Monday, November 26, 2007

Doing the Tourist Thing

While I was surrounded by visiting relatives this weekend, I had a chance to visit some of Greater LA's tourist areas. Of course, this called for another photo diary...

Wednesday Night:STAPLES CENTER For Clippers v Denver





Did anyone ever hear of developing around your major attractions? I couldn't find anything except more parking lots between me and Staples.












Well, at least the crosswalks are well marked, wide and have working signals...







Saturday: THE GROVE





Well, this is kind of cool. The Grove beefs up security so that the pedestrians are kept safe from even the minor danger posed by the one traffic lane that cuts it in half. Maybe this isn't a bad place to bring the kids.












Then we see two people get in a fight over a parking spot, they had to be separated by security....











Then the children's band sets up at a place completely inappropriate for kids...ok, maybe we can cross the grove off the list of places to take kids.









SUNDAY: THE PROMENADE in Santa Monica

Its Grove-esque, only bigger and with street performers and vendors not wholly owned by some corporation. You're not going to run into Jerry Rubin handing out flyers in front of a Banana Republic.







An empty holder of Metro and Santa Monica transit schedules. I suppose that's either a really good sign or a really bad one.











Like The Grove, Santa Monica has some extra muscle out to protect pedestrians.



















Unlike Vegas, Santa Monica seems to care whether or not pedestrians get hurt outside of the developed area. Note the crosswalk in the center of the street.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you believe that a mannequin in lingerie or a bikini isn't kid friendly, you are living in the wrong city. I think there are some areas in LA where you can wear a bikini to church.

That said, I totally agree with your assement of things around the Staples Center and Convention Center. Its amazing that we have two major venues that can attract tens of thousands of people at a time, and set them in an area where everyone has to arrive and leave at exactly the same time as there is nothing they can do locally, allowing them to hang out for a while and spread out the traffic flow.

Justin

Unknown said...

Heh, I was going to post the same thing Justin wrote about the bikini...I kind of thought there might have been something other than that that wasn't in the picture. I like to think we're not quite that puritanical anymore in most of the country.

Unknown said...

It's gotten better over the years though...Concerto, 717 Ninth, South properties, Market Lofts, LA Live! etc... have taken up parking lots that were operating 2 years ago. LA Central is expected to commence construction in January and Jardin next summer. All those lots are operated by private developers. The big problem is that parking revenue is so much due to their proximity, that's its such a huge obstacle to overcome when having to choose constructing a mid-rise or high-rise development. But, yes, tons of parking lots exist. And I really hate those flag wavers; it just shows we're a commuting town.