This year I decided to start a new category on my blog called All Things LA where I will be sharing stories and photos about different places in LA as well as some insights from the position of someone who actually lives here, everything is of course my humble opinion and personal experience, I hope you enjoy reading it. The first post is about Downtown Los Angeles.
Unlike in many other cities across the world Downtown in LA is really not a city center, not that LA has one anyway. To find myself in DTLA, acronym most people use when talking about Downtown LA, I need to make a special trip which I did this past weekend. In almost 4 years that I’ve lived in LA, I probably visited Downtown less than 10 times but every time I do it feels like adventure. There are days when I am really loving the big city vibe which the rest of LA doesn’t really have walking by old historic buildings and skyscrapers, chilling at the roof top bars or enjoying some local museums. There are also days like this one, gloomy and gray, beautiful, artistic but also kind of depressing.
Pershing Square Subway Station Exit
The Last Bookstore
I took the train to get to DTLA from Westside LA and it was a pretty easy ride. I forgot that there is an actual subway in LA. It’s not nearly as efficient as it could be but it’s better than nothing, I guess. I remember many times that I went to the wrong place because there’s only one railway with separate trains taking you to three different destinations, you need to check the timetable to make sure this the train you need considering it could go either direction.
We started walking from the Pershing Square which is where I got off the train, it’s a good central location and meeting spot if you got lost. There is a little fountain that looks like it’s going to spill, in the winter there is a ice skating rink which I mentioned in this post. From there we went to The Last Bookstore, which is California’s largest used and new book and record store. I’ve never been there before, it looked really cool inside. I’ve always loved book stores and this one was even more magical with its book art installations and sort of hidden pathways.
Later the same day I had the biggest OMG moment of the day when I randomly ran into Sonya Esman, one of my favorite YouTubers ever. If it was a year ago I would have never gotten enough courage to come and say hi, but this time I was like Challenge accepted! I got super excited and starstruck but she was really nice about it! This girl is such an inspiration.
After that me and my friend were just walking around the streets and then caught a happy hour at the Artisan House. As a wrap of my trip to Downtown I got an accidental Uber ride through Skid Row, an area of DTLA which contains one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the United States. Seeing those people living in tents that go for streets after streets put me in the weirdest mood, it felt so surreal. Downtown LA has seen many ups and downs, it’s seen it all.
