Downtown Los Angeles

Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district in the central area of Los Angeles, California, United States, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area. The area features many of the city's major arts institutions and sports facilities, sightseeing opportunities, a variety of skyscrapers and associated large multinational corporations and an array of public art and unique shopping opportunities. Downtown Los Angeles is the hub of the city's freeway network and Metro rapid transit system.


Downtown Los Angeles is generally thought to be bounded by the Los Angeles River on the east in Lincoln Heights, the Hollywood (Route 101) Freeway to the north, the Santa Monica (I-10) Freeway on the south and the Harbor (SR-110) Freeway on the west. Some sources, including the Los Angeles Downtown News and Los Angeles Times, extend the area past the traditional boundary to include University Park and Exposition Park, encompassing the University of Southern California (USC) and Central City West neighborhoods.

Demographics
Downtown Los Angeles is almost evenly balanced among the four major racial and ethnic groups – Asian Americans (23%), African Americans (22%), Latinos (25%) and non-Hispanic Whites (26%), according to an analysis of 2010 census data.

Dodger Stadium

Dodger Stadium, occasionally referenced by local sportscasters with the metonym Chavez Ravine, is a stadium in Los Angeles. Located adjacent to Downtown Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium has been the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers team since 1962. Dodger Stadium was constructed from 1959 to 1962 at a cost of $23 million, financed by private sources.
Dodger Stadium is currently the third oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball (behind Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago) and is, by seating capacity, the largest ballpark in the world.
The stadium hosted the 1980 MLB All-Star Game, as well as games of the 1963, 1965, 1966, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981, and 1988 World Series.
It also hosted the semifinals and finals of the 2009 World Baseball Classic as well as exhibition baseball during the 1984 Summer Olympics. The 2012 season marked the fiftieth anniversary of the stadium.

Seating
Dodger Stadium is the only current MLB park (excluding the most recently-built parks) that has never changed its capacity. It has always held 56,000 fans, due to a conditional-use permit limiting its capacity. Every time the Dodgers add seats, they always remove an equal number of seats in the upper deck or in the pavilion to keep the capacity the same. Through the sale of standing room only tickets, the Dodgers' 2009 home opener drew 57,099 fans, the largest crowd in stadium history. Following a number of incidents in the early 1970s in which fans showered Cincinnati Reds left fielder Pete Rose with beer, bottles, cups, and trash, the sale of beer was discontinued in the left field pavilion. Beer sales were reinstated in the left field pavilion in 2008. A new addition to Dodger Stadium in 2009 was the Bleacher Beach, a specially ticketed section of seats in left field upper deck where fans had access to free food. The Bleacher Beach has since been removed.
With the retirement of the original Yankee Stadium (1923) and Shea Stadium in 2008, the park claimed the title of being the largest capacity stadium in the Majors.
As of 2010, there are a total of 2,098 club seats and 68 luxury suites. Both of these amounts will increase once the renovations are complete.

Little Tokyo

Little Tokyo, also known as Little Tokyo Historic District, is an ethnically Japanese American district in downtown Los Angeles and the heart of the largest Japanese-American population in North America.  It is one of only three official Japantowns in the United States, all three of which are in California (the other two are in San Francisco and San Jose). Founded around the beginning of the 20th century, the area, sometimes called Lil' Tokyo, J-Town, 小東京 (Shō-tōkyō), is the cultural center for Japanese Americans in Southern California. It was declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1995.

Universal Studios Hollywood

Universal Studios, American motion-picture studio that was one of the leading producers of film serials in the 1920s and of popular horror films in the ’30s. Carl Laemmle, a film exhibitor turned producer, formed the company in 1912. In its early days it was a top producer of popular low-budget serials and also presented many of the films of Erich von Stroheim (1885–1957), who was a pioneer in realistic film direction.

For many years after the award-winning film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), the studio presented its characteristic low-budget films, which included the well-known horror films Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931). In the 1960s it regained much box-office success through the comedies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. It was known as Universal-International for a time and in the early 1970s it was purchased by the Music Corporation of America, which turned it into the largest and most profitable packager of films for television in the world. Universal was subsequently involved in a series of acquisitions, and in 2004 the company (as part of Vivendi Universal Entertainment) merged with the National Broadcasting Co., Inc., to form NBC Universal.

