I dared to go as few have gone before on a trip to Los Angeles last week �" I made the visit without a car. It was, in fact, my third car-free trip to LA in as many years. Despite what you may have heard, you can get by and have a fun car-free trip to LA with a little advance planning. You will save yourself stress and money.
I took the MegaBus from the San Francisco Caltrain station at 10:30 a.m. Monday and, after a stop at the West Oakland BART station and a quick rest stop in Kettleman City, I arrived at LA's Union Station a little before 6 p.m. The seven and a half hour trip was a lot less stressful than driving and easier and cheaper than flying. My roundtrip fare was only $43, including the $18 extra I paid to reserve the coveted upper deck front row seat. Expect to pay more or less than that depending on demand or how early in advance you book the ticket.
WeHo
Once in LA, I took the #704 Santa Monica bus and got off in West Hollywood, 45 minutes later. West Hollywood, aka WeHo, is one of California's most walkable cities. It makes a good home base for exploring Los Angeles and its surrounding cities. A couple of LA's best tour companies, the not-to-be missed LGBT Out and About Tours (www.thelavendereffect.org) and Bikes and Hikes LA (http://www.bikesandhikesLA.com), are based in West Hollywood. You can also book Starline (www.starlinetours.com) hop on/hop off bus, boarding in WeHo with stops that cover all the highlights in LA. West Hollywood also has a bike sharing program similar to San Francisco's (www.wehopedals.com) and it offers a free shuttle service on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon and evening that runs along Santa Monica Boulevard from Robertson to La Brea (www.wehopickup.com).
As one of the world's gayest cities, West Hollywood is a destination by itself, combining some of southern California's best restaurants with great nightlife and entertainment. The city is conveniently sandwiched between Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The famed Sunset Strip, with its music and comedy venues, is the place where you will find some of southern California's toniest restaurants, upscale hotels, and chic shops.
The Sunset Strip, as you might have guessed, is along Sunset Boulevard. Santa Monica Boulevard runs parallel to Sunset Boulevard and it's where you will find most of WeHo's gay nightlife. WeHo is just outside of the Los Angeles city limits and that, in part, helped the gay nightlife flourish in the bad old days when LA police routinely raided gay clubs. WeHo was under the jurisdiction of the more lenient Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. West Hollywood, which used to be known as the town of Sherman, became its own city in 1984. WeHo turns 32 next week �" Tuesday, November 29.
West Hollywood's most recognizable landmark is the famed Pacific Design Center complex, a series of three buildings, clad in red, green, and blue, clustered alongside one another like giant gems. West Hollywood's modern library is right across the street. It opened five years ago and is a destination to itself. It offers a sweeping view of the Design Center and has a large LGBT section. If you are driving, the library validates parking at its garage for up to three hours.
A must-do for any LGBT visitor to LA is one of the aforementioned Out and About Tours. The company offers the stuff you will see on a mainstream tour and the LGBT-specific sights that the other tours leave out. One of the tours focuses on downtown Los Angeles and shatters the stereotype of LA being devoid of the activism that often gets overshadowed by Stonewall and gay activism in San Francisco.
I had the pleasure of taking Out and About's walking tour of Hollywood last week. The 2.5-hour tour begins late Sunday morning with a champagne toast at the Hollywood Museum. The tour gives an insight to the booming gay community in Hollywood, which once had as many as 40 gay bars and nightclubs that had to operate through most of the last century under the threat of police raids.
Gay rights in Hollywood passed a milestone in 1970 when a group got a permit to close Hollywood Boulevard for a gay parade, a first for any city. A sign and street plaque that honor that distinction is on McCadden Place, just off Hollywood Boulevard �" ironically just alongside the Scientology building. Out and About Tours is part of the nonprofit Lavender Effect organization, so proceeds from the tour benefit LA's LGBT community. Out and About offers both walking and bus tours. In January, it will begin offering a walking tour of West Hollywood.
Bikes and Hikes LA offers bicycle and walking tours. It is based on Santa Monica Boulevard in the heart of gay WeHo, so it is an easy tour to catch if you are starting out in West Hollywood. It offers a great selection of tours ranging from daylong bike tours to sunset hikes in the Hollywood Hills.
