Los Angeles is huge -- everything from Beverly Hills to Bel Air can be considered LA. So there’s lots of area to cover and destinations to choose from. Don’t make one of them downtown.
Just east of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, DTLA proper is where you’ll get your typical skyline and city blocks. But there’s a reason you don’t picture any kind of skyline when you think of Los Angeles: downtown is not a great place.
With so many other sights to see in southern California, I’m surprised I even made it downtown, but it only took one night to turn me off forever. For one thing, nothing is very close together. I live in a city full time (albeit, a small one) but I’m used to being able to walk a few blocks and get where I’m going. It’s not like that in LA -- financial buildings are mixed with restaurants are mixed with pharmacies. It doesn’t make sense.
That, and I didn’t feel totally comfortable walking around once the sun went down, and I’m a fairly confident city dweller. The clientele definitely decreases in quality once the work day is over; my group of girlfriends and I entered a parking garage at 8 p.m. and speed-walked to our parked SUV.
Though an unfortunate fact, the homeless population in Los Angeles is no joke; as of this month, 53,000 people currently live without a home in LA. Skid Row is very much a thing -- and it’s not somewhere you want to hang out for an extended period of time (or any time at all).
We, of course, encounter the homeless in pretty much any major city, but the tent communities I drove past in downtown LA were something else entirely. While I'm not judging a population's inability to make ends meet, this type of environment is not necessarily a vacation bucket list option.
More to the point, DTLA just doesn’t really offer much. Ask yourself what you know about the city center. Is it known for food? Art? Any culture at all? No, not really.
But in case anyone’s wondering, I’ll go ahead and name some places I actually did enjoy in downtown Los Angeles.
The Last Bookstore is an Instagram’s dream and honestly one of the best places I’ve ever visited. Take that with a grain of salt, though, because I write for a living and consider books more precious than most children.
I landed four novels for a collective $9.00 and consider that one of my life’s greatest achievements.
Perch is a great place for dinner, perched on top of a skyscraper and offering sub-par views, but views nonetheless. I ate a ravioli dish called “Little Bunny Frou Frou” and I’d eat it again and again.
My advice is the same as it usually is: Stop in DTLA for a quick visit if you must, but please go see the rest of Los Angeles instead.