Universal Studios opened a number of theme parks that highlight its movie and television productions. In addition to being a working studio, Universal Studios Hollywood includes rides and attractions and offers tours of various television and film sets. It was damaged by fires in 1990 and 2008; the latter destroyed two square blocks of the studio lot as well as its popular King Kong attraction. Universal Orlando Resort in Florida features the Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure theme parks. The latter includes the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, an attraction based on J.K. Rowling’s popular book series. Other Universal Studios theme parks are located in Ōsaka, Japan, and in Singapore.

Koreatown in LA

Koreatown is a neighborhood in the Mid-Wilshire district of the city of Los Angeles, California known for its concentration of Korean American people and institutions. Home to a population of over 120,000 and covering just under 3-square-mile (7.8 km²), it has the highest population density of all neighborhoods in Los Angeles and its density ranks among the highest in the United States.


The neighborhood is in the midst of a construction boom that has helped fuel an influx of new residents priced out from nearby Los Feliz and West Hollywood. The neighborhood is known for its many commercial and residential mid- and high-rise towers, historic buildings, Asian high-fashion boutiques, and the largest concentration of nightclubs and 24-hour businesses and restaurants in Southern California. It is also the location of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

Economy

 

Asiana Airlines operates a sales office in Koreatown. Korean Air's United States Passenger Operations headquarters are located in close proximity to Koreatown in the Westlake community. Grupo TACA operates a Los Angeles-area TACA Center in Suite 100P at 3600 Wilshire Boulevard.
The Consulate-General of South Korea in Los Angeles is located at 3243 Wilshire Boulevard. The Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Los Angeles is located at 443 Shatto Place, while the passport and visa office is on the third floor of 500 Shatto Place. The Consulate General of El Salvador is located at 3450 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 250  and the Consulate General of Guatemala is located at 3540 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 100 . The Consulate General of Honduras and Nicaragua are located at 3550 Wilshire Blvd. The Consulate General of Bolivia is located at 3701 Wilshire Blvd #1056 .
South Korean investment has been a large contributor to the neighborhood economy since the 1960s. Since the early 2000s, that investment has increased greatly, ballooning to an estimated $1 billion in new construction investment.
Since the adoption by the Los Angeles City Council of smart growth and the subsequent removal of zoning laws and tax fees, Japanese investment has notably increased as well as interest from the UAE firm Dubai Holding.

Shopping

6th Street at Alexandria

Koreatown has several shopping centers that cater to Korean customers. There are many mini-malls and individual stores that sell ethnic products favored by the local residents.

Nightlife

The local scene in Koreatown is unique in Los Angeles, having the feel of a mini-Seoul. It is dotted with Korean language signs, often with no translation.
The neighborhood has over 1,100 night-time establishments which includes numerous bars, clubs, restaurants, spas, noraebangs (karaoke studios), dancehalls, theaters, poolhalls, coffeehouses, Hookah Lounges and internet parlors.
Koreatown is the nearest to a 24-hour district in Los Angeles, and has the highest concentration of nightclubs and restaurants in Southern California.
Though it is against California state law, smoking is tolerated everywhere. Many businesses serve liquor after 2 a.m. LAPD cites alcohol violations in the form of after hours sales and sales to minors as a "big problem."
A smorgasbord of restaurants can be found in Koreatown from every food category and culture. From tofu houses, Korean BBQ, Mexican taco stands, bakeries, Greek gyros, pizza, Vietnamese Pho noodle houses, Thai, Salvadoran pupuserías, boba parlors, Chinese food to American hamburger stands, coffee houses and steakhouses, it is common to find several of these types of restaurants in a single Koreatown shopping plaza, minimall, or city block.

Los Angeles County

Los Angeles County, also known as L.A. County, officially the County of Los Angeles, is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the county has a population of 9,818,605, making it the most populous county in the United States. Los Angeles County alone is more populous than 42 individual U.S. states. The county seat is the city of Los Angeles, the largest city in California and the second-largest city in the United States (after New York City).
Los Angeles County also includes two offshore islands, San Clemente Island and Santa Catalina Island. The county is home to 88 incorporated cities and many unincorporated areas. At 4,083 square miles (10,570 km²), it is larger than the combined areas of the states of Rhode Island and Delaware.
The county is home to over a quarter of all California residents and is one of the most diverse counties in the country.

Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills is an affluent city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, surrounded by the City of Los Angeles. It is home to the shopping district Rodeo Drive.
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Beverly Hills, city, western Los Angeles county, California, U.S., completely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles. The original inhabitants of the region, the Tongva (or Gabrielino) Indians, first made contact with the Spanish in 1769. In 1838 the land was deeded to Maria Rita Valdez Villa, the widow of a Spanish soldier, who there built the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas. The land was used mostly for cattle and sheep ranching until 1906, when it was organized as a residential area called Beverly, for Beverly Farms, Massachusetts; in 1912 the Beverly Hills Hotel was erected. In 1919 film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks built their estate, Pickfair, there, which began the fashion among Hollywood celebrities and executives to build lavish homes in the city; these are among the city’s most popular tourist attractions. Among the many celebrities who have resided in the city are Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Charlie Chaplin, Cher, Marlene Dietrich, Harrison Ford, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, Boris Karloff, Gene Kelly, Groucho Marx, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, and Rudolph Valentino.

Beverly Hills is transected east-west by three main boulevards: north of Sunset Boulevard are foothills containing the Beverly Hills Hotel (with its famous Polo Lounge and pink bungalows) and luxurious mansions among the winding drives; south of Sunset Boulevard are the flatlands, containing other expensive homes and, between Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard, many chic shops, boutiques, and department stores. The most exclusive of these are on the old Rodeo Drive and the newer Two Rodeo Drive, a multilevel shopping street in mock Mediterranean style. The city also has some light manufacturing south of Wilshire Boulevard, though tourism is its economic mainstay. The area of Beverly Hills—5.7 square miles (14.8 square km)—contains several parks and is profusely planted with trees, shrubbery, and lawns. The city is bordered to the southwest by the studios of Twentieth Century-Fox, whose lots, however, have now largely been converted into Century City, a shopping mall, office-building centre, and theatre complex. The city contains a branch of the Museum of Television and Radio. Inc. 1914. Pop. (2000) 33,784; (2010) 34,109.

Griffith Observatory

Griffith Observatory is a facility in Los Angeles, California sitting on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in Los Angeles' Griffith Park. It commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin, including Downtown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. The observatory is a popular tourist attraction with an extensive array of space and science-related displays.

3,015 acres (12.20 km²) of land surrounding the observatory was donated to the City of Los Angeles by Colonel Griffith J. Griffith on December 16, 1896. In his will Griffith donated funds to build an observatory, exhibit hall, and planetarium on the donated land. Griffith's objective was to make astronomy accessible by the public, as opposed to the prevailing idea that observatories should be located on remote mountaintops and restricted to scientists.

Griffith drafted detailed specifications for the observatory. In drafting the plans, he consulted with Walter Adams, the future director of Mount Wilson Observatory, and George Ellery Hale, who founded (with Andrew Carnegie) the first astrophysical telescope in Los Angeles.

As a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, construction began on June 20, 1933, using a design developed by architect John C. Austin based on preliminary sketches by Russell W. Porter.
 The observatory and accompanying exhibits were opened to the public on May 14, 1935. In its first five days of operation the observatory logged more than 13,000 visitors. Dinsmore Alter was the museum's director during its first years; today, Dr. Ed Krupp is the director of the Observatory.

Visiting Griffith Observatory
Admission to the building and grounds of Griffith Observatory is free of charge, excluding some of the shows for a minimal price at the planetarium. The Observatory is open five days a week. There is a small parking lot next to the Observatory. Additional parking is along the steep road leading up to the observatory. Parking is free of charge.
There are photo opportunities and scenery at and around the Observatory, with views of the Pacific Ocean, the Hollywood Sign and Downtown Los Angeles. (Note: Pictures of these views are on the right side of the screen.) Ideal for tourist destination, field trips, dates and outings with the family and friends.

