Los Angeles: Where to stay?

I'm also supporting the gabbneb/Jeff recommendations. Ste, are you going on a tight budget?

sorry, the recommendation (singular) that you consider staying in a couple places.

I'll add that the Ambros3 has a "London cab," if you're of that extraction, but if you're gonna stay in Santa Monica it's probably worth it for the carless to pay a little more or go further downscale to be by the beach/more touristy areas.

i'd recommend staying around miracle mile -- safer than hollywood, less noisy/busy, good restaurants and shopping, still right in the heart of things and very accessible to other places.

Hmm, Miracle Mile is safe but also a little sleepy. Hollywood is really not dangerous at all anymore. Maybe some parts of east hollywood, but the rest of the formerly crappy parts are getting super gentrified (in a hollywood way of course).

if yer thinkin far westside, i love the culver hotel (what i've seen of it from the exterior and lobby) in beautiful downtown culver city.

Culver City is not far West Side!

it is for me! i never go west of fairfax! [ /reverse snobbery]

Ha, the only snobbery I encounter is of the "reverse" kind.

Most of my friends live in Silverlake or Downtown.

god help me, i'm thinking of moving to the valley (toluca lake maybe?) once my lease here is up.

Toluca lake is nice actually.

Lots of good places in the Valley to live. As long as you're close to Ventura Blvd and can get over the hill easily.

OMG NOT THE VALLEY!@#!#!@#

::rolls eyes @ jbr "la expert"::

i like parts of reseda, van nuys, and northridge and a few others I've hung out in. Other than the heat I'm not anti-valley at all (and san gabriel valley is only a shade off in terms of heat).

i like the valley. and i like the sgv/foothills area (which i saw lots of on my way out to pomona yesterday).

toluca lake kind of rules for serious. awesome bars and food.

I like the Valley Village / Toluca Lake area too, but Glendale gets my 818 vote. Sierra Madre / Monrovia are the best for SGV.

In January I was in LA for a few days without the ability to drive and ended up at this nice B&B: http://www.venicebeachhouse.com/
We stayed in the Warren Wilson room, it was cute, cozy and there were hummingbirds outside our window every morning :)The staff was really cool too, they didn't mind that we had many friends visiting us at all hours and using their parking spaces. They also make a decent breakfast and have afternoon tea with fresh baked goods.
Staying in Venice was pretty fun, it was nice to ride bikes along the beach and go to happy hour and have beers and nachos.

The Farmer's Daughter hotel on Fairfax was mentioned here a while ago as a good place to stay. http://www.farmersdaughterhotel.com/ (and to paraphrase Jonathan Richman, "Who's their web advisor, somebody should take him by the hand.")

And ".../Monrovia are the best for SGV." Surely this is madness???

wow information. sorry went to bed early last night. Just going to look into all this now, cheers guys!

Elvis Telecom was right - if you're going to end up downtown, the Hotel Figueroa is great. That pool/patio is super nice and relaxing. I was always under the impression it was pretty reasonable, as well.

I kind of like that Golden Gopher bar downtown, too, which is pretty close by.

just checking flight+hotel prices on expedia and overall it seems a hulluva lot cheaper than New York. Is this expected? is it seasonal, because NY seems dear to travel to whatever time of year you go.

that's generally expected, but the season may have something to do with it too.

I like Venice a lot, but saudade's friends probably visited saudade at all hours at the venice beach house because saudade couldn't get very far from there.

I don't know what this place - http://www.MagicCastleHotel.com/ - is like, but it's walkable (tho not next door) to the Hollywood and Highland metro stop as well as to Runyon Canyon.

The Magic Castle Hotel is right by all the touristy stuff - it's pretty much the backyard of the Kodak Theater. There's a classically seedy L.A. dive bar right around the corner (The Power House), and it's at the foot of the hill that has Yamashiro's on it (which is a pretty crummy Japanese restaurant that's really fun to drink at, with excellent views of the city).

I lived literally next door to the Magic Castle Hotel on Sycamore for years. Lots of other classic dives around there - Boardner's, Frolic Room, Burgundy Room.

Ste, yes I do think that LA is much cheaper to visit than New York. This is particularly for food and hotel. It's not really seasonal. I still get reverse sticker shock every time I go out to eat. Where are you visiting from?

