The rambling metropolis of
Los Angeles sprawls across the thousand square miles of a
great desert basin, knitted together by an intricate
network of congested freeways between the ocean and the
snowcapped mountains. Its colorful melange of shopping
malls, palm trees and swimming pools is both mildly
surreal and startlingly familiar, thanks to the celluloid
self-image that it has spread all over the world.
LA
is a young city; in the mid-19th century, it was a community of white American
immigrants, poor Chinese laborers and wealthy Mexican
ranchers, with a population of less than 50,000. Only on
completion of the transcontinental railroad in the 1880s
did it really begin to grow, as a national mecca for good
health, clean living, plentiful sunshine and endless acres
of citrus crops. The biggest group of transplants were
refugees from the Midwest, who created a new political
ruling class to replace the old Mexican elite. The old
ranchos were soon subdivided, the population grew rapidly,
and the enduring symbol of the city became the
family-sized suburban house (with swimming pool and
two-car garage). The biggest boom came after World War II
with the mushrooming of the aeronautics industry.
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The first-time visitor
may well find Los Angeles thrilling and threatening in
equal proportions; it's a place that picks you up and
sweeps you along whether you want it to or not. While it
has its fine-art museums, California cuisine and a few
old-fashioned urban plazas, what people really come here
for is to experience the city that has come to epitomize
the American Dream the fantasy worlds of Disneyland and
Hollywood, as well as the gilded opulence of Beverly Hills
and Malibu.
With only limited space
between the desert, the mountains and the ocean, LA has
long since filled in the gaps between what were once
small and isolated towns. As a result, it's a massive
conglomeration of interconnected, amorphous districts,
often with little in common.
If LA has a heart,
however, it's downtown, in the center of the basin. It
offers a taste of almost everything you'll find
elsewhere around the city, from upscale avant-garde art
along Bunker Hill to the abject dereliction of Skid Row
in the Eastside, compressed into an area of small,
easily walkable blocks. The area around downtown
contains some decaying Victorian suburbs, 1920s Art Deco
buildings and the center of LA's enormous and growing
Hispanic population.
Heading west from
downtown to the coast, the first major district you come
to, Hollywood, has streets caked with movie legend --
even if the genuine glamor is long gone. Adjoining West
LA is home to the city's newest money, shown off in
Beverly Hills and along the Sunset Strip. Santa Monica
and Venice to the west are the quintessential seafront
LA of palm trees, white sands and laid-back living,
while the coastline itself stretches another 20 miles
northwest to glamorous Malibu, home to the movieland
elite.
Suburban Orange County,
to the southeast, holds little of interest apart from
Disneyland and a handful of laid-back beach towns. On
the far side of the northern hills lie the San Gabriel
and San Fernando valleys, or simply "the Valley."
For budget accommodations in the Los Angeles area.
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