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Griffith Park Observatory

Griffith J. Griffith (1850-1919) was a Welsh immigrant who made a fortune in mining in Southern California at the end of the 19th Century. In 1896, he donated 3,015 acres of his land to the City of Los Angeles to establish a public park that is five times the size of NYC's Central Park. In 1903, Griffith shot his wife during a dispute and he subsequently served 2 years in San Quentin for attempted murder. After his release, he donated money to the city to build a grand public observatory in the park. Architect John C. Austin (1870-1963) built the observatory in 1935 on the West slope of Mount Hollywood overlooking the Los Angeles basin.

The observatory underwent a major renovation between 2002 and 2006 and is now open to the public again. I highly recommend that tourists to Los Angeles and people who just moved to Los Angeles visit the Griffith Observatory. Admission to the building and exhibits are free but there is a fee for planetarium shows. The telescopes are open to the public free of charge on clear nights. Be warned that there is limited parking and the observatory tends to get very crowded on weekends. If you drive on a weekend, arrive early or take a shuttle from Los Feliz.

 

TCL Chinese Theatre

Hollywood & Highland Center

6801 Hollywood Blvd

Hollywood, CA 90028, United States

TCL Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and Mann's Chinese Theatre) is a movie theater on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. The theater was renamed in January 2013 when the TCL Corporation, a Chinese electronics company, purchased the naming rights for over $5 million.


The original Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, which opened in 1922. Built over 18 months, from January 1926 by a partnership headed by Sid Grauman, the theater opened May 18, 1927, with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille's film The King of Kings. It has since been home to many premieres, including the 1977 launch of George Lucas's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, as well as birthday parties, corporate junkets and three Academy Awards ceremonies. Among the theater's most distinctive features are the concrete blocks set in the forecourt, which bear the signatures, footprints, and handprints of popular motion picture personalities from the 1920s to the present day.

Footprints
There are nearly 200 Hollywood celebrity handprints, footprints, and autographs in the concrete of the theater's forecourt.
Variations of this honored tradition are imprints of the eyeglasses of Harold Lloyd, the cigar of Groucho Marx, the magic wands of Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, the facial profile of John Barrymore (reflecting his nickname "The Great Profile"), the legs of Betty Grable, the fist of John Wayne, the knees of Al Jolson, the ice skating blades of Sonja Henie, and the noses of Jimmy Durante and Bob Hope.

Western stars William S. Hart and Roy Rogers left imprints of their guns. The hoofprints of "Tony", the horse of Tom Mix, "Champion", the horse of Gene Autry, and "Trigger", the horse of Rogers, were left in the concrete beside the prints of the stars who rode them in the movies.

Since 2011, there has been a surge of concrete ceremonies, many of which have been paid for by movie studios for publicity reasons. One of the theater's current owners, Donald Kushner, acknowledged this and referred to them as mock ceremonies. This influx has been a matter of concern for film buffs and historians, as well as misleading for fans. However, despite the increase of cement blocks, the ones placed within the forecourt are still chosen by a special committee who selects celebrities based on their contributions to Hollywood cinema. The other blocks are placed on the walls of the Grauman Ballroom, located inside the Chinese 6 Theatres within the Hollywood & Highland Center.

Dolby Theatre

The Dolby Theatre (formerly known as the Kodak Theatre, and temporarily renamed the Hollywood and Highland Center Theatre) is a live-performance auditorium in the Hollywood and Highland shopping mall and entertainment complex, on Hollywood Boulevard and North Highland Avenue, in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, United States. Since its opening on November 9, 2001, the theater has hosted the Academy Awards ceremonies (the Oscars), initially held there in March 2002. It is the first permanent home for these annual awards ceremonies.

History
The theater is rented to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for weeks before Oscar night. During the rest of the year, it hosts numerous live concerts, awards shows, symphony performances, and other events. But since the 7,000-seat Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live opened in 2007, it has largely replaced the Dolby Theatre as L.A.'s premier auditorium, and some of the events formerly held at the Dolby are now regularly held at the Nokia, including the American Idol finals.

The theater was sponsored, until February 2012, by the Eastman Kodak Company, which paid $75 million for naming rights to the building. In early 2012, Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection, and thus ended its naming-rights deal. Then, the theater's name was temporarily changed to The Hollywood and Highland Centre, at the suggestion of the venue's landlord. On May 1, 2012, it was announced that the venue would be renamed the Dolby Theatre, after Dolby Laboratories signed a 20-year naming-rights deal.
Dolby updated the sound system first by installing Dolby Atmos. The company plans to continue updating the auditorium with newer technologies as they become available.

