Attractions & Landmarks >>

• Best Picnic Spot for Cowboys
  Paramount Ranch
  The Paramount Ranch has stood in for Tombstone, Laredo, Dodge City and a host of other cowboy movie landmarks. The façade of a Western town still stands at the entrance and is occasionally used for TV and film shoots. A large grassy area with tables is perfect for picnics. Various... More >>
• Best Dream Home
  Museum of Jurassic Technology
  It's a favorite of hipsters, artists, scholars, scientists and pretty much anyone with an interest in natural history, dimly lit rooms, mysticism, bees, Wunderkammer, biology, archaeology, pyramids, taxidermy, Victoriana, the notion of what makes a museum a museum, and/or a general sort of... More >>
• Best Moving Pictures
  The Engine Theater
  At first glance, it's a rusted tower crane. Perhaps something dredged up from the ocean, an artifact of some lost city in some displaced future, like Mad Max's Atlantis. Unlike any projection system Los Angeles has ever seen, the Engine Theater is 1,000 pounds of illuminated oxidized-steel... More >>
• Best Steam Trains (1 Comment)
  Walt Disney's Carolwood Barn
  Steam trains were an obsession for Walt Disney since his childhood. From his earliest sketches, he planned to have a railroad circling around the park at Disneyland. Ward Kimball and Ollie Johnson, two of Disney Studios' "Nine Old Men" of animation, shared the same obsession. They introduced... More >>
• Best Ticket to Train Heaven
  Travel Town Museum
  In the general category of obsessive types, rail fanatics are hard to beat. It's one of those fixations that begins in childhood and can balloon into an all-consuming, nostalgia-drenched existence. A glance at any historical rail Web site, typically filled with pages of precise timetables,... More >>
• Best Walk in the Park
  Griffith Park
  I walk past the tranquil Trails Café, where the baked goods are made from scratch and Allison Anders can be seen reminiscing with friends about Gas Food Lodging. I pass the Macbethian bridges, where the musk of resident nymphs has rubbed off on the tree bark. I cut through the children's... More >>
• Best Ape Hoots and Howls
  Gibbon Conservation Center
  The sun is high, the sky is blue, and a few scattered hoots are on the verge of becoming a rare midafternoon chorus at the Gibbon Conservation Center. "These guys usually sing in the morning," says Alan Mootnick, director of the center. "But maybe you'll get lucky." Sure enough, the hoots... More >>
• Best Hollywood Trash Collectors
  World of Wonder Storefront Gallery
  Estelle Getty would be rolling in her grave if she knew that there's a pornographic painting of her vagina out there. The World of Wonder Storefront Gallery opened its doors last summer with the now infamous "Golden Gals Gone Wild," an exhibit inspired by The Golden Girls that includes erotic... More >>
• Best Doggy Hike (2 Comments)
  Runyon Canyon
  The only off-leash hiking area in the city, Runyon Canyon is the best place to let your dog run free and enjoy sprawling views of the Hollywood Hills. With 90 acres to roam, both you and Prince will get a good workout walk or run. Of course, this see-and-be-seen slice of nature is also known as... More >>
• Best Blooming Urban Renewal
  Exposition Park Rose Garden
  It's hard to believe in a city that's largely known for creating the decentralized urban form, but even during Los Angeles' early years, shared public places were a given. Often, they didn't take shape without a fight, and one of the most pleasant places in L.A., now known as the Exposition Park... More >>
• Best Place to Tie the Knot
  Marvimon
  We've all been there: hot Scottish boyfriend needs a green card and you've always wanted a European passport; or, your waif-y girlfriend has systemic candida and could suck some serious marrow out of your SAG health insurance. All signs point to happily ever after, so you throw both caution and... More >>
• Best Measure of a Man
  Porn Prints at Studs Theatre
  How to measure penis size discreetly: big nose, big hose? Large feet ... ? Measuring the tip of the middle finger to the base of the palm? Outside Studs Theatre in West Hollywood, you can gaze upon the scrawl of the late and lamented Linda Lovelace, marvel at the impressive confidence oozing... More >>
• L.A. From the Top and Bottom: Best View from Money
  La Cañada Flintridge Country Club
  What first hits your nose is the perspiration scent of canyon sage that rims the country club's parking lot, 1,600 feet above sea level. The big homes directly below, with their aqua-blue swimming pools and juniper windbreaks, probably look a lot like yours if you belong to this club. The... More >>
• L.A. From the Top and Bottom: Best View from Justice
  District Attorney's Office
  It's a wonder Steve Cooley gets anything done. The District Attorney's 18th-floor office enjoys a sweeping, hi-def southern exposure — it's impossible to tear yourself away from its view of downtown Los Angeles and beyond, to the peninsula. If it's true the most spectacular views are from... More >>
