody.
Not quite the icon it was before they started opening franchises. Pink's hotdogs is very similar.
"Raise your hand if this has happened to you: your parents/siblings/friends are coming to visit you in Los Angeles and despite having a full and happy day-to-day life here, you’re not sure what to do with them when they arrive."
All I need is a car and some gas and I can get all the LA I need.
There are a dozen different "Los Angeles experiences". Many aren't worth the trouble. Most Angelenos haven't even experienced more than two or three in any depth.
"@john, I second what pm317 wrote about Gravelly Point. The only way you'll get closer to a passenger jet landing or taking off is at the beach in St. Maarten."
But it's a little distracting if you're trying to launch a boat.
"Unlike NYC, the LA area is a great place to live, but not so much to visit."
Au contraire, as a non-native New York City resident of 34 years and two months, NYC is a GREAT place to live...if you can afford it. (Aye, there's the rub, as it's becoming increasingly less affordable all the time, with a concomitant loss of that which made it so beguiling to me when I moved here...great bookstores everywhere, movie theaters that played foreign films, revivals of old Hollywood and foreign films, experimental films, great unique vendors selling all sorts of weird arcana, etc., etc., although there are still great museums and galleries and a few remaining essential bookstores.)
I can see myself leaving here when I stop working as I won't be able to long afford the bi-annual rent increases on a fixed income.
"the LA area is to be lived in and experienced"
Most of the places you list require somewhere near a million dollars to buy a decent house or even condo and then, just to get the feel of the place, I suggest a drive on the 405 at the south bay curve on Monday at about 6 AM.
@john In my opinion, the Getty is a great set of buildings housing an extremely mediocre art collection. Compare with the Art Institute of Chicago for the opposite.
No, the Getty is an excuse to overpay a self perpetuating board of directors that happens to own some nice buildings and a mediocre art collection.
"NYC is a GREAT place to live...if you can afford it. "
I think that, as deBlasio dismantles the Giuliani reforms and the police, it will become less great and more affordable.
@Robert Cook/
What I meant to convey is that NYC is concentrated enough that many of the things you list (plus the tourist parts--Empire Sate, Statue of Liberty, etc.) can be experienced within a relative short visit, unlike LA, which is too spread out to be easily sampled within a single visit.
And yes, the Real Estate..but so also LA (and New Orleans as well..)
@Michael K/
Until recently (2013-due to ill health of my Mother-in-Law) we spent late spring & summer every year in LA (Marina del Rey) and football season (LSU) thru Mardis Gras in New Orleans and "big B.R." (lol) The stunning accelerating rise in RE prices since 2008 has been amazing to behold for sure... and we're presently paying 2.25/gal at SAMs for gas in NO/BR area, so there's that as well....but sure DO miss the year-round 70s temp/low humidity at the beach in LA. We could see the ocean from one side of the breeze-way of our third-floor apt at the Marina and the snow-caped mountains out the other...nice
Marina Del Rey is a nice spot to see LA. Orange County is a nice spot to avoid LA. Both have astonishing real estate prices that I just can;t believe will last forever. I sold my house in 2010 for $600k to move to the mountains. I had to come back for health reasons. My house that I sold is now for sale again for $723k. A house in South Pasadena that I bought in 1972 for $68K is now valued at $2.7 million, Too bad I didn't keep it.
It's just crazy. I prefer Tucson but my kids are here and are upset if i talk about moving there, especially at my age, However, there are great houses in Tucson for a fraction of what a condo would cost here.
For example in an area I know well and like.
If you have an authentic experience in an inauthentic setting, does it still count as an authentic experience?
When I had out-of-towners visit LA, I would take a drive on Sunset Blvd, starting in East LA where it's Cesar Chavez Blvd, and going all the way to the beach. It's a great cross-section of LA, going from poor but gentrifying ELA thru downtown, Olivera Street, thru Silverlake, Hollywood, the Sunset Strip, to the incredible affluence of Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Westwood, and on to the beach.
So, what makes a place "authentic" again? I'm with Robt C ... a drive along Sunset does give you a full view of the rich tapestry of L.A. I like heading south along Crenshaw or La Brea too.
It's so great that everyone else lives in such awesome authentic locales. So little culture or diversity here in La La Land.<\sarc>
Laslo, I'm on to you.
Her legs are crossed. Best glimpse you get is thigh in that position.
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