Sights in Los Angeles
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Heritage Square Museum
Eight Victorian beauties saved from the wrecking ball were airlifted here to become the Heritage Square Museum , just off the Ave 43 exit of I-110 (Pasadena Fwy). You're free to walk around the grounds for close-ups of several impressive residences, including the way-cool Octagon House, a Methodist church and a carriage barn. The interiors can only be seen on tours offered on Saturday and Sunday on the hour from 12:00 to 15:00 (included in the admission price).
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Metlox Plaza
Many of Manhattan Beach's hippest restaurants, boutiques and hotels cluster in Metlox Plaza, a small and upscale outdoor mall built on the site of a former pottery. Besides the Greek restaurant Petros and a True Religion premium denim flagship store, there's Shade, the South Bay's first designer boutique hotel whose bar often spills over with starlets streaming in from the nearby Raleigh Studios where Boston Legal and CSI Miami are shot.
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Hollywood Wax Museum
Starved for celeb sightings? Don't fret: at this museum Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry and other red-carpet royalty will stand still – very still – for you to snap their picture. This retro haven of kitsch and camp has lots of monsters in the horror exhibit, plenty of stars in the sci-fi room and even waxen miniatures of the Capitol Records Tower and other local landmarks. Combo tickets with the Guinness World of Records Museum are available.
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Little Tokyo Koban
Little Tokyo swirls with outdoor shopping malls, Buddhist temples, public art, traditional gardens and some of the most authentic sushi bars, izakayas (taverns) and shabu shabu parlors in town. The community can trace its roots back to the 1880s, but only a few historic buildings survive along E 1st St; in 1996, they were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Stop by the Little Tokyo Koban for maps and information.
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Eastern Columbia Building
The 1929 Eastern Columbia Building is a strikingly turquoise art deco tower that originally housed a clothing store and was recently converted into luxury lofts by the Kor Group, which also operates Maison 140 and other fashionable hotels. Note the gilded sunburst pattern above the entrance and on the tower's clock face. One-bedroom apartments rent for $3000 a month; Johnny Depp allegedly bought the penthouse for a cool $2 million.
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Pasadena Museum of History
A palatial beaux arts mansion that once housed the Finnish consulate, this interesting museum now presents changing exhibits on some facets of the culture, history and art of Pasadena and its neighboring communities. If you want to see the precious antiques and furnishings of the house itself, you'll need to join a tour. The admission price also lets you sneak a peek inside a shed-like structure housing folk art from Finland.
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Grand Hope Park
A few steps north of the Staples Center is the small and peaceful Grand Hope Park . Designed by Lawrence Halprin, one of the country's foremost landscape architects, it was the first of South Park's beautification projects which began in the late '80s. It's often filled with students from the adjacent Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, a private college with an international student body.
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Ripley's Believe It Or Not
Life's pretty strange and it'll feel stranger still after you've visited Ripley's , where exhibits range from the gross to the grotesque. If shrunken heads, a sculpture of Marilyn Monroe made from shredded $1 bills and a human-hair bikini capture your imagination, this is your place. It's in a pretty cool building: just look for the T-Rex bursting through the rooftop with a clock in its fangs whose hands run backwards.
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Grier Musser Museum
Fans of Victoriana will get their fill at the Grier Musser Museum inside a beautiful Queen Anne home with intricate woodwork and luscious stained glass. It's stuffed with antiques and yesteryear's knickknacks, including a neat 1909 windup Victrola phonograph that still works. To keep things dynamic, the dedicated staff puts together monthly exhibits usually revolving around a holiday theme. The Christmas one is famous.
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Descanso Gardens
Descanso Gardens put on a dazzling show all year, but especially so in January and February when some 34,000 camellias brighten the LA winter, some as tall as 20ft. In spring lilacs perfume the air, followed by roses in summer. It's easy to spend a whole day amid the greenery, waterways and bird sanctuary. The gardens are in La Cañada–Flintridge, about 6 miles northwest of Pasadena at the foot of the Angeles Crest Hwy.
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Pasadena Museum of California Art
The Pasadena Museum of California Art is a progressive gallery dedicated to art, architecture and design created by California artists since 1850. Shows change every few months and have included masterpieces by Maynard Dixon, collages by Beatnik artist Jess, and vinyl toys by Gary Basemen, David Gonzales and other artists. Also swing by the Kosmic Kavern, a spray mural by Pop artist Kenny Scharf, in the garage.
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California Heritage Museum
For a trip back in time, check out the latest exhibit at the California Heritage Museum, housed in one of Santa Monica's few surviving grand Victorian mansions. Curators do a fine job presenting pottery, colorful tile, Craftsman furniture, folk art, vintage surfboards and other fine collectibles in as dynamic a fashion as possible. To see locals at play, come during the Sunday morning farmers market in the museum's parking lot.