• L.A. From the Top and Bottom: Best Gazing from the Golden Hood
  Baldwin Hills
  From one of the $1 million decks on South Cloverdale Avenue, Los Angeles looks vaguely familiar yet radically different. Inside out, almost — a parallel, alternate Los Angeles. There's a tart metaphor here for Baldwin Hills, the affluent African-American neighborhood long ago dubbed the... More >>
• L.A. From the Top and Bottom: Best View from Heaven
  Griffith Park Observatory
  The observatory is sometimes so dismissively associated with tourists and high school field trips (including the famous one from Rebel Without a Cause) that it takes a visit by distant relatives to make you realize how ethereal this place really is. Elevation is everything in L.A., and the home... More >>
• L.A. From the Top and Bottom: Up from the Bottom
  MacArthur Park Metro Station
  You might feel like you're trapped in a fancy Chinese restaurant as you walk out of the MacArthur Park Red Line station, what with its great walls of shiny scarlet tiles. Suddenly, as you're about to ascend from this subterranean cave to Alvarado Street, the perspective dreamily changes. Looking... More >>
• Best Make-Believe Mayberry
  Franklin Canyon Park
  Just off Coldwater Canyon at Mulholland is a secluded nature retreat millions of mental miles away from the clamor of rush-hour traffic. You may recognize the duck pond, woodland setting and three-acre lake from their starring role as the background on The Andy Griffith Show reruns. With its... More >>
• Best Theater-in-the-Round
  Velaslavasay Panorama
  It's a little neighborhood movie theater in Union Square, which you'd almost miss if you weren't facing it as you drive up Union Street on the way to USC. Mint green and unassuming, the former Union Theatre — once known as Fairyland — had served as headquarters for the Tile Layers... More >>
• Best Foot Forward (Or Back) (1 Comment)
  Sign at Sunset Foot Clinic
  Eels said it best with their song "Sad Foot Sign": "Sad foot sign, why you gotta/taunt me this way/the happy side is broken now/it's gonna be an awful day." Anyone traveling down Sunset Boulevard to or from Echo Park has seen it: the big rotating sign for the Sunset Foot Clinic, one side of... More >>
• Best Telescope
  Mount Wilson Observatory
  The Griffith Observatory may get all the press, but high up in the San Gabriel Mountains is another space-gazing outpost equally worth a visit. The Mount Wilson Observatory, on a summit 5,712 feet above Pasadena, is a haven for astronomers both amateur and professional. Founded in 1904 by George... More >>
• Best Glass Houses
  Judson Studios
  Searing flames. Tiny pieces of brilliantly colored glass. Hot molten lead cames. These are the same tools of the trade the Judson Studios have used in Los Angeles since 1897 to make stained-glass windows. Judson Studios specializes in an old-fashioned craft that hasn't changed much since the... More >>
• Best Art Star Scouting
  Hope Gallery
  A collaboration between Fairfax's Family bookstore and Teenage Teardrops' Cali Dewitt, the Hope Gallery sits on Echo Park Avenue's well-trafficked bohemian block of shops by the historic Chicken Corner. Focusing on local and upcoming artists with a penchant for comic style illustration and... More >>
• Best Models
  Roundhouse Train Store
  The oldest and longest-running train store in Los Angeles is nestled on a block of Victory Boulevard, next to tiki bar (and fellow sixties relic) the Tonga Hut. Stepping inside the Roundhouse, one enters a Los Angeles of the past. The coffee pot's always on, and free cups are offered up with an... More >>
• Best Beach
  Point Dume
  Often mistaken for the phonetic spelling (doom), which perhaps accounts for the fortunately sparse population of beachgoers, the beach at Point Dume is a reliably pristine shore, one of the few beaches in Southern California where human footprints dissolve, parking is free and pods of porpoises... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Wooden
  Ghost Rider
  There is heated debate among roller-coaster riders over which is better: wooden tracks or steel tracks. Steel people cite smoothness and power. Wood people cite superiority of noise, the "classic" clattering sound wheels make on wood struts. Back in the '80s, Magic Mountain's wooden behemoth... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Appetizer of Terror
  Boomerang
  As you stand in line, the cars rush past you like a horde of screaming banshees. It is a terrible sound. It's so terrible, it's almost funny. You pull out of the station backward, up a hill, through the station again, through a roll, an inverted loop, then a hill, then falling, falling, falling,... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Scariest
  Xcelerator
  In two seconds, this monster accelerates straight out of the gate to 82 mph via the workings of a powerful hydraulic catapult motor — and pure evil. "Like a monkey being sent into outer space," was how one guy described the sensation. Other rides are perhaps longer, slicker and more... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
