Today, I walked to the ocean. I wanted to end at the Santa Monica Pier, mostly so I could send my friend Clark a picture of a road sign for Ocean Avenue since he likes that Yellowcard song – which apparently is not based on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. Well I think Clark also likes the song Santa Monica by them too, so let’s go with that instead. My sister also once ran into my Mom’s best friend from college at the Santa Monica Pier, so I thought I’d run into someone too. I was not as fortunate as she was.

My route was almost exclusively Pico Boulevard, inspired in large part by a favorite pedestrian writer of mine, Alex Wolfe (you can read his much better writing here, and here). Pico is a major east-west corridor, and passes through a ton of different parts of the city. The eastern section, closer to downtown, is heavily Latino while the Mid-City section closer to Century City is primarily Jewish. But throughout, there’s just about anything you could want.

The day started with a brief wander around Downtown. I wanted to get a good look at the former Pacific Electric headquarters. It was nice, but I must have missed the commemorative plaque. And of course I had to check out Eastern Columbia, one of the best examples of Art Deco in LA. Unfortunately for me, the facade is currently undergoing maintenance so I didn’t get to see it in all its glory.

Anyways, I like downtown LA – a lot more than I anticipated. I think LA somewhat fairly has a reputation as a polycentric place, but this doesn’t mean downtown isn’t interesting. Yes, it’s heavy on office buildings – and it’s not worth going to Bunker Hill – but there are tons of great buildings from the pre-WWII era and seemingly lots of things to do. It wasn’t New York busy, but I haven’t been walking alone while downtown – which is more than I can say for some other places I’ve been.

But then it was down Pico. The sun was shining, and I didn’t bring any sunscreen with me so I mostly stuck to the south side of the street. Pico is characterized by low-slung commercial buildings, and without much tree cover staying out of the sun was difficult. But who needs shade when the sights and smells of fresh Mexican bakeries abound? I felt like a cartoon character floating along, enchanted by the smell of fresh baked conchas.

Around 9:30, I stopped for a bite to eat. I had a lovely chile relleno torta for a very reasonable price and got to listen to some Mexican music while I ate it. Learning Spanish is high on my to-do list these days, and this walk really hammered that home. Sure, I know a little but it mostly is just “calientita como una pollita” and “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido” – not exactly what you say when you want to order food or shoot the breeze.

This part of Pico – roughly between the freeway and the Midtown Crossing mall was a great walk. The sights and smells of Latin America easily outweighed the stress of being fairly close to Angeleno drivers on a 5 lane road. But as the day dragged on, things started to get a little less pleasant. Near Century City and the Fox Studio, Pico becomes more like 7 lanes – sometimes up to 9. I still saw a fair amount of traffic though, so it looks like those poor traffic engineers stopped one lane short of solving traffic forever again!

Jokes aside, the wider road further west seriously eroded my morale – maybe just as much as the loss of the smell of freshly baked pan dulce. Surely the 17 miles I walked yesterday on top of the 11 or so I had already done today didn’t help either, but my patience really started to wear thin. But I had committed to finishing at the Pacific Ocean, and I wanted to see if Santa Monica would bring a respite from the car-oriented pains I had been going through.

After passing under a freeway (the San Diego/I-405), a light rail line (the Expo Line), and another freeway (the Santa Monica/I-10) I finally arrived at my destination – the city of Santa Monica. To my dismay, the wide road with loud traffic situation did not improve at all, which retrospectively isn’t very surprising. And to make matters worse, the previously generously wide sidewalk was replaced with a pitiful strip barely wide enough for one. I had hardly realized how wide the sidewalks on Pico were in LA, but missed them as soon as I crossed the city line.

I’m not sure what to think about Santa Monica. I guess I don’t really care for it much. It’s a bit tacky, which isn’t unforgivable, but I was seriously struggling by the time I got there and the sidewalks really made me angry. Pico mostly has two lanes in each direction, a median, and room for parking. But the 4 foot wide sidewalks are good enough? The nerve.

There’s something so frustrating about Southern California being so outrageously car-oriented. They have some of the best weather* in the world but have designed a region so hostile to people enjoying that weather outside their cars. Well they purport to have some of the best weather anyways – there’s a bit in Ecology of Fear (another Mike Davis classic) where the LA press is actively censoring itself from saying “tornado” to preserve the impression of perfect weather to Midwest transplants. I’ll have to consult my dad on his opinion before I write much more on the weather in LA though – but it is warm and sunny!

Eventually I made it to the end of Pico, and down to the ocean. There’s something spiritually satisfying about ending a long walk at the ocean. Just a nice sense of completeness – you can’t walk any further even if you wanted to. And I did not want to, but a brief hobble down the pier and back to the E Line station was still in order. The Pier is a classic tourist trap, but it was still worth a go I guess – even if there were no serendipitous encounters.

I’m still not entirely sure what to make of the walk. Of course I enjoyed it – I’ve done far worse walks. But it definitely made me less of an LA booster than yesterday’s did – though that’s for the best. Los Angeles is a chaotic and brutal place, but I find the most difficult places to experience to be places like Century City. It won’t make a list of “worst LA neighborhoods”, but it’s a horrible place from what I saw – it may as well be in Orange county (derogatory). Any place that has three dedicated left turn lanes on major roads should be shamed out of existence.

So much of the conversation about Los Angeles revolves around crime, and I don’t feel qualified to comment on it. Parts of Pico were on the slightly rougher side visually, but I’d prefer walking in a place like that over many of the visually less rough parts. Safety is a complicated topic, crime statistics are misleading, and the LAPD is extremely problematic even by US cop standards. In any case, I feel that I learned a lot today and experienced something truly unique. And for that, I am grateful.

Tomorrow I’m catching the Southwest Chief to Flagstaff. I’ll be writing up a longer summary of my time here – but suffice to say it’s been quite good so far. Til next time!