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Discovering downtown L.A - spending a leisurely weekend at Los Angeles, California

Sunset, Nov, 1996 by Matthew Jaffe

A weekend in the heart of the West's largest metropolis isn't most people's idea of a day at the beach, but a visit to Los Angeles may surprise you

"Take me to a hotel!" After months of working on movies as a photo editor, followed immediately by an overly long magazine shoot in New York, Allison was desperate for a break. She had visions of beaches, palm trees, and tropical drinks - an endless summer, at least for a weekend.

Fine, I said. Let's go downtown.

Allison was more than a little dubious. After all, downtown Los Angeles doesn't exactly conjure up images of a perfect getaway, It's the place nobody goes, right? Not unless they work there. Or are on trial. If downtown is a getaway, then so is a trip to the dentist.

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I had doubts, too. But our weekend showed that Los Angeles can be everything it supposedly isn't: urbane, historic, romantic. As they say in New York, start spreading the news.

DOWNTOWN DIARY

Our first night downtown is a revelation. We look out from a ninth-floor room at the Wyndham Checkers as the fading light plays off generations of downtown architecture: the '60s arrogance of international-style corporate towers, the '70s passe-as-platform-shoes gloss of the Bonaventure Hotel, the late-'80s setbacks of the First Interstate World Center, and, most dramatically, the tiled pyramid that tops the now-restored '20s Central Library. This looks like a real city, not the sprawling auto-oriented megalopolis that America loves to hate.

We walk across the street to the Regal Biltmore Hotel, the 1923 Renaissance revival landmark. On this night, the Biltmore pulses, as promgoing boys in tuxes and girls dolled up in gowns that they won't regret for several years stroll through the Rendezvous Court beneath the Biltmore's elaborately painted Moorish ceiling. We grab a drink at the Gallery Bar and watch the passing parade, then walk a block south to dine at Rex Il Ristorante in the Oviatt Building.

The Oviatt originally housed the exclusive Alexander and Oviatt men's store, where stars like Errol Flynn shopped. Lalique glass covers the ceiling of its marquee lobby. Windows are framed with mallechort, a metal blend of zinc, copper, and nickel.

Inside, the restaurant has preserved much of the old store. Oak drawers that once held shirts run along one of the walls, and our waiter comes by just as Allison is sneaking a peek inside. Far from being officious, he jokes with her, setting a relaxed tone that's a welcome surprise in such a highfalutin setting. As for the food itself, it more than meets the challenge.

We stroll hack to our hotel, cutting through a passageway that is pure L.A. noir, both ominous and irresistible.

Both of us are surprised and impressed by our evening. We are products of cities back East, where going downtown meant dressing up, and a kid's first solo trip to Chicago's Loop or midtown Manhattan was a veritable rite of passage. It has been generations since downtown Los Angeles played that role in the Southern California imagination.

On Saturday, I walk to the library to find out how downtown has changed. I check out a thick file on Bunker Hill, which Raymond Chandler described as "old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town." Once considered L.A.'s fashionable answer to San Francisco's Nob Hill, the neighborhood of Victorian-era structures had become dilapidated by the 1940s. When urban renewal came in the late 1950s, the neighborhood was given the death sentence. Photos in the file show workers tearing down the old Victorians.

What rose on the hill in the 1960s and 1970s was prosperous, clean, and with few exceptions soulless. It was also physically and economically isolated from the older and increasingly Latino sections of downtown.

In recent years, two projects have bridged these divergent downtowns. Library Steps, with its cascading waters and broad promenade, provides a connection from the library up to Bunker Hill. On the east side of the hill is the re-installed Angels Flight funicular, which links California Plaza to the Broadway district. It's all beginning to add up.

Allison joins me outside the library, and we walk over to Broadway. Here in the older part of downtown, I'm struck by the numerous Beaux Arts buildings from the 1920s. Blocks of them. The structures are proud but careworn: many are covered from street to roof line by graffiti and appear as bombed out and hopeless as buildings in Sarajevo.

Certainly downtown has a way to go. Along its fringes, the desperate and dispossessed gather in numbers that are shocking. And redevelopment has been selective. Two prominent landmarks, City Hall and St. Vibiana's Cathedral, face uncertain futures because of damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake, while lack of funding has stalled Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall.

But Broadway is hopping. Nobody walks in L.A.? Everyone does here. The streets are packed: families, seniors, and more than a few of the homeless. A cacophony of Tejano music blares across the sidewalk. A police car's cherry-top flashes and spins in front of one spot, while another store's machine sends bubbles floating into the air. There's a weigh-yourself scale in front of the cutlery store where O. J. Simpson bought a knife.

Discovering downtown L.A - spending a leisurely weekend at Los Angeles, California

Sunset, Nov, 1996 by Matthew Jaffe

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