A quick guide to visiting Downtown Los Angeles

When friends have visited LA, I used to give them a list of pieces of advice. Since then I've shifted to stating that I would collate my advice-to-visitors into a blog post, and forward it to each new visitor. I have yet to do that. But since this coming week is the week of SIGGRAPH, and many people I know are likely to be, not only in LA, but in the one part of LA I know well enough to give advice about, I feel it is time to finally write this up.

One of the problems to giving visiting advice for LA is that the "city" is actually comprised of many different subcities, visitors will want to visit sites scattered among many of them, the realities of traffic mean that one should not plan to visit sites in two different sub-cities in the same day, and the only areas I'm sufficiently familiar with to give advice on are Downtown, East LA, the San Gabriel Valley, and Orange County. This completely omits Hollywood, Mid-City and the Venice / Santa Monica areas, all of which are places any tourist should visit. Luckily SIGGRAPH (held next week) takes place in Downtown LA, meaning that I have a whole raft of acquaintances who primarily care about downtown.

Transit If all of your LA destinations, other than the airport, are downtown, you can get by using public transit alone. General schedule and route information can be found at a variety of places, but the first thing you're going to want to do is to travel from your airport of choice to Downtown LA.

If you are flying into
1. LAX : You should take the LAX Flyaway bus to "LA Union Station" LAX flyaway bus
2. Ontaria Airport : Take a cab to the Rancho Cucamonga Metrolink Station. From there, take Metrolink to "LA Union Station"
3. Burbank Airport : I have no idea.

By car If you do choose to arrive by car (and brave parking and traffic), you will spend a good chunk of time stuck in traffic. My only advice to you is to reprogram your car radio such that one of the stations is FM 89.8 KCRW. LA has other radio stations as well, pick them according to your musical tastes. But prepare to be disappointed by those that purportedly play the genres of music you like (unless you are into hip-hop, which has historically been big here).

Getting around downtown If you're pressed for time, there is a nearly-constant swarm of Uber cars. I'm sure the same is true of Lyft. Downtown is the part of LA that is best-served by public transit. You'll probably want a TAP card if you're doing this. I personally prefer to explore downtown by bicycle, but locking up one's bike safely can be a bit of a nightmare.

Things to visit downtown. The following points of interest are worth stumbling into once or twice.

1. LA Union Station. I wouldn't go out of my way if you're going everywhere by car : but if your'e going by public transit, you'll probably end up here anyway. Take a look around. It is a beautiful building with fascinating crowds.
2. Grand Central Market : A variety of food and grocery stands embedded within a larger building downtown. Great for lunch. It has moved slightly beyond the "gentrification sweet spot" into the edge of "upscale banal", but still beats the convention center for lunch.
3. LA Centra Library : Kindof a nifty old building. Closer to the convention center than the other places I'm mentioning : http://www.lapl.org/branches/central-library.
4. Last bookstore LA : Don't pretend you don't have a use for a stack of used sci-fi novellas for your plane flight back to wherever you came from. http://lastbookstorela.com/

Where to eat. Lunch near the convention center is likely awful : but LA is emerging as a bit of a foodie city. Here are neighborhoods and destinations I can recommend.

1. Grand Central Market : Google maps says this is a 33 minute walk from the convention center. I'd advise using public transit instead, which Google tells me takes 15 minutes. I don't know what the intervening neighborhoods are like, as I rarely travel near the convention center.
2. Little Tokyo : If you're stuck at the convention center, it can be kinda tight to get here for lunch. But the ramen joints are well worth the effort, and it is an extremely compelling place to have dinner. I will not reveal my favorite ramen joint unless you are visiting me for dinner (partly because I only know its location, not its name), but my runner-ups include "daikokuya" and "shin-sen-gumi". Sushi is also available in this neighborhood.
3. Boyle Heights : Famous for Mexican food. Food destinations should be clustered around "Guisado's tacos", near the "Mariachi Plaza" stop on the LA Metro Gold Line. Parking is plentiful.
4. San Gabriel Valley : By public transit : The San Gabriel Valley is LA's suburban Chinese-American enclave, and arguably has some of the best Chinese food in North America. If you are going by transit, you probably want to take the 487 bus (or 489 bus) from LA Union Station to Del Mar and Marshall (or Del Mar and Valley). There are quite a few shopping plazas around there that are full of Chinese restaurants, very few of which are bad. I particularly recommend "Sam Woo". The third floor of the shopping plaza containing a "Daiso" store and a "Focus" store has an excellent dim sum restaurant (whose name keeps changing). Bear in mind that dim sum stops being served at the end of lunchtime. Those wishing for dim sum for dinner are likely out of luck. An alternative to the 487/489 is to take the LA Metro Silver Line express bus to El Monte Station, and then to take an Uber or a Lyft to your final food destination, which is an excellent way to reach Din Tai Fung. The area around El Monte station itself is not too interesting : it will take a car trip to get from there to where you want to eat. The 487/489, on the other hand, drops you immediately in the middle of a dense shopping-district full of restaurants.
5. San Gabriel Valley : By car : If you are going by car, different parts of the SGV open up. For instance, one of the best dim sum restaurants in the area, "Ocean Star Seafood" in Monterey Park, is difficult to reach by public transit, but is easily accessible by car. Parking nearby, while non-trivial, is free, and normally feasible.
6. Koreatown, mid-city, Hollywood, whatever -- I know there are good places to eat in these neighborhoods, but I don't know where they are. Sorry. The best I can do is advise you to look up whatever Jonathan Gold has had to say about these neighborhoods
7. LA's so-called "arts district" -- a better destination for drinks and entertainment than for food. If you're headed there and you know me, give me a call. Get there the same way you would get to "Little Tokyo". It has a sausage restaurant as well as vegan and vegetarian options.
8. Chinatown : If you have a car, don't bother. It'll probably be just as quick to hop on the 10 Fwy headed east, skirt around downtown, and wind up in Monterey Park, which has better food (take the Atlantic Blvd exit off the 10 and head south). Plus Monterey Park has parking! If you wind up here anyway, "Empress Pavilion" has decent dim sum, there is a Sam Woo, although I'd almost advise going to Olvera Street or Phillippe's instead.