Noticing that a number of the walks in Walking L.A. are under a mile long and don’t really justify an entire trip, we decided to tackle a group of westside walks this morning, four in all, from Santa Monica to Culver City. We started in Santa Monica, in an area of the community I’d never really visited before, wandering among business parks and art galleries around Cloverfield and 26th. We wandered through the Water Garden complex, a business park heavy on the fountains, pools, rivulets, and ducks, and past the Yahoo! Center, which the book called the Colorado Center. We also walked by the community garden pictured above, which seems to only have one plot in it so far, but it’s a good start.
More photos from the walk here.
From Santa Monica, we headed down Centinela to Mar Vista, to Meier St. and Moore St., a two-block tract of more than fifty “Modernique Homes” designed by Gregory Ain and built in 1948. It was quite astonishing to see the uniform yet individual homes, all but one a single story tall, set back from the street, each a different color and slightly different style. They were appealing, but somehow at the same time reminded me of mid-century elementary school architecture, something about the layout of the windows and the prominent overhangs. Apparently, one of the homes recently went for $1.5 million; it was a really lovely neighborhood and had a cohesion you don’t often find in Los Angeles.
More photos from the neighborhood here.
We traveled west towards the water to reach Playa Vista and the Ballona Wetlands, for an odd walk that highlighted the way development and open space tenuously coexist in the Los Angeles area. After parking in the giant condominium complex that is Playa Vista, we walked across Jefferson and Lincoln Boulevards to find ourselves in the Ballona Wetlands, where we saw dozens of different birds, various types of trees and reeds…and jumbo jets, taking off across the roofs of more giant condos lining the hillside above. Better than nothing, I say, but it is a little odd and forlorn. I did spot this nice bit of trompe-l’?il thoughtfulness in the Playa Vista parking lot, next to the fire station:
A few photos from the walk here.
We were getting hungry by this point, so we headed to Culver City and MeltDown, an all-grilled cheese restaurant I’d been wanting to go to for a long time. I had a delicious grilled turkey/brie/cranberry sandwich and some carrot dill soup, very tasty. Last on our list was the “North Culver City” tour, around the industrial warehouse district and the Helms Bakery building. We enjoyed looking at the amazing architecture of Eric Owen Moss’s building at 3535 Hayden Ave., and, across the street, his insane Stealth building and behind it, The Umbrella – quite a collection of eye-boggling edifices.
We walked by the brand-new, and totally packed, Father’s Office, which we’ll save for another day, and browsed the massive selection of furniture of all sorts (but with uniformly crazy-high prices) at H.D. Buttercup, in the old Helms Bakery Building. I love the fact that they’ve kept all of the classic 1932 Olympics signs all over the building.
More photos from Culver City here.
