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Immediately north of Venice, Santa Monica
is the oldest and biggest of LA's resort areas, perched on palm-tree-shaded
bluffs, or "the palisades," above the blue Pacific.
Once a wild beachfront playground, it's now a self-consciously
healthy and liberal community, with a large expatriate British
contingent of writers and rock stars, ranging from Rod Stewart
to John Lydon.
The Santa Monica beachfront grew into a giant funfair
city when it was linked to downtown LA by the suburban streetcar
system. It was the location for many of the underworld stories
of Raymond Chandler, most memorably as "Bay City" in
Farewell My Lovely , but today Chandler wouldn't recognize the
place. The gambling ships and bathing clubs have gone, and Santa
Monica is now well known for its tight rent control policy and
stringent planning and development regulations. For these perceived
infractions, local right-wingers refer sneeringly to the city
as the "People's Republic."
Santa Monica reaches nearly three miles inland,
but most things of interest are within a few blocks of the beach.
The visitors center (daily 10am-4pm; tel 310/393-7593,
), in a kiosk at 1400 Ocean Ave, makes a good first stop. It can
be found in Palisades Park , the enjoyable, cypress-tree-lined
green strip along the top of the bluffs, where the homeless mix
with the yuppie elite and the whole area seems to be under constant
threat of eroding down to the beach below. Two blocks east of
Ocean Avenue, the Third Street Promenade , a
pedestrianized stretch popular with street vendors and itinerant
evangelists, is the closest LA comes to having an urban energy,
though colorless chain stores are crowding out many of the quirky
boutiques and oddball shops - especially north of Arizona Avenue,
now a fully corporatized dead zone. On weekend nights the Promenade
brings together visitors and Angelenos of all ages and accents,
and it's by far the best place to come for alfresco dining, beer-drinking
or people-watching.
The real focal point of Santa Monica life is down
below, on the beach and around the once-decaying
and recently refurbished Santa Monica pier ,
which boasts a well-restored 1922 wooden carousel
(daily 9am-6pm; 50?) - featured, along with Paul Newman, in the
1973 movie The Sting . Although the familiar thrill rides of Pacific
Park (Mon-Fri 11am-6pm daily, weekends closes at midnight;
$16, kids $9), the pier's walled-off amusement zone, may first
attract the eye, save your money for the UCLA Ocean Discovery
Center (weekends 11am-5pm, summer also Tues-Fri 3-6pm;
$3; ), just below the pier at 1600 Ocean Front Walk, where you
can find out about local marine biology and get your fingers wet
touching sea anemones and starfish. The grand beach houses just
to the north of the pier were known as Hollywood's "Gold
Coast"; the largest, now the Sand and Sea beach club,
was built as the servants' quarters of a massive 120-room house,
now demolished, that belonged to William Randolph Hearst. In the
adjacent villa of MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, the Kennedy brothers
were later rumored to have had liaisons with Marilyn Monroe.
Five miles north along the curving Pacific
Coast Highway (PCH) from Santa Monica, a huge mock French
chateau inadvertently marks the easily missed entrance to the
opulent Getty Villa , 17985 PCH ( ), the original
site of the Getty museum. A fake Roman villa poised high above
the ocean, the complex is currently closed, until it re-emerges
as a showcase for Getty antiquities.
