Surprised at how beautiful so much of Los Angeles is

It ain't beautiful, OP. It was destroyed many years ago by overpopulation.

I don't think it's a beautiful city in general, although there are interesting and beautiful areas in the city limits. No, the city overall is cement-gray, largely shabby, with too much commercial space and too many ads everywhere, crowded with traffic and houses jammed too close together, even in wealthy areas. It's not an attractive city to visit, and doesn't have a good vibe.

There was a long thread about LA's dark undertone and the nameless dread that fills the city some nights, I've never felt that during any of my visits. But I do feel a vibe of stress and indifference, with the aggressive drivers and the houses of the wealthy closed off behind stone walls, in addition to the city-wide feeling of commercialism.

I don't think it's a beautiful city in general either - I am just surprised that any of it is.

Houses in cities tend to be jammed together pretty closely. I never noticed gigantic yards surrounding the homes of the wealthy in New York or London or Paris. LA is a lot more spacious and garden-like than those places.

And I'm unfamiliar with these stone walls of which you speak. In the hills they're hedges - down below, in the well-to-do areas, there are no walls. Chain link in the shabby areas is as much as I'm seeing.

I, like others, thought that LA was horrific after living in many large international cities.

Then I moved here from NYC....and fell in love.

Surprisingly.

While all places have their challenges (and LA is no exception), I have found a piece of paradise here and am appreciative every day.

(Saw Grey Whales out the window on Sunday....)

R4, may I ask... loving the place is one thing, thinking it's physically beautiful is another.

Do you think LA is beautiful, with all the traffic and concrete and so on?

Los Angeles is like a handful of cigarette butts and used condoms hidden in a Gucci bag.

Beautiful where?🧐

LA reminds me of London. Both are incredibly sprawling cities and both are so drastically different depending on which neighborhood you go to. London is a bunch of villages put together and LA is a bunch of suburbs put together.

I agree and I'm from London.

I also found L/A to be very beautiful in many ways - but it's sort of fake beauty, you get up close and the beauty is gone. The Hollywood Hills for example look so beautiful from afar but once you're in them there's nothing but houses built right onto the street, isolated unless you have a car...but they also have views of the whole city which also looks amazing from their vantage point.

R9, LA looks best in the spring assuming it rains in winter. Usually those hills all looked burnt.

[quote] LA reminds me of London. Both are incredibly sprawling cities and both are so drastically different depending on which neighborhood you go to. London is a bunch of villages put together and LA is a bunch of suburbs put together.

I agree completely and love both cities for different reasons. LA is massive but there is topography that is so unique and gorgeous. Malibu, Palos Verdes, the Westside, the hills, the views. I think there is a lot of beauty to LA as well as lot of just sprawl. Most people tend to stay in their bubble so it's good to live in a nice area. London to me feels more cosmopolitan, but I find there is less to do there because the weather is so bad. Having lived in London, I missed the LA weather and just being casual. London requires money to have fun. It's all about shopping, eating, drinking, and traveling. Both are awesome cities and hope to have a studio flat in London one day as well as my place in LA.

R11, LA definitely has beauty in spots. In a city like Chicago, there are definitely different neighborhoods but they are all definitely "Chicago". LA ones can feel drasitcally different from one another.

I've always thought it was a hauntingly beautiful place. Glad you appreciate it OP.

[quote] [R11], LA definitely has beauty in spots.

Agree with this. Its most scenic parts are abutting the ocean or mountains or hillsides. But yes, she can be a concrete beast in other parts, especially in park-poor areas with few trees (Koreatown, South LA, etc.).

[quote] London to me feels more cosmopolitan, but I find there is less to do there because the weather is so bad.

It's not so bad. It often doesn't rain for weeks on end. Rarely do I say I won't go out today because the weather's so bad...and there's masses to do and see without spending money. I've been here all my life and still discover secret parks and streets of great age and beauty. Nearly every village has something of interest and you just keep walking and it keeps unfolding - whereas most American cities have interesting sections but they end after a few blocks and you enter miles of suburban no man's land.

I love that thread r2

R7, lots of places. The Mid-city regions are surprisingly beautiful, with mature plantings, allee-like rows of palms and pines and gorgeous gardens. The housing stock is surprisingly varied and older than expected - a place like Spaulding Square, for example, almost seems like a set design.