LA's gay beach is about a 25-minute drive from WeHo. It is a section of Will Rogers State Beach, two miles north of the iconic Santa Monica Pier, opposite Entrada Drive and West Channel Road. Regulars call it Ginger Rogers Beach. If you are driving, take Sunset Boulevard west to the Pacific Coast Highway. Make a left on PCH and then turn left onto either Entrada Drive or West Channel Road. There is usually free street parking available. There are a couple of pay parking lots nearby, including a public parking lot at the beach. By public transit, take the #4 bus from WeHo and transfer to the #9 bus in downtown Santa Monica. It will take you a little over an hour on the bus.
Greater Los Angeles
The greater Los Angeles area is home to the world's best-known and -loved amusement parks. Disneyland and its sister attraction, Disney California Adventure Park, are well worth seeing. And be sure and stay to enjoy the closing shows at each of the parks. California Adventure's World of Color show is an amazing music, light, and sound show. Right now a new Christmas show is playing and it's unclear if the one with gay actor Neil Patrick Harris is coming back. Disneyland is a little less than an hour's drive from WeHo but if you are car-less, Starline Tours offers daily express bus service to the parks.
Universal Studios unveiled its Harry Potter attraction and it is drawing Potter fans to the park from all over the world. The attraction includes a re-creation of an old English town complete with very realistic snow-covered roofs. If you want to avoid crowds, stay away from the parks during the Thanksgiving or Christmas weeks, but if you can travel there in early December, or in January after New Year's, you will find much smaller crowds than is typical during summer vacation or spring break times. Universal is easy to get to by public transit. It is on a stop on the Metro Red Line subway.
Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Sony all offer studio tours. Warner Brothers is among the best. The tour concludes with a stop at a museum of movie memorabilia where you can take your time exploring your interests. Out talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is featured in a video introduction of the tour and she introduces the film memorabilia archive room near the end of the tour. By the way, The Ellen Show is shot at Warner Brothers and you can request free tickets, just make sure to do so far in advance (http://www.ellentv.com). You can also request free tickets to the Big Bang Theory but the show fills up as long as a year in advance (http://www.TVtickets.com). The tour also includes the original set of the Central Park coffee shop from the Friends show as well as the living room set from Two and a Half Men. If you get a little homesick, the back lot includes the facade of the San Francisco Victorian home where Full House was filmed. The facade is now being used for the Fuller House Netflix revival series.
Gay nightlife
Most of greater Los Angeles' LGBT nightlife is centered in West Hollywood. The newest gay nightspot opened just last month next to the Abbey. It's called the Chapel and is owned by the same company that owns the Abbey. Previously, the space was the Here Lounge. Since the closing of the Palms three years ago, WeHo has no exclusively lesbian bars but the Chapel hosts a lesbian-focused night on Wednesdays and, like the Abbey, it is always very women-welcoming.
Ground zero for gay nightlife is along Santa Monica Boulevard from North Robertson Blvd to Palm Avenue. The Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles is about five miles east of WeHo and has also long been gay-popular. It had its own version of Stonewall, in 1967, two years before the New York City riot, outside the Black Cat bar. A plaque in front of the building that housed the Black Cat at 3903 Sunset Boulevard recognizes the location as the place of the first known formal organized gay rights protest in the U.S. Among the mainstay gay bars in Silver Lake are Akbar, the Eagle LA, and Faultline.
Accommodations
There are no exclusively gay hotels in Los Angeles. Longtime visitors to LA might remember the notorious Coral Sands Motel in Hollywood or West Hollywood's San Vicente Inn. The Coral Sands went mainstream and the San Vicente changed its name and is now an upscale boutique hotel.
The Ramada (http://www.ramdadaweho.com) is perfectly located across the street from the 24 Hour Fitness and it is directly on Santa Monica Boulevard, just steps from the city's LGBT nightlife.
If you are looking for luxury accommodations, the Andaz (http://www.andaz.hyatt.com) on Sunset Boulevard and the London (http://www.thelondonwesthollywood.com), just south of Sunset, are good choices. Both hotels are known for their upscale accommodations and fine dining.