Pleasure Pockets

You don’t have to read too many of these posts to realize that I’m not actually a great fan of Los Angeles.  It’s a city without a heart.

There’s no downtown as such – what they call “downtown” Los Angeles is a collection of high rise office blocks.  If you want the retail experience you head out of town to the Malls, if you want designer haute couture you head out to Beverly Hills; if you want tourist tat you head out to Hollywood, and if you want history then you head out of state.

Los Angeles itself doesn’t have an awful lot of inspiring architecture–the guidebooks will set you off on a trail along Wilshire Boulevard, with its rather faded art-deco collection of buildings; Olvera Street in El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Park, the original Mexican quarter can be walked around in half an hour.  LA is a vast sprawling metropolis and most of the tourist hotspots are good drive apart. Remember this is a city of 18 million people, all of whom have two cars. Something that looks a 20 minute drive on a map can still take two hours in rush hour gridlock.

However, it would be mean to spend nearly three years living here and not have a good word to say about it.  There are little pockets of pleasure in Los Angeles – you just have to look for them.  I like Angel’s Flight, it’s a bizarre two minute funicular ride that takes you away from the down and outs in Pershing Square to the top of Bunker Hill where you can stand and admire even more office blocks. It’s a novelty but blink and you’ll have missed it.

I also like Griffith Park – home of the Hollywood Sign and Griffith Observatory.  Over Christmas we took a walk around the north side of the park and you’d have never even known you were in LA. Hawks circled over head and a friendly coyote kept popping his head up out of the undergrowth.

When we want to go to the beach we usually go to Santa Monica. It’s not just the lure of the sand but because of the English Shop where we can stock up on essentials like Bisto, Orange Squash and Branston Pickle. However, now that our local Fresh and Easy has increased its stock of British goods, Santa Monica has lost its usefulness, so last weekend when the temperature hit  80 degrees, we headed to South LA and discovered Manhattan Beach.

The place was a revelation.  This was real So Cal living.  This is how I had imagined I would be spending my time when the idea of transplanting to LA was first suggested. We’d have a beach house in an urban village.  I’d be power walking or cycling along the seafront. We’d have a hub of restaurants and cafés, trendy clothes shops on our doorstep, surrounded by lots of fit young men carrying surfboards.

Manhattan Beach had me inspired.  I’d finally found a part of Los Angeles that I really liked, even envied. An eclectic mix of pastel coloured beach huts, high tech glass fronted uber modern apartments dotted amongst mock tudor mansions and a 1930’s style residence that looked suspiciously like a piece of Wedgewood.  A thriving community built around attractive winding lanes sloping down to the wide sandy beach. Shame it just costs millions of dollars to live there.

Maybe I have warmed to Southern California after all.  It just goes to show one should always keep an open mind.