The hills are full of magnificent places, but as pointed out above, they're unfortunately not walkable.

Downtown is seedy but has a great collection of Beaux Arts, High Modern and Art Deco buildings.

What people don't get is that LA is not necessarily a place where you land and fall in love with at first site when you get off the place. It's not like NYC or SF where just being in the city gives you a vibe that you can either really like or not. LA is so massive and really every type of community that you could want that you have to take time to explore it, which can take forever. There is the obvious beauty but there is a lot that can be found through exploration which takes time.

As a native, I do agree that there is a darkness lurking below the surface. Here you can find the best of the best, but there is very dark stuff, maybe the worst of the worst. The crazy here is darker type than a place like SF. With that said, I like that people are really open here, which I have not felt elsewhere. You can tell a random stranger you just went to therapy and then got fucked and they will have a story of their own to share. I like how open people are. You either resonate with that or not, but I guess that is true anywhere.

I've been going to LA since the 80s and have stayed for periods as short as overnight and as long as 2 1/2 months and styed in various parts of the area. Certainly there is an abundance of interesting archietecture mostly in the older, inner areas--nice mide cnetury modernism, some great between the World Wars stuff and the downtown area along Broadway with all its old theaters and retail spaces is a happy accident of history---it was neglected rather than torn down like the Bunker Hill area and gradually making a comeback. OTOH, the lush vegetation in place sis simply unsustainable and where you don't have it's easier to see how dirty the place can be. It's also very brown--noticable during the June gloom and dreary winter, but also equally obvious on bright beautuful days, esp. if you're hiking in the hills. The becahes are fine for summer suntans or surfing but otherwise pretty disappointing---one of the first things that made me question the LA hype, but over time other things have gotten noticable, the superficiality of the people, the difficult building real friendships (a common complaint even among people who've lived there for decades and like it), the ever worsening traffic. The heyday for LA probably ended somewhere in the 70s---housing had gone from cheap to relatively expensive and Anglo flight was underway although people were happy to have the benefits of cheap immigrant labor. The mystique seemed to be gone by the time I ever got there and it seemed like a place that just didn't live up to its hype. Fortunately, it's not like say, Atlanta, which always inflated claims well beyond reality and there many things to like about LA---the growing arts scene and the fantastic array of restaurants, but beauty is not something I think of with LA. Despite sprawl and congestion, San Diego--in teh more coastal areas still has a bit of that endless summer magic, but LA is basically a sprawlburg although at least not as dull as places like Houston, Dallas, or Atlanta. It promised the future, seemed to deliver it for awhile, but now its often a remindser of what the unintended consequences of a certain kind of future.

IDK, San Diego has a lot of traffic, is not much cheaper, and feels like 5 years behind LA. It's beautiful, but it's not this amazing, much cheaper alternative.

R18, that's true. LA is also not a great tourist city. It's not NYC or San Fran or even Chicago in that regard. It's a city you will like if you have a local show you around. Especially if they drive you.

I wouldn't 100% say that, R21 - it seems that there's a lot for a tourist to visit. And the museum culture, if you count the surrounding area, is extremely varied and seems more "plugged in" at the local level. I thought the Getty was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen, and I'm not much of a fan of the architect.

Gorgeous!

R22, but I feel that LA is not a place that is visited for its museums even though (I think) it has the most in the country. It's tourist appeals lies in things like the Hollywood sign, Hollywood Walk of Fame, etc. Most of the things promoted suck, honestly. I agree 100% about the Getty Museum (but the art there isn't that great compared to Chicago's art Musuem but that's probably an unfair comparison). The Getty Villa is even better. I think it's a city that is best explored with people who know it well, beyond a superficial level.

Where dreams come true!

I was born in downtown LA 80 years ago. When I went to school on the bus and we would all roll the windows down to smell the orange blossoms in the spring. The orange groves were everywhere.

My father made millions selling parts to all the tract housing going everywhere.

They ruined LA back in the 1950s. So sad.

R26 Tell us more! I bet it was so glamorous and fun back in the 40’s! All the glamorous Spanish style houses before all the ugly modern shit started being built. Are you amazed by how trashy it’s become? Do you still live there?

