Los Angeles has always been an enigma to me. I find it to be so easy to plan a trip in any walkable city. Philadelphia, New York, Boston, DC: I have dominated planning trips in all of them. Cars seem to be so necessary in LA, that it is just intimidating.
The last time I was in Los Angeles, I was there for GreenBuild. While I was thrilled to be able to meet up with people from the east coast who I had not seen in awhile, that time was exclusively spent in downtown LA, going back and forth between the hotel and the conference center and to restaurants and bars in between.
Before 2016, everything I knew about LA, I learned from The Hills. It was not exactly as though Lauren and her gang of frenemies were taking in cultural experiences of the city, but that is exactly what I set out to do with our time there. And maybe eat at every LVP restaurant too.
The Annenberg Space for Photography has a particularly fantastic exhibit. Contact High: A Visual History of Hip Hop will be on exhibit until mid-August. While the space, which is located in the middle of Century City, has free admission and validated parking, I recommend scheduling a tour with a staff member to get the most out of the experience. As a {mostly clueless} white woman, it was the best way to educate myself on the hip hop movement.
Sidebar: Did you know that hip hop has four elements: break dancing, graffiti, MC, and turn tables?
I also recommend visiting the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. While the art is impressive, the site, design, and development plans of the museum are on display and caught our interest. The MOCA was one of the first cultural institutions that was built downtown and it served as a catalyst for the development of many others, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall. We were excited to note that Arata Isozaki designed the Museum of Contemporary Art. For those out of the built environment loop, Arata Isozaki won the 2019 Pritzker Prize which is commonly acknowledged as the Nobel Prize of the architecture field.
Sincerest thanks to Visit Los Angeles for planning our day.