Los Angeles is less a single city than a hundred suburbs in search of a centre — a basin the size of a small country, strung together by freeways and held together by the film industry, the weather, and the idea that anyone can arrive and reinvent themselves. It is the place the rest of the world has already seen on screen, which makes the real thing both familiar and slightly disorienting: the light really is that good, the sprawl really is that vast, and the gap between the glamour and the strip-mall ordinariness is part of the texture.
The city is best understood through its neighbourhoods, many of which are technically their own cities. Hollywood is the obvious starting point — the Walk of Fame, the Chinese Theatre, the sign in the hills — though the reality on the ground is grittier than the myth. Downtown holds the museums, the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the old civic core; Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive supply the wealth; West Hollywood the nightlife along the Sunset Strip; and Century City the corporate towers. Koreatown and Chinatown anchor the immigrant city, Silver Lake the hip eastside, and out by the ocean Venice Beach, Marina del Rey, and West Los Angeles face the Pacific. Miracle Mile has the La Brea Tar Pits and the county art museum.
You will need a car. LA is built for driving, the distances are long, and public transport — though the Metro is slowly expanding — still covers only a fraction of the city; budget for traffic, which clogs the freeways for most of the day rather than just at rush hour. But the driving is part of the pleasure too: Mulholland Drive along the ridge with the city on one side and the San Fernando Valley on the other, Sunset Boulevard running from the eastside out to the coast, and Highway 1 north through Malibu. Give it time and a full tank, and LA rewards the effort.