Jeff and Spencer, I do rib you about Santa Monica occasionally for personal and stylistic reasons (nothing to do with ILXors), and because I think it's funny in the Hipster Olympics when the play-by-play commentator says "I haven't seen performance like these since the Douchebag Summer Games in sunnny Santa Monica, California!" The term douche tickles me. My theory is that is something we Californians excel at to the exclusion of East Coasters and I have been busily reclaiming the term and trying to define "Douchebag Style" since I moved back here. Douche pride.

However, we haven't really discussed many West Side places in any detail on these threads for a while. The Santa Monica public library is gorgeous architecturally (especially in nice weather) and has a fantastic collection, which they are very liberal about lending to the rest of L.A. county. And the Kelly Wearstler-decorated designed Viceroy Hotel bar is one of my favorite rooms in L.A.

What else do you recommend in Santa Monica and Venice?

I'm coming from England.

For the past three years I've been visiting NY so for a change I thought I'd sling shot to the west coast this year.

Splitting this between two hotels sounds tempting actually. One for the beach side and the other for downtown? what do you think?

i've been to axe in venice. is that douchebaggy? the food was very good.

Felicity, I DON'T LIVE IN SANTA MONICA.

I haven't lived in Santa Monica since the summer of 1984 :(

Movies...

http://egyptiantheatre.com/sched.htm
http://egyptiantheatre.com/Aero/aeromastercalendar.htm
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/public/calendar/calendar_f.html
http://www.lacma.org/programs/FilmSeriesSchedule.aspx
http://www.silentmovietheatre.com/

arclight

This is my hood!

http://www.midcitywest.org

http://www.midcitywest.org/images/M_images/midcitywestlimits.gif

spencer lives in a good neighborhood (except for Grove congestion). definitely not "westside" in my book

Yeah, getting around the Grove can be a pain, but I can actually walk there when I want to see a movie or go to the Farmer's Market.

A: Away.

Gabbneb is right, we hung out at the Venice Beach House a lot because we were totally stuck in the immediate area of Venice until someone came and got us. Luckily, our kind friends drove us all over the place: Museum of Jurassic Technology, Griffith Observatory, art museum, Little Tokyo, Dim Sum in SGV, downtown, but usually after dinner we ended up chilling at the beach house because we had all just been in Vegas so we were nightlifed out and wanted to keep it low key.

It was a great place to stay without a car because there was quite a bit of stuff within walking distance, but it was a long-seeming drive to other places. So if you have people who want to drive you places then it would be good, but probably very inconvenient if you didn't have that. The moving around idea is a good one, I think.

This is my hood!

That's my hood also! (though I'm closer to La Brea)

Also for movies: http://www.newbevcinema.com/

What else do you recommend in Santa Monica and Venice?

I heart the Santa Monica camera obscura: http://gridskipper.com/travel/los-angeles/la-letter-camera-obscura-143840.php

Also, this is where I mention the Museum of Jurassic Technology and the Center For Land Use Interpretation again...

http://mjt.org/
http://clui.org/

The Wende Cold War museum in Culver City is pretty dang strange:
http://www.wendemuseum.org/

Only open on Fridays though

Really, for Santa Monica there's nothing that beats a drive up PCH to the Ventura county line and a meal at Neptune's Net: http://www.neptunesnet.com/

I'm glad to learn the Mid-City West designation. There's something about the mix of use and the low rise and the gentle elevation and the quality of light at certain hours around there that works for me. I just wish the Grove/Farmer's Market lived up to their billing more.

Chris, I didn't know you lived here, let's hang!

Gabbneb, yes, it's no longer a "farmer's market", but some of the food places are truly amazing! (and yeah, the magic hour here can be especially magical)

Farmer's Daughter looked great and we looked forward to our stay their, until they fucked up our reservation and left us stranded making us stay at a more expensive much less nice place in Beverly Hills. That was total bullshit.

in that neighborhood, I might opt for the El@n Hotel Mod3rn, which may be doing renovation work at the moment

dinner tonight, anybodies?

Sierra Madre beats Monrovia, easy. Pasadena has good stuff but we get enough tourists.

Oh dear. felicity in overexplaining making things worse shocker.

Mid-City West has a lot of favorites: Centerfold News, Pinks, Cantors, Ethiopian Village, 3rd and Fairfax, Damiano's (bad pizza, good soda pop).

Sorry, Spencer, it was all the brunch talk. Now that you've identified your coordinates, the penalty is you have to come talk to me in Los Feliz about the awesomeness of Tokyo Drift and Teriyaki Boyz.

i've been to axe in venice. is that douchebaggy? the food was very good.

aw, lauren, always got my back. :) I have never been to Axe (apparently pronounced "ah-shay)." Will try.