I've written about this project before. For now the essays which are written will be posted here and, as soon as I have a suitable space worked out, I'll be recording the essays.
Anyone who has any input on the essays, either corrections or additional information, add a note and I'll look to include it.
Please, enjoy.
In her 1968 hit ‘Do You Know The Way to San Jose’ Dionne Warwick sings ‘LA is a great big freeway’ and, famously, LA is a city of the automobile. Sure, there’s a metro system used by nearly two-hundred thousand folks a day, but the personal car reigns supreme. LA is a place where walking is a fitness activity instead of something you do to move from point-to-point.
Though, you don’t have to drive to experience the wide variety of things the city has to offer, if you choose your location cannily.
Where Runyon Canyon succumbs to the city at its southern end there is the Fuller Entrance, and beyond that a small block-and-a-half bounded by North Fuller Avenue, Franklin Avenue, And North La Brea Avenue. It’s a liminal place, not North Hollywood, that starts the other side of the canyon, and nor yet is it fully West Hollywood.
The streets are filled with four or five floor tall apartment blocks, parked cars pack the sides of the road, and there are mature trees and bushes up and down which offer shade, and places for birds to perch, nest, and sing their songs - which may sound idyllic, but can be a nuisance for owners who just had their auto detailed.
Within a mile of this small area, fifteen minutes walking distance for the average person - twenty to twenty-five for a slow poke like me - you can find nature, good food, arts and culture, glitz and glamor, sport, and plenty to make you think.
Let’s start with nature. We’ve already mentioned birds and, heading into Runyon Canyon through the gates at the top of North Fuller Avenue, we enter a place where you can spot doves, hawks, tits, and swallows. Other animals include deer, coyote, snakes, and lizards. Celebrities with their dogs may be seen, along with a myriad wannabe-seen folks ‘hiking’, but dressed and made up to be spotted because you never know who will be taking pictures
The canyon is now an LA city park but has a long history of attempted development and the remains of some can be seen while walking the trails.
Although a straight line on the map shows it to be about a mile from the Fuller Entrance up to the Mullholland Drive Trail Head, walking it will add more yards than expected to your step tracker, especially if you make your way to the high point of just under thirteen hundred feet.
Most of the trails are well maintained, but some of the smaller ones are steep and the sandy soil can shift beneath your feet. Choosing between crowded main trails or quieter small ones is a consideration.
While the canyon’s high spots give you superb vistas across the city, delving down into the canyon and its offshoots will give you shade in trees and shrubbery, and surprise you with things such as a nicely maintained mandala, a tool for meditation and spiritual journey in many religions. You may even be able to pick some wild fennel to go with your lunch, though make sure it is fennel, and not the similar looking but dangerous hemlock.
Of course, you may not want to be bothered with preparing food if you’ve had time walking in the sun. But you may wish to continue enjoying the beauty of nature while you eat. A booking at Yamashiro on Sycamore Avenue will allow you to do so. A replica of a mountain palace - which is the meaning of the name - in the mountains near Kyoto, this former residence has been a high-class restaurant for some time, with formal gardens only open to diners. The inner courtyard even has a pond, with koi carp as may be expected. The food is a mix of traditional Japanese, and typical L.A. fusions of tastes and styles.
Other than this the local area can provide burgers, pizza, pasta, barbecue, taco and steaks, both from well-known chains or single location locals, such as re-opened Irv’s on Santa Monica Boulevard.
You can also find gems such as June Intrachat’s Otus on North La Brea Avenue. Making the most of the many farmers markets in the area, June produces award winning food underpinned by recipes from Northern Thailand, where she was born.
If you do want to cook your own food, then there are several farmer’s markets within the mile we mentioned. On Sunday’s have an early start and drop by the best option, Hollywood Farmer’s Market on Ivar Avenue, but early means early, it’s an eight am open. On Monday head to Plummer Park where you can shop between nine and two at the Helen Albert Certified Farmers Market.
Culture is important in the area. While there is an overlaying drive to portray the European-American heritage, on a street level it celebrates the many nations who have made the USA the nation it is, the different people, their lives, loves, and passions.
And that culture goes from local art and poetry often highlighted in the wider area covering West Hollywood Times, through to nights at the Hollywood Bowl where you can enjoy the renowned LA Philharmonic Orchestra perform music that is classical, modern, and lots of places in between; or watch opera; or see musical stars from current chart toppers, to those that will have parents or grandparents tapping their feet and remembering their youth.
Then there are museums that, with this being Hollywood, tend towards highlighting the predominant business of the area. On North Highland Avenue you can visit both the Hollywood Heritage Museum, and The Hollywood Museum.
This second collection focuses more on the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and is housed in the old Max Factor Building. Lovingly restored over a nine-year period the building is a gem of Regency Art Deco design with a front containing three sets of gracious tall windows flanked by four taller fluted columns. Inside the foyer is an ocean of marble and design created to please the eye and is as much an exhibit as anything else inside.
