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Published: April 20th 2024
Me
Universal Studios HollywoodDear All
After a great start in Hollywood, I enjoyed my second day exploring more of Los Angeles. As mentioned in my previous, there is quite a lot to see in this big city, so I had to narrow my sightseeing down. I focused on seeing the places which are etched into my mind, and make me think of Los Angeles. The kinds of places that I'd seen on film or TV, but wanted to see for myself that they existed. One of these places I decided to explore on this second day, and that was Santa Monica! It was in my mind for its beach and pier, for its setting for the iconic 90s TV series that I grew up with, Baywatch, and for the Sheryl Crow lyrics: "until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard"!
I took once more the Metro there, which happened to pass by the Century Plaza area of the city, home to the famous Nakatomi Tower, aka the Die Hard building. With my zoom lens, I managed to take a good picture of it, which was great as this place also features prominently in my LA imagination! Upon arriving in the coastal
Amity Island Jaws Set
Universal Studios Studio Tour suburb, I headed first to the famous Santa Monica Pier, which also marks the official end of America's iconic Route 66 as it arrives from Chicago and onto the Pacific West Coast. There were a couple of photogenic signs bearing testament to this. I also took a ride on the pier's famous rollercoaster, with awesome views over the pier, up and down Santa Monica Beach, and over to Malibu to the north.
As mentioned, the Beach here is where much of the 90s TV series Baywatch was filmed, and my walk along it passed by numerous lifeguard stations, with seriously chiselled lifeguards in their red swimshorts, along with those memorable red life floats dotted around. Ah, the memories! I didn't get to see one of them running though, with life float in tow...! My walk took me two miles down the coast, along the beach and boardwalk, and into hippy-ish and very cool Venice Beach. This place is home to numerous weird and wacky shops and outlets, selling all sorts of crystals, trinkets and other nick-nacks, as well as a fair number of weird and wacky people. It is also home to Venice Skatepark, with lots of cool, dreadlocked
Downtown LA
Los Angeles California skater-dudes doing their thing, as well as the famous Venice Muscle Beach. Sadly this was closed, so unfortunately there were no muscle dudes there doing their thing. Apparently this was where Arnold Schwarzenegger was found "pumping iron", said with an Austrian accent. From The Terminator to Governor of California, I don't think the guy has looked back since! "Get to the chopper"! After this, I took a short walk through the very peaceful Venice Canals area, a complete world away from the craziness and mayhem of the Venice Boardwalk. Perhaps this area is where the place got its name from, and its graceful canals, bridges, houses and gardens were the perfect antithesis to the weird and wacky back at the Beach!
I decided from there to take a long bus ride into Downtown LA, as there was a nearby route going directly there, and also as I wanted to see more closely the LA suburbs as they made their way through to the city centre. A guy sat down next to me and just didn't stop talking to me until I put my earphones in - I don't mind a bit of conversation, but this was very much
Me
Santa Monica Beach one-way, and I noticed there were a number of these types riding the public transport systems of the city.
My plan in Downtown LA was to follow my Lonely Planet's Downtown LA walking route, which takes you through the city's theatre district and civic gardens, past grandiose art deco buildings along the way. However, I cut this walk short after having quite quickly realised that what they are saying in the news about Downtown LA, and I've no doubt later with Downtown San Francisco, is true - the place has simply been taken over by some kind of zombie apocalypse, of slow-walking, drug-infused crackheads and homeless people just walking around, talking to themselves, or lying slumped on the pavement somewhere. I got talking to a guy from Los Angeles and his Japanese girlfriend just outside the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which felt relatively safe, who told me that since the 2020 lockdowns, the place has never been the same. Parts of the Downtown area have become no-go areas, and it was not wise to be anywhere there after dark. He completely warned against me visiting nearby Skid Row, saying that the local druggies there have a deal with the
police, so that the latter just won't go in there. You could be killed there he said, and nothing would be done about it. I had no intention anyway of visiting Skid Row, but this guy's words completely put me off exploring LA's Downtown area further. This was especially after an earlier incident in which a local hobo shouted at me and started following me. Ah, those government lockdowns - the gift that just keeps on giving.