It has it’s pockets, like most cities. On average it is still a cesspool.

I loved L.A. from the first time I drove into Hollywood going south on the 101--the bougainvilla, the quality of light, the Mediterranean climate (just enough humidity, balmy breeze, in the 70s most of the time), and the Spanish feel of the place. The city lights from Griffith Park Observatory, the view when you come out of the tunnel into Santa Monica on the 10, the seaside restaurants in Marina del Rey, all the great little "villages" formed by streets like Melrose, Fairfax, Franklin, Ventura. I loved it for its sordidness and its glamour equally. Great fucking city, full of interesting people.

[quote] I agree completely and love both cities for different reasons. LA is massive but there is topography that is so unique and gorgeous. Malibu, Palos Verdes, the Westside, the hills, the views. I think there is a lot of beauty to LA as well as lot of just sprawl.

LA has it all.

As another poster mentioned, it comes off poorly for the tourist or frequent visitor. It truly takes a native or someone who has the time and opportunity to explore it all to understand all its nuances and complexities. I’ve been her not quite a decade and feel as if I am only scratching the surface.

LA is huge, a sprawl and its’ communities are exceedingly diverse and unique. It has it all: the good, bad, gorgeous and ugly. To dart in and out of the city, gives a skewed impression. When I would fly in from Sydney (while living there), I would literally become ill in the airspace above L.A. The sprawl, smog and psychological topography was just too much coming from Sydney’s more mid-mannered vibe.

But now, after being in LA and exploring it as I have, I have found a peaceful enclave with the best weather and natural views that parallel anywhere I’ve ever lived. I am on the coast in LA County and believe the weather to be even better than my home in Fremantle which I held as the Gold Standard Mediterranean climate I preferred and compared to everywhere I lived in Europe and the US.

We even gave up on Kauai holidays as the coastal weather here was much better than graveling to The Hawaiian Garden island.

That said, LA is not for everyone. But I can see the attraction to SoCal that I so long resisted. And while San Diego is nice (as another poster upthread mentioned), its psychological topography is MUCH different than LA. Following the Trump Era, it would be difficult to live in many US places that resonate with like-minded Trumpians, and this includes SD and Orange County.

If you are a native, there is kind of an inherent knowledge that you are from somewhere cool and people are impressed when you travel. Life in LA is very different, but also not. With that said, I have tried to leave LA a few times because I wanted to explore or see where the grass is greener. I keep coming home. I can't quit you, LA, although I want to many times.

I met an eldergay recently who is like R26 and grew up near the coliseum in the late 40's, which is an absolute shithole now. Not as bad as it was, but you don't want to go south of there. 70 years ago it was orange groves and farmland. I like hearing the stories offirst families, which is pretty rare to come by.

I grew up in the 1970s SFV and thought L.A. was pretty much the greatest place ever!!

The problem now is that even the really beautiful parts of L.A. -- the beaches, mountains -- are being destroyed.

Why don’t you LA people vote in officials who will clean up this shithole?

The point is that, in my opinion, you can never "destroy" a great city--it just keeps changing. I'm sure 30s LA had its romance, but so did every decade since, as the layers accumulate and some things go away forever. I don't know any other huge city at all, but I imagine that for every change for the worse there is one that thrills somebody.

Glad someone compared the sprawl of LA and London - village sprawl vs suburban sprawl is a good description, I always feel London - while mentioned in the same way as NYC - is more like LA in being neighborhood dependent and not easily traversed. The standalone houses and far flung areas of London make it feel too sprawling from a NYC perspective.

LA can provide a beautiful house and lifestyle. The mountains, ocean and sunset are uniquely LA and fabulous. The connecting tissue of traffic is the main impediment to LA - but there are some fantastic areas which are definitely beautiful.

My dad's family moved to LA from Indiana in 1922. My dad used to climb and play on the king kong wall. He said it was much smaller than it showed in the movie. He lived in culver city. I grew up there and moved away when I was 30. There are pockets of beauty but mostly it's just sprawl and a cold impersonal city. I remember growing up in the '50s there wasn't much traffic but by the time I left in 1980 traffic was bad and housing prices were already getting more and more expensive. When you are living there and working and commuting, there is not too much time to spend exploring and when you do find time, you have to drive there in traffic. I used to explore it when I first got my license and know most of the city pretty well. I watched a recent youtube video walkabout at Santa Monica beach along the strand there and it is now full of homeless tents. I live in a much smaller town in northern CA now and have never missed LA.