Not all nods to history are as large as a museum. Some are plaques or monuments, such as the one in Plummer Park commemorating the murder of Kyiv’s Jewish populace during World War Two, or the one near the Hollywood Bowl reminding folks that this is the site of Hollywood’s first major film studio,
And with that reminder of Hollywood’s main business, it would be obtuse to not talk about where you can see or experience some of the glitz and glamour of tinsel town. From our designated start point you can’t go all the way down Hollywood Boulevard, but you can get up to the intersection with Ivar Avenue. That won’t let you see all two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-eighty-two stars on the Walk of Fame, but you can see those of Vivienne Leigh and Jimi Hendrix amongst many others.
Or, maybe, standing in the crowds during a film premiere at the famous Chinese Theatre or when the Oscars close down Hollywood Boulevard to take place at Dolby Theatre, you can you glimpse a current film star. We already mentioned you may spot a celebrity, or someone from television, walking their dog in Runyon Canyon but if you want to be assured of clocking someone famous, then Madame Tussaud’s or the Hollywood Wax Museum are your go to destinations.
As much joy as some find spotting someone massively famous, there is also fun in seeing someone on the way up. That person you just passed, that you think you recognise from that thing, where they, you know… well, keep them in mind because maybe they’ve just been cast in next year’s blockbuster summer movie.
But if you really want in at the ground floor is there somewhere to go in the area? Maybe a local theatre or dance school. There are several to choose from, but have you considered the local High School?
Hollywood High has a list of acting, sporting, and public service alumni that would make many an alma mater blush. So maybe you need to watch out for the school production or go sit in the bleachers and watch the Sheiks shake down their rivals. Maybe the current season will be a good one. The school’s volleyball and athletics teams may also appreciate your support.
If you’re more inclined to playing sport than watching, the previously mentioned Plummer Park has tennis courts. Alongside tennis courts The Ponsietta Recreation Centre has ball fields, hoops, and is home to the World Dodgeball Society.
Beyond that, many apartment complexes have a pool, if yours doesn’t then you need to walk a little more than a mile to the publicly available Hollywood Pool on Cole Avenue. Of course, there’s plenty gyms for those inclined, or various spas if you prefer pampering to pain
All of the above sounds lovely, and for someone doing a city break from another state or spending a few days in LA while on a US tour from abroad, it is an ideal way to take in the city’s massiveness in a microcosm.
What about living there?
Let’s start with basics, somewhere to live. In the small block we laid out a two-bed, two-bath apartment will start about three-thousand dollars a month to rent, though this will include the annual property tax.
While there are lots of jobs and work opportunities in LA, there are also lots of people chasing them. Having a main job, second job, and even side hustle is not uncommon because, apart from housing, everything is expensive. This means the time you have to enjoy leisurely walks around the canyon, or to Plummer Park for a game of tennis or some fresh produce, will be limited.
This is especially so if you need to commute. You might get lucky and have a job on a direct bus or metro line but the reality is having access to a car is likely a necessity. And the prevalence of cars in the city leads to a background hum of vehicles that never really dies down, even in the depth of night and, although the smog so famous in seventies and eighties films has been attenuated by California’s stringent drive for cleaner cars, in the area selected air quality is often at unhealthy levels.
Another difficulty in the area is where to put your car. Being so close to main tourist attractions of the city, and the canyon, adds to the frustration of there being more apartments than parking places.
When Dionne Warwick sang about there being space in San Jose, LA had only seventy percent of the population it does now. It’s not just parking that is oversubscribed. Doctors, dentists, hospitals, social services, all feel the squeeze of too many people and too few resources, unless your wealth is plentiful that is.
As in all cities there are higher rates of crime than further out. The LAPD has a strength of just under nine-thousand but, sadly, anecdotal evidence indicates an issue with ongoing applications from white supremacists. This makes interactions for non-European Americans more of a concern than you would hope in a modern cosmopolitan city, despite the happy propaganda of shows such as The Rookie.
Policing is more even-handed if you have the misfortune to be homeless, or unhoused in local parlance. With rents and living costs as high as we mentioned, and the job market so tight, many folks are only a few weeks away from the financial difficulties which can see them unhoused, and many others are already there - over sixty-thousand according to some estimates. The upshot of this is streets filled with ad hoc encampments which are allowed to last for a few days or weeks before police sweep through, enforcing city ordnances or responding to housed residents’ complaints.
And there’s a dichotomy to be seen between the promise of LA, and the care the city proclaims it intends for residents. Even as the unhoused are victimised for their lack of accommodation, the Hollywood Farmer’s Market and others around the city will allow a number of social fund vouchers or checks be used to purchase good, fresh, produce - though you have to be housed to receive such assistance.
No city is perfect, they all have their issues.
However, if you can live with LA’s, then there are fewer spots more convenient than being just off the boulevard, at the gates of the canyon.
words by stuartcturnbull. Picture licenced from Kirsten Alana and worked in Canva