  Ninja
  Otherwise known as the ride that Ewoks would have built — if they weren't fighting off stormtroopers with rocks and saving the Empire. You board a little black dangling pouch of a car and, suspended from the track above, thread your way through trees, swinging side to side, bobbing and... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Recalling the Old Days
  Montezooma's Revenge
  Remember when just the name Montezooma's Revenge was enough to raise your hackles? You were 8, maybe, and had to look up what it meant. And when you learned that it was a cool name for traveler's diarrhea, and were struck by the perfectness of naming a scary ride after an unpleasant bodily... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Approximation of Stomach Poisoning
  Sierra Sidewinder
  Imagine it as the roller-coaster version of Disneyland's whirling tea-cups ride. Germans designed this ride. It is their vision of what a desert sidewinder snake would do, influenced by a touch of waltzing. Targeted for older kids (and wussy adults), each of the spinning four-seater cars rotates... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Mild-Mannered Water Coaster
  Log Ride vs. Splash Mountain (Tie)
  There is a certain class of rides that is not quite waterslide, not quite roller coaster proper. Water-coasters are distinct from rides like Big Foot Rapids at Knott's, where you and your party clamber aboard a large circular rubber innertube with seats, are carried along a rolling... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Moody Atmospherics
  Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
  For mood and atmosphere, night is the ideal time to ride certain coasters. Most roller coasters attempt to put your body through the ringer — screw the theatrics. If you expect animatronic werewolves to pop out at you on Silver Bullet at Magic Mountain, you'll be disappointed. While... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Unintentionally Scary
  Matterhorn
  The abominable snowman with the glowing red eyes who growls as your bobsled shoots by? Not scary. The rumbling mountain itself, which threatens to rain avalanches of snow down on you? Not scary. The sensation that your ridiculous carnival-style seat belt might come unbuckled as you hurtle down... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Simulation of Quidditch, or Broomstick Riding
  Tatsu
  Silver Bullet at Knott's is like Harry Potter taking a pleasant little joyride on his broomstick. Tatsu at Magic Mountain is like Harry flying on his broomstick, chasing after the golden snitch with Voldemort on his tail about to devour his soul. For those of you unfamiliar with the Potter... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: Substitute for Actually Dying, then Coming Back to Life (1 Comment)
  X2
  Each seat on Magic Mountain's X2 is equipped with speakers (à la Space Mountain), and as the ride pulls out of the station, Frank Sinatra croons in your ear, "It had to be you." Then, Metallica's "Enter Sandman" comes on, overlapped with yelling from the ruthless drill sergeant in Full... More >>
• Best L.A. Roller Coaster: All-Around
  Space Mountain
  Besmirched by just enough lore of real-life death, mainly due to stupid people ignoring posted safety warnings, or having surprise seizures and exploding brain aneurysms, Disney's squeaky-clean Space Mountain has it all. The frisson of possible, though improbable, bodily danger. A sleek,... More >>
• Best Tombs With a View
  Cinespia at Hollywood Forever Cemetery
  The Cinespia film screenings at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, otherwise known as "I see movies with dead people," started in 2002 with a handful of hardcore film buffs and has evolved into a several-thousand-people weekly summer pilgrimage. On Saturday and Sunday evenings through... More >>
• Best Public Art
  Pacific Nexus Gallery
  In a town teeming with super-rad public art spray-painted across buildings, stickered onto scaffolding, dangling from power lines and hacked into digital billboards (yay, Skullphone!), who can say where and what "the best" is? I can. There's a building in Venice on the southwest corner of... More >>
• Best Place to Stop and Enjoy the Traffic
  The 10/110 Interchange
  Los Angeles is known around the world for its miles of winding concrete freeways, which too often go unappreciated. While the days of chatting on the phone during commutes are over, there's no shortage of fun to be had while sitting bumper-to-bumper. When else would you have time to listen to... More >>
• Best Underground Sounds
  Los Angeles Theatre
  Two stories below Broadway, beneath the ceaseless hustle and/or bustle, there's a ballroom in the belly of the Los Angeles Theatre. When it's an empty belly, everything echoes, as though calling forth the sounds of past dancers up from the bedrock and delivering them once more. It's the kind of... More >>