Los Angeles is a beautiful city OP. Don't mind the East Coasters, Canadians, or Brits that always feel compelled to trash the West coast.

You bitches ALWAYS have to bring up New York in every thread. So fucking tiresome. What does shitting on New York have to do with the beauty of LA?

Get over it.

R32 - I am obsessed with the Bret Easton Ellis podcast and his formative years were 70's, Sherman Oaks, and he talks about it a lot. I love hearing about the movies he saw from that time, the freedom of that era, even as kids. He went to Buckley. High school in LA in the 90's was a different experience than the 70's for sure.

r6, please, please marry me. Hard.

R6, At least they are in a Gucci bag and not a Walmart one.

r4, r30 - San Diego county overwhelmingly voted for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Yes, it was once a republican stronghold, but no more.

I think my view of LA has always been colored by its appearance in so many film noir episodes - gritty, surreal. From Barton Fink to Pulp Fiction, and Chinatown to Sunset Boulevard, there's always some elements of LA that are portrayed as seedy or tawdry, usually in juxtaposition to scenes of carefree affluence and luxury. My visits to the city are usually confirmation of this strange alternation. There is nothing stranger than going to the Midtowne Spa in the very worst part of Skid Row with tent cities of homeless on every side street for a mile or more- and emerging on the top floor open air area to see magical views of the skyline of the skyscrapers of downtown LA filling the entire horizon. It's like going from a screening of Blade Runner to a screening of the Wizard of Oz. Or to park on the green manicured campus of USC and walk to Exposition Row with its wonderful museums and parks, to emerge on Martin Luther King Boulevard and some very scary and sketchy neighborhoods beyond. Eagle Rock and Pasadena have some wonderful scenery and homes, but the routes to drive there are crowded and dangerous freeways with debris and litter on every side. I like to drive to LA from Palm Springs on day trips during my short annual winter vacations there, but I've never been inspired to investigate living in LA. I also think the water is basically barely potable, so that would be a deal-breaker for me in regard to permanent residence.

I grew up in the East Bay and my parents were very open-minded. I was the last of six kids and while they could not afford to put me through college, they made sure that I had every possible scholarship, grant, loan, financial aid, etc.. So, there wasn't an obligation to seek their approval for anything I did -- but I always sought it.

When I came out to them in 1983, my mom said: "Good! No more grandkids". My father asked if I would be bringing home Liberace for Thanksgiving before he spewed his beer out thorough his nose in hysterics. A few months later, I announced that I was vegetarian (except for salami). Then I was an Atheist. Then a Communist. Then I joined a quasi-Buddhist cult. Then I had an internship with a major pharmaceutical company and was trading stock options and complaining about capital gains taxes.

When I told them that I was thinking of transferring to UCLA there was at first dead silence. You could hear a pin drop until my mom said "I'll pretend I didn't just hear that". Dad, as always, was sunk in his chair, dressed in a SF Giants uniform like a 12-year old in front of the TV: "Honey, our (air quotes) "son" has taken too much LSD in Santa Cruz". He was mostly correct.

This subject would never rear its ugly head again.

LA has some beautiful areas - sure it has changed but much of it has remained beautiful - Palm Trees and fruit trees are still abundant and the daily view of the San Gabriel Mountains remains a thrill. Beautiful homes in South Pasadena and San Marino - Art Deco buildings in Los Felix, although I hate horse racing The Santa Anita Race Track is a beautiful structure. The Hollywood Bowl will open back up soon - Laguna Beach and it’s Art Deco motels - I think LA is still pretty great. This thread makes me think of that Randy Newman song “I Love L.A.”

R44 hello fellow slug!! The only thing i liked about la was the cheap tacos!

R44 and R46 I am from LA and went to Berkeley. My brother was at Santa Cruz, and I would take the weekend "party bus" from Cal to Santa Cruz and hang there. Good times!

r46, I lost my virginity in a shower stall at College Five (now called Porter College) and remain addicted to shaving cream. My room mate was from Specific Palisade with a "view" (smog so thick, you could taste it) of the LA sprawl, but the sunsets were beautiful.

