LA 4 Nights with 15 year old
 

Heading to LA June 5th with 15 year old boy. Is not into Disneyland. Spending one night at Royals/Angels game. Any suggestions for other 3 nights? Best Beaches? Universal? Fun restaurants with ocean view? We are staying in Glendora but will have rental car.
Thanks!

Sorry for the double post.

Glendora is not near the ocean, as you know, but if you don't mind driving, I'd take him to the Malibu area, because he's probably heard about it. You could go to nearby Zuma beach, also.

Duke's at Malibu is a good place to eat that's oceanside. It has an old surfer vibe. Duke's Malibu. I posted about going there for Easter brunch.

Gladstone's has a good outdoor patio. Gladstones Malibu. It's where Sunset meets the Pacific Coast Highway.

There's also Moonshadows, where Mel Gibson famously made a drunken fool of himself several years ago. More pricey: Moonshadows Malibu Ocean view dining and nightlife, California

Or you could stop in the grocery store there, and make a picnic for yourselves.

If he's interested, you could visit UCLA and Westwood, also. And maybe cruise Sunset Blvd/Sunset Strip.

The teen might like the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire.
Agree with MoBro about visiting Malibu and Duke's.
About the baseball, if you are not set on the Angels (who play in Anaheim, down in Orange County), it looks like the Dodgers are playing longtime rivals SF Giants on June 15 at home and there are fireworks afterward. This is a very popular matchup so tickets might be a bit more expensive.
Any interest in visiting a working studio like Warner Bros or Paramount instead of Universal which is basically a theme park.

If your teen is interested in science, the La Brea Tar Pits museum might be of interest. They have skeletons of animals that were caught in the tar for centuries and the tar is still bubbling up in the small pond in front of the museum.

For cars the Nethercutt Museum in Slymar is great and if you can do a tour there are fantastic mechanical musical instruments as well as cars in the second building.

Duke's looks awesome!! We'll hit that place first. Sunset blvd sounds good and it's on the way to Glendora. What's in Westwood??

Thanks!!!!

Westwood is the section of LA that houses the UCLA campus. Nice area, you should at least take a walk around. It's Beverly Hills-adjacent.

The stretch of beach between Santa Monica pier and Venice Beach is Classic California... the boardwalk, surf shops, quirky people is perfect for a 15 year old. .. especially on the weekends...

Yes, my cousin works at warner brothers....will prob hit that spot again. Was there a few years ago....shot the breeze with Zach Levi........had no idea who he was. I thought he was part of the kitchen help! :)

Who is he?

Venice Beach is NOT a fun place to go to anymore. It is a long homeless encampment with lots of pot shops and the smell heavy in the air. If your son is thinking about colleges then UCLA is a good visit but not much to see in Westwood Village - lots of closed down shops.
Tell is what he likes and we can better make suggestions. Sports? Movies? Outdoors? Museums?

That’s really not true of Venice Beach anymore. The huge infusion of tech money has transformed it into “Silicon Beach” and cleaned it up, pushing out most of those older, seedy elements. We have gone to Venice Beach and stayed there many times since the 70s. Were just there over Easter and remarked about the cultural changes we observed.

I'd like to see Venice Beach myself. I was there 30 years ago and thought it was really neat. Sounds like it has changed a little! Malibu looks nice. I'm looking at Newport Beach for a day also. I ate at the Crab Cooker 30 years ago.....is it still good? Looks like a lot of places to hit between Malibu and Glendora. I want to avoid traffic if all possible so when does Rush hour start? Or does it ever end?!

Twice, for the worse and then for the better.

I agree, sf7307. Venice Beach went through a bad stretch for several years, but I think it's better now. Some will complain about the 'gentrification'. Although, I heard the tech companies are moving up to Santa Monica, instead of Venice Beach. Not sure why. Maybe more storefronts.

The Crab Cooker in Newport Beach is our all-time favorite! We've been going there since the mid-70s, and stop in every single time we are able. Last time was one year ago. It never changes! Have lobster tails, cole slaw, and potatoes for me!

As a general rule don't leave Glendora before 9am, and don't return from L.A to Glendora anytime between 4pm and 7pm or you are 90% sure to hit the worst kind of parking-lot-traffic.
What time does your flight arrive into LAX on day one? Timing is everything if you're planning to detour out to Malibu and then up Sunset Blvd.

Flight gets into LAX at 9:00 a. m. Don't like early flights but wanted to avoid traffic!

What Venice Beach are you all talking about? I work on Venice Beach. I stand by what I said. The boardwalk is a long drug-ridden homeless encampment. Sure parts of Venice are being gentrified and the main drags of Main Street and Abbot Kinney are ok. There are some cool restaurants on Rose if you want to step over people and around pee and crap on the sidewalk to get there. But, most tourists head to the boardwalk and I would not take my child nor visitors to the boardwalk for any reason. Head to Malibu or down the coast.

If for whatever reason, you might not end up at Dukes, then Malibu Seafood is also a really good place to eat and the views, from the outdoor top seating area is great. But, I always get there by 11AM as it can get crowded. If others are with me, then I have them go online and figure out what they might want to eat beforehand and then when we get there, they grab one of the tables at the top level while I stand in line and order the food.

