California (Los Angeles Area)
Around Downtown LA 

The LA sprawl begins as soon as you leave downtown, whose diverse environs tend to be forgotten quarters, scythed by freeways and with large distances separating their few points of interest. They are too widely separated for it to make sense to try to see them consecutively; each is ten to thirty minutes by car or bus from the next.

Exposition Park
Across Exposition Boulevard from the USC campus, south of downtown, is the sizeable Exposition Park, one of the most appreciated parks in LA. It retains a real sense of community, bolstered by its function as favorite lunchtime picnic place. The California Science Center here, off Figueroa Street (daily 10am–5pm; free), contains enjoyable working models and thousands of gadgets – recently improved thanks to a multimillion-dollar renovation, though the museum remains as familiar as other science-and-industry museums around the US. Just outside, an IMAX Theater attracts youthful patrons of nature documentaries; while nearby, the Aerospace Hall recalls LA’s once-dominant industry, though the building is more notable for its architect, Frank Gehry. Exhibitions on the history, art and culture of America’s black communities are at the California African-American Museum (daily except Mon 10am–5pm; free).

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (Mon–Fri 9.30am–5pm, Sat & Sun 10am–5pm; $8) is the nicest building in the park, with its echoey domes and travertine columns. Its tremendous stock of dinosaur skeletons includes the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and a Diatryma – a huge flightless bird. Other displays include Mayan pyramid murals and the complete contents of a Mexican tomb (albeit a reconstruction).

MacArthur Park and around
Reachable on the new Red Line subway, the dilapidated patches of green and large lake of MacArthur Park are the nearest open spaces to the sidewalks of downtown. Half a mile west, the seminal Bullocks Wilshire department store is the most perfectly realized example of late 1920s Art Deco in LA and has recently been reincarnated as the law library of adjacent Southwestern University.

Inside the Ambassador Hotel, 3400 Wilshire Blvd, the Cocoanut Grove club flourished from the Twenties to the Forties, and the large ballroom (now closed) featured in the first two versions of A Star is Born. The kitchen, however, was the scene of the hotel’s most notorious event. Bobby Kennedy was fatally shot here on June 5, 1968, the day of his greatest political triumph – his victory in the California Democratic Primary. Converted into a filmmaking location, nowadays the Ambassador is also closed to public view.

The so-called “Miracle Mile” continues west from the Ambassador. South of Wilshire, along Olympic Boulevard between Vermont and Western, Koreatown is five times larger – and far more genuine and lively – than the more tourist-oriented Chinatown and Little Tokyo combined, and is home to the largest concentration of Korean people outside Korea.

Maps
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