This level of homelessness and drug abuse certainly wasn't the situation back on the East Coast, both in New England in 2022 and in Florida 2023, which although had their fair share of homeless people, they were mostly harmless and hadn't taken over vast swathes of a city's streets. I can understand now why so many people are leaving California behind and heading to Florida now, as I had learned there last year. I could quite clearly see from my brief walk around the Downtown area, that the place was once happening, particularly in the Theatre District around Broadway. Now all the theatres were closed, shops were boarded up, and the only commerce taking place was from informal trolleys on street corners
The Nakatomi Building!
From the Die Hard Film selling all manner of Latin treats. You may notice from my Downtown LA photos that there's hardly anyone else on the streets or in the plazas. It had a strange, abandoned post-apocalyptic feel to it, which felt very incongruous to its centralalised location in one of the world's greatest cities.
I had originally hoped to have some lunch in the Downtown area, but there were simply no places to get anything from. I managed a brief trip to LA's Union Station, where I enjoyed a pretzel from "Wetzel's Pretzels". I asked a security guard where there was a safe place to sit and eat it, as even that place had zombies roaming around, and he pointed me to a passenger waiting area manned by security guards and surrounded by plastic barricades. The station was literally buzzing with security guards, seemingly in place to keep the zombie-hordes at bay. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing or feeling there, how the druggies and homeless had simply just taken over such large parts of the Downtown area of one of the world's richest cities, and how no-one seems to be doing anything about it. For anyone doubting the significance of
this after reading news reports, as I had once done, they are true and correct. This is very sad.
I took the long Metro ride back to my motel again, a bit earlier than I'd planned due to the situation, but happy for the extra time I had to relax in the evening before hitting Universal Studios the next day. I was excited! 😁
So for my third and final day in the City of Angels, I indeed visited Universal Studios Hollywood for the day! It was an amazing, highly enjoyable day, which was actually a year in the planning. This time last year in Orlando, I had the option of either doing Disney World for my full day there, or Universal. It was a close decision, but I went with the former, with the idea of doing the latter this year in Los Angeles instead. I think this was a good decision. While Universal Orlando has the huge mega rides that I just love, Universal Hollywood has Universal's original film studios, making it to my mind the much more authentic option of the two.
I started the day with the very famous Studio Tour, in a
trolley train. It takes you to visit the sets and warehouse studios of numerous films. Highlights were seeing Alfred Hitchcock's office, the King Kong 360 3D experience, and only from a distance as the area leading up to it was closed, the Psycho house! After this, I packed in all the rides I wanted to go on, and then some. The queues seemed fairly short on this mid-week day, and I also managed to take advantage of the Single Rider option at numerous places, which at times got me on the ride within a few minutes! I did, in order, the amazing Revenge of the Mummy the Ride (my favourite I think), Transformers The Ride, Jurassic World The Ride with a massive drop into the water, the new and hugely popular Mario Kart Bowser's Challenge ride and its amazing new Super Nintendo World attached, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Flight of the Hippogriff ride, the fantastic live WaterWorld show, Despicable Me Minion Mayhem, the Kung Fu Panda Adventure, the Simpsons Ride, and the rather naff Ollivanders. After all this, I took the opportunity of having been on all the rides I wanted and thus not rushing to the next
Malibu
Seen from Santa Monica queue, to take in the really fantastical locations throughout the Park. This included appreciating the brilliant Super Nintendo World again, along with the cartoony Springfield and English-themed Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
It was a great final day on the LA leg of my trip, though rather achy on the legs. Fortunately I had a lovely two-hour Metro ride on three separate lines to rest up a bit - Los Angeles is just so massive and sprawling, it does take a while to get anywhere! I then had my mile walk back to my motel from Redondo Beach station, to contemplate what had really been an excellent start to my California trip 2024! The next day I was picking up my rental car to begin an epic road trip through the state. First up, the beckoning Sierra Nevada mountains which seem to actually begin just north of LA with the snow-capped peaks of the San Gabriel mountain range. Of course, I will be writing up about this in my next one.
Until then, thanks for reading, and all the very best for now.
Alex
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John Miranda
John & Miranda
LA
Memories of 1989 ....... Downtown wasn't great even then!