Downtown LA

Hello everyone,

We had Chipotle for dinner one last time of the trip last night and then had an early night.

This morning we had breakfast at the hostel and then grabbed a coffee at the cafe from yesterday and went walking at Santa Monica Beach. It was a nice sunny morning and we saw lots of cute squirrels!

Afterwards, we bought a TAP card and a daily pass, and headed into downtown L.A. I’m lucky enough to have been to the states on four separate occasions now and have passed through L.A. during all four stays, but the only experiences I’ve had in downtown were changing buses and then passing through on a Hollywood tour on our 2005 trip, and attending the NBA at the then Staples Centre alone in 2017.

To put it nicely - downtown L.A. is gross, and a borderline scary in parts! There are some great gems such as beautiful art deco buildings and museums, but you have to put up with what honestly feels like a zombie apocalypse at times of people screaming and being intimidating in the street, peeing in the street and being so out of it I think they don’t even know where they are. As a result the streets are pretty dirty. I think the abundance of homelessness and drug addled people here speaks volumes of the difference between rich and poor though, which is likely worse post pandemic. It’s hard to take knowing that celebrities and rich people are living in the hills surrounding the city while so many people are sleeping and living rough here.

We caught the train all the way in and alighted at Metro Center/7th. This line from Santa Monica was opened in 2016, which is why back in ‘05 we caught buses around. We then walked past Pershing Square and some murals including two of Kobe Bryant, and some cops said hello to us. Rob replied “g’day!” and then they had a chat with him about the job over here. There were police and security all over the downtown area today. In a way this made us feel safer, but it also made me think about why so many of them are needed around the place….!

We then went to Grand Central Market where we shared some donuts and enjoyed the atmosphere, before heading over the road seeing the Angel’s Flight funicular which opened in 1901 and features in the movie ‘La La Land’. We passed Grand Park and admired the beautiful purple jacaranda trees in bloom and then arrived at the el Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument and square (el pueblo meaning ‘the village’). This is where in 1781 a group of 22 people from Mexico were sent to be the first Spanish civilian settlement in Southern California. They were sent to provide food for soldiers in the region and secure Spain’s hold on the area. This square was lovely, with cute buildings and flags and a vintage fire station that we had a quick look at.

Afterwards, Rob and I had a look at beautiful Union Station and he then caught a ‘Dodgers Express’ bus to Dodger Stadium for the Dodgers vs Washington Nationals baseball game. I had seen three other baseball games at this point so gave it a miss and instead stayed to explore more of downtown. I caught the metro back a couple of stops to where we started and questioned my decision for a moment, as a dodgy looking man cat called me as I left the station, and walking down the footpath in this area I was surrounded by people screaming and speaking gibberish. More baseball sounded idyllic at this point, and no exaggeration I later reflected that I think I felt more on edge here than I did in Cairo in Egypt (which gets a bad reputation and I’m not really sure why!). I think the other thing that contributed was having no tourists around as you do in Santa Monica, Hollywood etc. I was the only tourist around.

I went to the Spring Street Arcade built around 100 years ago and had a gelato from Uli’s. The shop itself was closed but they had a vending machine you could buy ice cream from. Everyone around here seemed ok, so after sitting and eating my ice cream I felt a bit more at ease again. From here I went to the Bradbury Building which was built in 1893. It was beautiful, with wrought iron staircases, open cage elevators and a lovely skylit ceiling. Apparently it featured in the movie ‘Bladerunner’.

My next step was the Broad Museum, which was opened in 2015 to house the art collection of philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. It was opposite the giant silver Walt Disney Concert Hall which I remember passing on our bus in 2005. I was lucky enough to get a free timed pass to one of Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms here, which apparently at some points in the year books out a month in advance. This one was titled ‘The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away’. There are a number of these rooms around the world of differing themes, and the one I saw today reminded me of a museum we were supposed to visit in Japan in 2020 that has since closed. I waited 20 minutes in the queue and got to enter by myself. The attendant told me you only got to go inside for 60 seconds, but the security guard got so caught up chatting to her outside that he let me stay in for four minutes which was cool! I got to really stand there and take in the lights and how far into the distance the mirrors in the room made them appear. It was beautiful!

I went upstairs for a while, but the museum was mostly art that wasn’t really my scene. I did enjoy Robert Therrien’s ‘Under the Table’ sculptures which made me either feel like a family pet or a small child being underneath furniture. I also enjoyed a giant balloon dog and some of the works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as another infinity room, this time inside a box and not as impressive as the first. However, my eye floaters went insane up here as all the walls were white, so I left and headed to my next stop, seeing the museum’s storage room en route.

The Los Angeles Central Library was next. Though the idea was started in 1844 as a collection of donated works in a town of 1500 people, the present site opened in 1925 and has withstood a couple of arson attacks and various stages of disrepair. Ironically, the disrepair protected its beautiful murals from the most recent arson attack in the 80s, as the grime covering it saved it. Today the building is beautiful from the outside, and a labyrinth inside. The murals in the rotunda depict various scenes in California’s history and were really interesting to look at.

Finally, I walked past one final art deco building called the Orvatt Building before seeing some really rundown old theatres that were probably once beautiful. At this point I was tired from lots of walking and avoiding dodgy people on the footpath, so I caught the train back to Union Station to meet Rob. All the chairs at all food and drink venues here were gone so as to discourage the homeless from loitering, but I somehow lucked out with an Amtrak lounge attendant letting me straight through. I sat here in comfort for an hour and then met up with Rob before catching the train back to Santa Monica together again. We had a crazy guy screaming his head off and throwing things on this one, and all of us in the carriage were very happy when he got off the train, but only after he pulled the emergency alarm first! We saw a self driving car on the walk back from the station.

Tonight we are going out for dinner, and tomorrow is our last day so I will write one more then. Today was interesting, and I can’t help but feel that those who settled LA and created all these beautiful buildings would be pretty shocked at how dirty and rundown it is these days.

Love to all
Claire
Xoxox