Driving there, I go over Las Virgenes as it's peaceful and quick as I'm always on my way to Malibu Seafood. 101 freeway, off at Las Virgenes, and though the gorgeous canyons until the end which is PCH (Pacfic Coast Highway). You'll see Pepperdine University to the right on the hill.

By the way, it's also a really nice drive around Pepperdine campus with great ocean and Malibu views. Anyhow, when you come to PCH, turn RIGHT and head up PCH for about 5 minutes and Malibu Seafood is right there. You will need to slow down as not to pass it. Park in the parking lot and not along fast-moving PCH, and $5.00 needs to be put into one of the white envelopes, on the parking lot stand area, and then inserted into the attached box. You will need to write your car, license plate number on the white envelope.

When people come to visit me, I always take them to Malibu Seafood and they love the food, how chilled out it is, the gorgeous views and getting there though the canyons.

Malibu Seafood | Fresh Fish Market and Patio Cafe

L.A. Drives: Topanga and Malibu canyons

Happy Travels!

"As a general rule don't leave Glendora before 9am"

Even right now on a Monday morning at 10:47 a.m. it will take you between an hour and an hour and a half to get to Santa Monica Pier or Venice Beach from Glendora. 1070 am radio is your friend. "Traffic on the 5s."

((H))

I’m surprised by Renee’s impression of Venice Beach. We have walked that boardwalk so many times since the 70s, and as recently as April 2. It is better than it’s been in a long time. We saw no pee or crap anywhere. Sheesh.

Again, I think your 15 year old son would be interested in seeing it, and reporting back to his friends. The Venice canals are fun to walk, as well.

There are BIRD electric scooters available all over that area. You and your son might enjoy riding them on the bike path. I almost tried one. . ..

So... I would disagree. UCLA now receives more than 100,000 applications every year. And they give zero aid to out-of-state applicants. You would be on the hook for $59k/year.
If you'd like to wander around a college campus for an hour or two... or even take a tour.. why not visit a college that he might actually attend? If you are out of state, truthfully, there are merit scholarships or financial aid at private nonprofit schools that would be better than trying to attend out-of-state public universities. The greater Los Angeles area has many.

These three would be the most convenient to work into your trip:

• Chapman University in the city of Orange, Orange County. Very doable if you go to Newport, mentioned above.
• Loyola Marymount University in Westchester/Fox Hills (near LAX)
• Pitzer College, this one is not far from Glendora either. (Note: It's part of the Pomona College Consortium. All these schools are great, but Pomona and Harvey Mudd are almost impossible to get into. Pitzer is more reasonable.)

A few more, further afield:

• University of Redlands further east of your lodgings in Glendora.
• Whittier College in Whittier
• Occidental College. (also in San Fernando Valley between Glendale and Pasadena)

For any of them, you can see their stats on the College Board website. You don't need an account.
btw. https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/find-colleges

https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-venice-homeless-05102017-story.html%3foutputType=amp

it really is bad and sad out there.

Here is something your teen might enjoy:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/davidhochman/2017/11/29/2017-best-escape-rooms-in-los-angeles-by-category/amp/

We will have to agree to disagree re: the condition of Venice Beach. It has always been somewhat gritty, but I really did not see anything like that one-year-old article describes.

I guess you could wander around the alleys and look for that stuff, but we did not experience problems when we walked up and down the Venice boardwalk on April 2. We are fairly tolerant, though. The smell of marijuana does not upset us.

I still say it's a place a teenager would be interested in seeing. Get a BIRD and ride it up to Santa Monica for lunch. We went there to Cha Cha Chicken, which is a fun place to grab a simple bite. Cha Cha Chicken, Santa Monica Restaurants,

If you're afraid of a funky place, just don't go there. If you're open-minded and tolerant, you'll do fine.

Well then let me throw out a different suggestion.

Once you have the car at LAX, head south on Sepulveda (CA 1) to Hermosa Beach and have a late breakfast or early lunch at Martha's on 22nd, set a few yards from the beach and offering one of the best breakfasts in the South Bay area. Walk off the carbs along The Strand, the beachfront pedestrian/bike path; you can decide which bank to rob so you could afford to buy one of the houses you'll pass.

Then head north along the coast, visiting Manhattan Beach (maybe a walk out the pier to watch the surfers) and on to Marina del Rey and Venice. I'm not personally fond of Venice at all, but if it's a must-see, so be it. I'd probably aim for Santa Monica before heading inland to get to Glendora. Here's a little map illustrating this. (I picked Avis car rental but they're all pretty close to each other.) https://goo.gl/maps/XFsPCf4iSJE2

I think you'll have to make peace with awful traffic the whole time you're in the region; it's just the way things are, and Glendora isn't very convenient to much of anything besides Pasadena, and not so much even there. Use the HOV lanes when you can, and follow the radio traffic alerts as mentioned. To do so you're going to need some fluency in the road system; you'll discover people use a mixture of terms. Some people will call it "the 405" while others (mainly older folks like me) will still call it the "San Diego Freeway." "The Ten" is the "San Bernardino Freeway" to some, and "the 110" is still the "Harbor Freeway, etc."

Gardyloo, that sounds like a good plan for day one. Good way to see cute beach towns from the start.

This sounds like a great plan. I think we'll do this route on day 1. Thanks!!!

I'm bookmarking for good info.

If you want a South Bay breakfast, I'd go with the classic..Uncle Bill's (especially if you are doing it on a weekday..no reservations).


uncle bill's pancake house - Home