Travel

Just back: Los Angeles

The notorious “June gloom” may have rolled into town, but there’s plenty of sunny news from Los Angeles, an always-fascinating corner of the world that these days looks to be on the fast track towards — or maybe it’s a collision course with — maturity. Anyone who has been paying attention gets it: The old movie colony isn’t what it used to be. Sometimes, not even a little. That new rail station above La Cienega Boulevard as you drive up from the airport, for example? That, friends, is the much-talked about Exposition Line, slated to eventually connect the center of town to the beach, out in fancy Santa Monica.

Los Angeles isn’t just building transit; people with a choice not to are actually opting to use the growing network. On occasion. And this is not the only seismic cultural shift one can observe around town these days. Angelenos are riding bikes, too. They are even — wait for it — walking, and sometimes outside of shopping complexes, off boardwalks and hiking trails, too. In a city that for years seemed almost passionate about keeping the real world out of sight and mind, the humble city sidewalk may just turn out to be the next big thing. (Turning right on red? Watch for pedestrians, bro.)

Where to find these brave pioneers, with their walking? Start anywhere there are good transit links, an add that often seems to lead to increased densification. (Imagine.) Places like Downtown’s lively 7th Street, for instance, home to a busy underground rail station. Here, once-windswept blocks are now filling up with bars and restaurants; the newest being the third outing by local star Ricardo Zarate, whose Lima-worthy Peruvian cooking is currently some of the tastiest in town.

But it’s not always transit. Sometimes, a neighborhood just gets awesome, all on its own. There’s no subway station at the corner of Third and Fairfax and there may never be, but the historic Farmers Market and the glittering Grove shopping complex behind it are the stars in a more vibrant than ever corner of town; Third to the west and Fairfax to the north both have more than plenty to offer, while just behind the Park La Brea housing estate, an increasingly destination-worthy LACMA stays busy into the evening with the addition of one of the city’s most likeable new restaurants, Ray’s, facing out on to a peaceful plaza filled with people, happy and at leisure — think Lincoln in New York, but affordable and, well, fun.

No neighborhood in town, though, begs to be strolled quite as ardently these days as cooler-than-you Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, where restaurants like Gjelina and Intelligentsia’s industrial-chic cafe serve as anchors for a week’s worth of window shopping, not to mention a lifetime of people watching. (It’s convenient to the airport too — honestly, this should probably be your first stop in town these days, particularly if you’ve been away for a long time.)

Speaking of the beach, after years of turning one’s nose up at the bubble-era same-sameness of it all, I finally checked into Terranea, a too-big pile of Spanish Mission-ish that proudly calls itself “L.A.’s Oceanfront Resort.” Maybe — it’s what, 45 minutes from Downtown, but there is a certain charm about barreling down the Harbor Freeway through perennially workaday San Pedro and onto the twisted road that circles the shaky Palos Verdes Peninsula, leaving the city far behind without going very far at all. And when you compare ocean views (and proximity to surf) to what you pay too much for up in Santa Monica, well, hey — no contest. Now, if only they’d run a subway to the front door.