On a temperate Friday afternoon in bright and sunny Downtown yesterday, I got off work early and took the opportunity to run around DTLA, and reflected on how different it is from other downtowns around the world.
I've lived around New York downtown (and Uptown), Washington DC downtown, Chicago downtown, San Francisco downtown, and they're all prominent attractions for tourists and usually brimming with tourists. Manhattan is one of the most dense spaces on Earth and has Central Park, Wall Street, Empire State Building, and miles and miles of cultural destinations, DC has the White House and National Mall, San Francisco is right around the Bay and offers great views, and Chicago has the Chicago River and Lake Shore Drive running through it that claims the best properties. I'd say the No. 1 destination if I were visiting those cities for the first time would be downtown.
Not Los Angeles. DTLA is not built around the ocean, not built on the mountains, no river running through it......it's actually interesting why downtown LA was built where it is. (My friend Nathan is a historian/ librarian/TV host hosts a TV show called "Lost in LA" about this very topic); tourists would much rather visit Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Hollywood before venturing to DTLA. In fact, when I first moved to LA more than 10 years ago downtown was sort of a ghost town where people went to work and left after the day ended, going home to nicer areas. Even as an urban center some might prefer to work in Century City or Santa Monica.
The lack of tourists and acclaim, however, actually makes running through DTLA nice.......there's not that many people who take the route I do, whether it's through the Walt Disney Hall area or the newly built Los Angeles State Historic Park next to Chinatown, or a trek to Union Station.......they're all nicely built areas with fountains and decoratively arranged flowers, architectural masterpieces.....just without the mass amounts of people stampeding all over it. Like in New York City, I'll see flocks of people running the same running path that I do. In DTLA, I'm a lone wolf. Dodger Stadium is a little ways away from DTLA but actually reachable by foot; one day I imagine there will be some sort of easy subway line or tram that transports people from downtown to the stadium.
Certainly parts of DTLA are hilly, so it might require climbing up or down some stairs, which I appreciate. Sometimes you might have to cross through a building or two, through the Los Angeles Public Library, for example, to get where you want to go, a sort of zig zag path of loops and turns. Not a straight, clearly marked path for runners to know exactly how far they're running and where to. Which is part of the intrigue for me: climbing up a 50-step flight of stairs, for example, isn't exactly normal, but it changes the view dramatically and gets you to another area of the city, as if teleporting to one area but also traveling through time from one era of older buildings to the modern skyscrapers. There are vestiges of tunnels and overpasses over the roads that were probably illusions of grandeur of a larger city walk above the city which are probably underutilized (but I love them!) and iconic areas that one can see used in films like "Heat," or in the upcoming third season of Westworld. I often see new TV shows and commercials shooting too, especially on clear days or dark nights. It's really a unique downtown that I've had the privilege of working in and exploring (and really looking through every nook and cranny). Even better, it's still expanding! With the gargantuan Wilshire Grand Building opening a few years ago, downtown's attracting even more innovation and development. Like a kid growing up year after year from infancy, every time I come back to work in DTLA I see newly developing features and potential of things to come.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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