Karma is a bitch and then you end up employed by a company based in SoCal and you have to go down there monthly. The only good thing about the COVID pandemic for me has been WebEx meetings. And no trips to LA.

One of the problems with "tourist LA" is that travel mags, esp. those targeting foreign tourists send people to the same places that were on I Love Lucy in the 50s. Hollywood (the seedy but somewhat cleaned-up business district) probably would have been bulldozed without the European backpackers. There are certainly other things to see, but they require a little bit of research and that's not what people expect from a trip to Southern California.

The compasion with London really doesn't make sense--London has more of a functional public transit system and much of the vernacular housing is essentially like rowhouses. It is more like Washington, DC, Chicago within a couple miles of the lake or maybe Boston than LA.

The "magic" that made LA the golden, trendsetting city of the future is really what's gone. It fell behind the ugly sunbelt sprawlburgs which incorporated its wost aspects (freeway-centric sprawl, visual monotony) with little of the good stuff. It fell behind the resurgent older cities like NYC and Chicago, as well as the middling cities that have had their day in the sun like Portland or Seattle.

I don't like iceplant and it's everywhere in LA. It gives me the willies.

Congrats, LA! This may explain that feeling of doom reported in the other thread.

Or it may just be that LA is better at reporting crime... Lies, damned lies, and statistics!

Honorable mention to SF!

R49, but London is basically a bunch of villages crammed together which is why it looks "disorganized" (in comparison to other European cities like Vienna, Paris, Madrid, etc.). LA seems like that too a lot of the time. And depending on where you go in London, the vibe can be so radically different from one place to the next. I found LA to be like that too. Maybe thats a product of horizontal sprawl.

LA is pretty off the main strip. The main roads are just over built.

I suppose it all depends on who you know and what you do in a city. I didn't find anywhere except Broadway downtown(skid row) all that "sketchy" or "dangerous." Sure, some places are poor, but those were areas my students came from, so they didn't seen frightening to me, just ethnic and interesting. Venice Blvd. is poor in places, but I used to go to poetry readings at Beyond Baroque, so the area seemed bohemian and trendy. Beverly Hills in places is what is cold to me--concrete, overly-manicured lawns, stupidly lavish shops hardly anyone goes in. Admittedly, I haven't been there in ten years, and the last ten I was there I had a loose work schedule so could avoid the traffic, but I used to find hundreds of corners of the city I liked to hang out in or visit on a whim. Also, it's not so much L.A. itself as the way you can drive 60-90 minutes in any direction and be delighted--Santa Barbara, Big Bear, Palos Verdes, Laguna, Malibu, Palm Springs, etc. Where I am now you'd have to drive four hours to get anywhere interesting. Yawn.

R51, those neighborhoods are all Skid Row. Unless you're hanging out on Skid Row for some ungodly reason -- and maybe you're someone who would -- I'm not understanding your sense of alarm.

r44, I’m from NorCal too. At our house, “Down South”(how we euphemistically referred to LA) was known as a water-stealing wasteland of endless traffic and without a single thing to recommend it. USC was regarded with particular disdain as something approximating the Whore of Babylon.

That made me laugh that like every neighborhood was LA.

You live in the most beautiful house in Brentwood and you don’t care if your clothes are stretched out from wire hangers!

They can’t tear down those ugly white stucco strip malls built in the 1950’s fast enough. Vile and trashy looking. Same for those 50’s ranches.

Catalina is amazing, especially when you are dating someone. Sleep, fuck, eat, drink, ride in the golf carts, go the the country style Vons. I haven't been in a while.

Can someone explain to me why the homes in Brentwood are more expensive than the homes in Beverly Hills and Bel Air when many of the homes look dated and the location is nothing special? At least in BH and Bel Air there are areas with good views and there are a variety of homes.

LA would be great if they'd just gather up all the homeless and drop them off on some island.

R56, and meanwhile, we never bother thinking of NorCal. It's a very one-sided relationship.

r51, S.F. is right up there with L.A.

[quote] and meanwhile, we never bother thinking of NorCal. It's a very one-sided relationship.

And naturally enough, I suppose. People in LA don’t appear to spend much time thinking about anyone but themselves.