Hollywood Walk of Fame

The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California. The stars are permanent public monuments to achievement in the entertainment industry, bearing the names of a mix of actors, musicians, directors, producers, musical and theatrical groups, fictional characters, and others. The Walk of Fame is administered by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and maintained by the self-financing Hollywood Historic Trust. It is a popular tourist destination, with a reported 10 million visitors in 2003.

location:Hollywood Blvd. and Vine St.  Hollywood, Los Angeles

Hollywood(2)

Hollywood is a district situated in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and celebrities, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema. Even though much of the movie industry has dispersed into surrounding areas such as West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, significant auxiliary industries, such as editing, effects, props, post-production, and lighting companies remain in Hollywood, as does the backlot of Paramount Pictures.

As a district within the Los Angeles city limits, Hollywood does not have its own municipal government. There was an official, appointed by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, who served as an honorary "Mayor of Hollywood" for ceremonial purposes only. Johnny Grant held this position from 1980 until his death on January 9, 2008.

Santa Monica, CA

Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, United States. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is bordered on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and Venice on the southeast. Santa Monica is home to executives and Hollywood celebrities amongst others and it is a mixture of affluent, single-family neighborhoods, renters, surfers, young professionals, and students. The Census Bureau 2010 population for Santa Monica is 89,736.

Santa Monica is named after Saint Monica of Hippo, from a former, turn-of-the-19th-century name for Kuruvungna Springs, now on the SE corner of the campus of University High School at Barrington and Ohio, a short distance from the eastern border of Santa Monica. The Portola Expedition visited Kuruvungna on August 3–4, 1769. Father Crespi renamed the Springs "San Gregorio", but the expedition soldiers called them "El Berrendo" after a deer they wounded there. Later, the pair of springs began to be called "The Tears of Santa Monica" by locals because they brought to mind the weeping eyes of the saint as she cried for her erring son. The first official record of Santa Monica as a place name was on a 1827 grazing permit and then again the following year on the record of the grant for Rancho Boca de Santa Monica.

Partly because of its agreeable climate, Santa Monica had become a famed resort town by the early 20th century. The city has experienced a boom since the late 1980s through the revitalization of its downtown core with significant job growth and increased tourism.

Attractions and cultural resources
The Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome (carousel) is a National Historic Landmark. It sits on the Santa Monica Pier, which was built in 1909. The La Monica Ballroom on the pier was once the largest ballroom in the US, and the source for many New Year's Eve national network broadcasts. The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was an important music venue for several decades and hosted the Academy Awards in the 1960s. McCabe's Guitar Shop is still a leading acoustic performance space, as well as retail outlet. Bergamot Station is a city-owned art gallery compound that includes the Santa Monica Museum of Art. The city is also home to the California Heritage Museum and the Angels Attic dollhouse and toy museum.

The Grove at Farmers Market, LA

The Grove is a retail and entertainment complex in Los Angeles, California, built, owned, and operated by Rick J. Caruso and his company Caruso Affiliated on parts of the historical Farmers Market.

History
The complex fills space previously occupied by an orchard and nursery (the last remains of a dairy farm owned by A.F. Gilmore in the latter part of the 19th century). The developers began demolition of an antiques alley and other older buildings on Third Street behind CBS Television City, and broke ground for the new mall in 1999. There was some controversy over potentially increasing traffic in a busy Los Angeles neighborhood that already offered several other shopping venues, including the Beverly Center. The Grove opened in 2002 and has been an extremely popular outdoor mall ever since.
The Warner Bros. tabloid television news program Extra is also taped in the complex, usually in front of the animated fountains.

Attractions
The Grove features a large center park with an animated fountain designed by WET. Its music-fountain show plays every hour, though the feature has a non-musical program in between shows. The water's choreography is reminiscent of the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas—also designed by WET—but on a much smaller scale. The fountain also has a statue, The Spirit of Los Angeles. Live shows are often performed there, or on the grassy area by the fountains. An internal transit system uses electric-powered trolley cars to link The Grove and the adjacent Farmers Market.