Los Angeles & Southern California - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [66]
FARMERS MARKET
Apples to zucchinis, cheeses to blinis – you’ll find them at the landmark Farmers Market (Map; 323-933-9211; www.farmersmarketla.com; 6333 W 3rd St, Fairfax District, Mid-City; admission free; 9am-9pm Mon-Fri, 9am-8pm Sat, 10am-7pm Sun; ), in business since 1934. Casual and kid-friendly, it’s a fun place for a browse, snack or for people-watching. Next door, the Grove (Map; 323-900-8080; www.thegrovela.com; 189 The Grove Dr) is a faux-European yet attractive outdoor shopping mall built around a central plaza with a musical fountain (nicest after dark, almost magical at Christmas time; also Click here).
North of here is CBS Television City (Map; 323-575-2624; www.cbs.com; 7800 Beverly Blvd), where game shows, talk shows, soap operas and other programs are taped, often before a live audience (for tickets, see boxed text, Click here).
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART (LACMA)
LA’s premier art museum, LACMA (Map; 323-857-6000; www.lacma.org; 5901 Wilshire Blvd, Miracle Mile, Mid-City; adult/senior & student/child $9/5/free, after 5pm free; noon-8pm Mon, Tue & Thu, noon-9pm Fri, 11am-8pm Sat & Sun) is an Aladdin’s cave of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts stretching across the ages and borders. Yet, somehow, so far, it just hasn’t quite got the respect it deserves. Sure, galleries are stuffed with all the major players – Rembrandt, Cézanne, Magritte, Mary Cassat, Ansel Adams, to name a few – plus several millenia’s worth of ceramics from China, woodblock prints from Japan, pre-Columbian art, and ancient sculpture from Greece, Rome, Egypt and lots of other treasures; the depth and wealth of the collection here is stunning. The way it’s displayed – in dark galleries spread across a jumble of undistinguished buildings – is outdated and not particularly user-friendly. Even director Michael Govan calls the museum a ‘sleeping giant’.
If all goes according to plan, this is about to change as LACMA is moving full steam ahead with a major revamp masterminded by Renzo Piano Phase 1. Opening in early 2008, it includes a new entry pavilion and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. It will present part of the personal collection of developer Eli Broad, including seminal works by Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.
Some collections may be closed or moving during renovation, so check ahead if you’re keen on seeing anything in particular.
LACMA also hosts headlining touring exhibits and frequent movie screenings, readings and other events, including a popular Friday-night jazz series. A café and a formal restaurant provide sustenance.
PAGE MUSEUM & LA BREA TAR PITS
Did you know that Manfred the mammoth, Sid the sloth and Diego the saber-toothed cat used to roam around LA in prehistoric times? Even if you’re not a fan of the Ice Age animated film trilogy, you’ll likely have a ball at the unique Page Museum (Map; 323-934-7243; www.tarpits.org; 5801 Wilshire Blvd, Miracle Mile, Mid-City; adult/student & senior/child 5-12 $7/4.50/2; 9:30am-5pm Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm Sat & Sun; ), an archaeological trove of skulls and bones unearthed at La Brea Tar Pits, one of the world’s most fecund and famous fossil sites. Thousands of ice-age critters met their maker between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago in gooey crude oil bubbling up from deep below Wilshire Blvd. Animals wading into the sticky muck became entrapped and were condemned to a slow death by starvation or suffocation. A life-size drama of a mammoth family outside the museum disturbingly dramatizes such a cruel fate. Parking costs $6.
Excavations continue every summer when you can watch paleontologists at work in Pit 91 (admission free; 10am-4pm Wed-Sun Jul & Aug; ). At other times, they’re fussing over bones in the glass-encased laboratory inside the museum itself, cleaning, identifying, cataloging and storing their discoveries.