I hate all the palm trees. They are not pretty just sticks with a poof on top and they don't offer any shade.

There's enough shade being thrown in Weho.

Troglodyte

I love palm trees - one of my favorite things about SoCal. Feels worlds away from NY.

I love the Palm Trees, too!

lots of sushi

i fell in love with LA AREA on an airline non-rev trip in the mid 80's with my mother to visit an old Cleveland neighbor who moved to Rolling Hill Estates on the peninsula. I love all of California, even with its "faults" and still pinch myself having my own place in PS now. This after spending working career in the mid-South and Great Plains!

LA is a fascinating, vibrant, complex city with multiple personalities. There are some spectacularly beautiful natural settings, extremes of wealth and poverty, architectural splendor juxtaposed against endless strip malls, dreamers, tortured souls, liars, and poets. Like New York, life in LA can be challenging. And, like New York, it can take a long time to fully understand and appreciate what it has to offer.

I really love SF. I think it's a wonderful city and I had a blast living there for a short time. With that said, the "rivalry" between SF and LA is completely one sided. Nobody from LA has anything bad to say about SF or at least not to go out of there way to say something. The same can not be said for SF.

My favorite time of year in L.A. is when the Night Blooming Jasmine blooms for 2 weeks in Feb/March. That smell alone makes the city beautiful.

But S.F./Bay Area is always stunning to me- the endless skies, hills, night panoramas, bridges, skyline. You have to drive around the L.A. area to get all those panoramas.

People talk about smog - but for me the most amazing thing about LA is the smell. Whenever I get out of the airport and driving to wherever I’m staying in LA, I’m overcome by the beautiful smell. I think it’s the flowers and the ocean - but I find the CA smell intoxicating and addictive. You ignore it after a day - but it’s odd no one ever mentions the unique scents of LA.

There was some TV show (I think on the History Channel) a few years ago about what would happen to various areas if there were no more humans. It said LA would become a wasteland of a desert. Funny to think that all those green yards everywhere are all because of irrigation.

Moved here as a toddler, now 57. I tell people that LA is a awful place to visit, but a great place to live.

" It said LA [without irrigation] would become a wasteland of a desert. Funny to think that all those green yards everywhere are all because of irrigation."

I read a book written by a 19th century merchant seaman, his ship stopped at the Port of Los Angeles to pick up some cow hides. He described the barely inhabited LA Basin as an endless flat, dry, plain.

FYI San Francisco was considered the major city of the West Coast and the most civilized place for thousands of miles in those days, it was a built-up city with a bustling port, an opera house and theaters, and ten times more bars and saloons than churches. The last is probably still true.

Well, whatever might have been its past or humanless future, L.A. right now is full of jacaranda, eucalyptus, jasmine, bougainvillea, palms, and a wealth of other South African, Australian and tropical verdancy. Roses bloom year round with minimal encouragement. Lawns I don't much care for, but some grasses apparently do well even in dry conditions--they go from green to brown just like in other areas of the U.S.

[quote]I hate all the palm trees. They are not pretty just sticks with a poof on top and they don't offer any shade.

Why are the palm trees 🌴 in Florida fuller and prettier than the ugly ass ghetto ones in LA that barely have any leaves?

[quote] " It said LA [without irrigation] would become a wasteland of a desert. Funny to think that all those green yards everywhere are all because of irrigation."

I am giving Palm Springs the side eye after this statement

Must admit that once you get deep into the older, established neighborhoods landscaped with mature shrubs and trees (courtesy of our NorCal water and water from the Colorado River) parts of LA are stunning. The air is clearer than it was in the 70's and 80's. Government air regulations in CA have been effective..

Even though they might be shallow and superficial, I find Angelinos to be friendly and fun. In the Bay Area, especially in SF, I do not trust anyone and ignore them unless I've known them for decades or have some other connection, usually professional. If a stranger becomes a friend, it means that we will have sex and the relationship is likely to become a bitter disaster. I put everyone into categories: straight Yuppie, Techie-bro, trophy wife, clueless Midwestern transplant, etc.. LA has become far more ethnically diverse and more liberal.

I've become more open-minded about LA's scenery and people but will always detest the vast sprawl -- and the Dodgers.