Westwood, UCLA, and Santa Monica
 

These photos were taken on two separate trips to Los Angeles. (This is my first photo post and I'm definitely no photographer, so be easy on me :cheers: )

First off, let's do a photo tour of UCLA...

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You have no idea how many college movies have been filmed on this campus..

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Santa Monica

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Santa Monica Pier

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3rd Street Promenade

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Plenty of room at the Hotel California...

And finally, some Westwood pictures.

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This is my favorite picture I have ever taken..

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A nice car to stare at makes traffic move faster...

What a beautiful area. Those mountains add a lot to the background too.

Parts of southern California are so beautiful. I use to love hanging out in Westwood and Santa Monica. Great pics.

West LA rocks.

Thanks for the photos! This is just my personal opinion, but I think the Santa Monica-Westwood-Beverly Hills-West Hollywood-Hollywood corridor is the best area of metro LA.

(now it just needs a subway running down Santa Monica Blvd) :D

I disagree. I dislike this part of LA very much.

These are good photos though, thanks.

They're talking about it... we'll see. I would add Los Feliz, Sunset Junction, Silverlake and Echo Park to that list and it won't be long to include Korea Town, MacArthur Park and Downtown to that list too. My preference is West Hollywood to Downtown north of Wilshire.

jeeez......
 

...in the 60's and 70's everyone headed for LA or tried anyway. Surfing was such a perfect pastime and the music echoed the activity. I will always think good thoughts about the entire area...and never forget the billboard "The Doors, Live at The Whiskey".

Thanks for the photos

I really want to go to LA. Thanks for the pictures.

The old alma mater is looking good.

Thanks for sharing. That was the one part of LA I did not get to see when I was last there. Definitely want to go. And yes, I love that dense looking picture in Westwood Village. Despite its reputation for sprawl, I am constantly amazed at how dense many areas of LA are.

Man, I love that part of L.A.! That Westwood Village shot is incredible.

That's what a lot of us LA forumers are always trying to get across to everybody! :cheers:

Great photos, you were in my neck-o-the-woods. Everyone seems to be interested by Westwood... I believe you may have inspired me to do my own photo post on it.

The UCLA campus is quite impressive even if the architecture is a pastiche of several traditions. I sometimes marvel at the difference is between the America of the 1920s (in LA, USC's campus also stems from that era) and the contemporary period. Even in depression-era LA, there were some jaw-dropping buildings going up. If a civilization is judged by its art and buildings, we're in a period where even the grandiose looks cheap. I know there are exceptions but it almost seems like we don't care anymore.

Nice pics, but the first one in the Santa Monica section is technically in Brentwood...

I did not know that. Speaking of Brentwood, I wish I would have taken pictures of the Par-3 golf course I played on there. It was kind of hidden away, behind a retirement home I believe. But It was on top of a hill overlooking all of Westwood and that area. Also, it was a pretty easy Par 3 so I did halfway decent :notacrook:

I wonder what happened that transformed Los Angeles from being a city that constructed archtectural gems to a city that has an almost absolute disregard for public architecture and design. Out of all the alpha cities in the world, Los Angeles, by far, has the most uninspiring public architecture since the 50s.

Capitalism run amuck... the cheaper to build the better seems to be the motto in this city... just a guess anyway.

Jeez, I can't remember the last time I was out that way. I may have to visit sometime before I leave SoCal. Great pics :tup:

Out of curiosity, were the first couple of shots taken in the last few days during the fires, or during the morning sometime in the past when the marine layer's in full swing?

Now...I could live there.

I don't think the architecture at UCLA is more a pastiche than that at most American universities. There was a traditional, founding theme--Lombardian/northern Italian in particular--and then came the modernist era, the postmodernist jumble, and now whatever the hell we call the current architectural era.

^^^That seems to be true of the largest universities but the two medium-sized ones I attended have been pretty consistent at trying to adhere to the original style (one Georgian, one Gothic).

Anyway, nice pictures of this part of LA. Santa Monica looks as much like Berkeley at the beach as I would have guessed. The Westwood photo does show a nice density, but what contrasts with other dense cities in my mind is the width of the streets--I count 9 lanes of traffic with no median. That's an almost uncrossable barrier for many pedestrians (e.g the aged or disabled or just slow). Clearly this part of LA, like the other parts with which I'm more personally familiar, is still a car-centric place.

Are you familiar with UCLA architecture?

You're looking at Wilshire Blvd there. On the north side of the street all the way to UCLA there is a very pedestrian oriented area which is Westwood and incorporates the campus. You can choose to live in a variety of many other cities and neighborhoods that are pedestrian oriented throughout the Basin of Los Angeles from the Santa Monica, to Downtown, and south to Long Beach. The problem is that none of these cities and neighborhoods are quite as connected by Mass Transit as they should be.

Astons Martins do have nice asses, don't they?

^^^:notacrook:

I believe the UCLA photos were taken in December of 2006. I have never seen nice weather in Los Angeles -- every time I go, it is completely overcast :(

Nice!

Did UCLA? :P