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Southern California Institute of Architecture
The Arts District got a nod of respectability when the Southern California Institute of Architecture moved into the former Santa Fe Freight Yard in 2001. It's a progressive laboratory whose faculty and students continually push the envelope in architectural design. You can see some of the results in the gallery or attend a lecture or film screening; call or see the website for upcoming events.
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Annenberg Space for Photography
This fine, camera-shaped museum is just east of Westwood, in the skyscraper village known as Century City. Parking is $3.50 from Wednesday to Friday, $1 on Saturday and Sunday or after 4:30pm daily.
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Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels Church
Architect José Rafael Moneo mixed Gothic proportions with bold contemporary design for the main church of LA's Catholic Archdiocese. Built in 2002 it teems with art, and soft light through alabaster panes lends serenity. Tours (1pm Monday to Friday) and recitals (12:45pm Wednesday) are both free and popular. Unless you're coming for Mass, weekday parking is expensive – $4 per 15 minutes ($18 maximum) until 4pm, $5 on Saturday.
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Fort MacArthur Military Museum
Just north of Point Fermin, in Angels Gate Park, are the Korean Friendship Bell , a gift from South Korea to the US government, and the Fort MacArthur Military Museum , an LA harbor defensive post until 1945. Unless you're a total pacifist, bring your kids to scale the gun batteries and search for secret tunnels, while you study up about yesteryear to the sound of toe-tapping big-band music.
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Ennis-Brown House
The spectacular Ennis-Brown House is one of Frank Lloyd Wright's four Mayan-inspired 'textile block' houses in LA. Unfortunately, it was deemed unsafe in 2004 and remains closed pending restoration. Wright influenced any number of architects, including Austrian immigrant Richard Neutra, whose nearby Lovell House featured prominently in LA Confidential; it's not open to the public.
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Los Angeles Theater
The most ridiculously lavish movie palace on the strip is the 1931 Los Angeles Theater. The soaring lobby is a sparkling hall of mirrors with a three-tiered fountain, crystal chandeliers and a grand central staircase leading to a lavish auditorium where Albert Einstein and other luminaries enjoyed the premiere of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. Restored, it presents special events and screenings.
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Travel Town Museum
The delightful outdoor Travel Town Museum displays dozens of vintage railcars and locomotives, the oldest one from 1864. Kids are all smiles imagining themselves as engineers, clambering around the old-timey iron horses or riding a miniature train. A huge hall holds historical fire engines and a model-train network, which a dedicated local hobby club operates, usually on weekends from 10:00 to 16:00.
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Lightbox
Gallery-hopping in Culver City is the current must-do, with 30 galleries jostling for space along Washington Blvd and La Cienega Blvd south of the I-10 (Santa Monica Fwy). Lightbox, an artist-friendly enterprise is located here. The first Art Walk drew 1500 people, and the Exposition light-rail line is set to open in 2010. Before you know it, the artists will be gone, looking for the next new thing.
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Venice Canal Walk
Just north-east of the Washington Blvd and Pacific Ave intersection, it’s a step through the looking glass from the traffic-clogged roar of Washington Blvd to the bougainvillea-lined bungalows bordering Venice’s once-plentiful canals. Wandering the narrow, impossibly cute bridges and walkways, it’s tough to keep envy in check as dog-walkers, surfers and grandmas pass by, enjoying their tranquil patch of paradise.
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Pierce Bros. Westwood Memorial Park
Half the challenge is finding this postage stamp–sized cemetery. Tucked behind a commercial building, celebrity-filled Westwood Memorial seems the current Hyde Lounge of the postlife set. Truman Capote, Dean Martin and Marilyn Monroe – see the lipstick prints – crowd sanctuaries near the entrance while headstones for rabble-rousers like Rodney ‘There goes the neighborhood’ Dangerfield keep ‘em chuckling in back.
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Brewery Art Complex
The Brewery Art Complex is LA's largest artist colony, housed in a former brewery. There are a few galleries, but studios are generally closed to the public except during the biannual Artwalks (usually in spring and fall; call or check the website for details), though you can wander around to examine the large installations – usually works in progress – scattered throughout.
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Page Museum
Between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago, tarlike bubbling crude oil trapped saber-toothed cats, mammoths and other extinct ice age critters, which are still being excavated at the La Brea Tar Pits. Check out their fossilized remains at the Page Museum. New fossils are being discovered all the time, and an active staff of archaeologists works behind glass. Parking is $6.
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United Artists Theater
The 1927 Spanish Gothic United Artists Theater was bankrolled by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr and Charlie Chaplin. It's long been the 'cathedral' of the late televangelist Dr Gene Scott (look for the 'Jesus Saves' sign on the rooftop), now run by his wife Melissa. The only way to get inside is by calling the 'voice of god' to ask for a free reservation for a Sunday service.
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