10 Things To Do In Santa Monica California
10 THINGS TO DO IN SANTA MONICA CALIFORNIA
Santa Monica is a beachside city in western Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is bounded on five sides by different Los Angeles neighborhoods: Pacific Palisades to the north, Brentwood to the northeast, West Los Angeles to the east, Mar Vista to the southeast, and Venice to the south. It is located on Santa Monica Bay. Santa Monica became a well-known resort town in the early twentieth century, attracting numerous celebrities due to its pleasant temperature and proximity to Los Angeles.
Santa Monica Pier
The Santa Monica Pier is a large double-jointed pier in Santa Monica, California, United States, located at the foot of Colorado Avenue. There includes a small amusement park, food stands, and viewing and fishing sites.
Pacific Park, a family amusement park with a solar-paneled Ferris wheel, is located on the pier. The brightly lighted wheel, which can be seen from afar, was turned off for the Earth Hour observance.
There's also a vintage carousel hippodrome from the 1920s, the Heal the Bay-operated Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, stores, entertainment, a video arcade, a trapeze school, pubs, and restaurants. Anglers flock to the pier's west end to cast their lines. Outdoor concerts, movies, and other activities are held on the pier.
Downtown Santa Monica
The Third Street Promenade is a pedestrian mall esplanade, retail, dining, and entertainment complex in Santa Monica's downtown district that first opened on November 8, 1965 as the Santa Monica Mall. It is regarded as the Westside's top shopping and dining center, attracting visitors from all around the Greater Los Angeles area. Because of its proximity to historic U.S. Route 66, the neighborhood's north-south thoroughfares connecting to Muscle Beach, Venice Canal Historic District, Marina del Rey, Ballona Wetlands, and Los Angeles International Airport, and its easy access to Downtown Los Angeles via the Big Blue Bus rapid transit service, E Line's terminus station, and the Pacific Coast Highway-Santa Monica Freeway Interstate, the neighborhood's north-south thoroughfares connecting to Muscle Beach, Venice Canal
Museum Of Flying
The Museum of Flying is a Santa Monica, California-based private non-profit aerospace museum. It first opened in 1974, then shuttered in 2002 before reopening in 2012 in a new location. The Museum features exhibits on the history of aviation, with a concentration on Donald Douglas and the Douglas Aircraft Company of Southern California.
The museum has a nearly 22,000-square-foot display and exhibit area.
The museum features displays and explanatory exhibits on the history of flying as well as the creation and evolution of the aviation and aerospace industry in Southern California, with a focus on the Douglas Aircraft Company and the Santa Monica Airport's history.
A replica Wright Flyer and Lockheed Vega, both of which were featured in the film Night in the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, are among the museum's around a dozen aircraft chronicling flight from its inception. 20th Century-Fox studios donated both of these relics. The façade of the Museum is dominated by static models of the North American F-86 Sabre and Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. The museum's showpiece is a partially external nose portion from a Boeing 727-200 donated by Federal Express and used in their aircraft for twenty years.
A vast collection of aviation art, unique artifacts, and ephemera from notable aviators, as well as an enormous collection of images of old aircraft and aircraft production, may be found at the Museum.
18th Street Arts Center
Susanna Bixby Dakin, a visual artist and publisher of High Performance Magazine, founded the 18th Street Arts Center with writer Linda Frye Burnham. Dakin founded the organization in Santa Monica in 1988 after purchasing the former production studio of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party and four other adjacent properties. The buildings were sold to the 18th Street Arts Center, a non-profit, in 1998.
The 18th Street Arts Center is a Santa Monica, California-based nonprofit arts organization. It is the oldest artist residency center in Southern California, having opened in 1988. The 18th Street Arts Center's aim is to "provoke public dialogue via contemporary art creating," and its basic beliefs are based on the notion that art is an important part of a just, vibrant, and healthy society. The residency program of the 18th Street Arts Center hosts 50 or more American and international artists and curators each year.
Santa Monica Farmers Markets
Santa Monica's four city-run farmers markets are like beautiful pop-up festivals in the midst of the city, with bright weather, stands loaded with fresh vegetables, and street musicians strumming and singing. Each of the year-round, rain or shine market locations has its own distinct charms, but they all offer only pesticide-free fruits and vegetables purchased straight from the farm where they were grown. Many of the sites have live music; check the schedule to discover where the music is being performed.
The Pico Market (located at the crossroads of Pico Blvd. and Cloverfield Blvd.) is a Saturday market in Virginia Avenue Park that contains about 35 farmers selling vegetables collected the day before. It is open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Picnicking is permitted on the lawn, and prepared food sellers offer coffee and breakfast fare.
On Sundays, the Main Street market in Heritage Square features produce as well as a bustling prepared foods section with breakfast burritos, crepes, pancakes, pastries, and other baked goods. Every two weeks, there are cooking demos and activities for the kids, such as face painting and balloon art.
The Wednesday and Saturday markets in Downtown Santa Monica, on Arizona Ave. and 2nd St., are the longest-running of the city's markets. It's where neighborhood shoppers and cooks go to obtain both essentials and more exotic seasonal goods, having started in 1981. The Wednesday market is one of the largest in Southern California, with roughly 75 farmers selling; the Saturday market has about 50 farmers selling.
Insider tip: Many Santa Monica chefs shop for their weekly veggies at Wednesday Farmers Markets (after they finish surfing that morning). On Wednesdays and Saturdays, excellent restaurants such as Coast, Fig, LAGO, and Ocean & Vine build their menus around what they pick up fresh that day at the market.
The Original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica
The Original Muscle Beach, not to be mistaken with the nearby Muscle Beach in Venice, began in Santa Monica in the early 1930s and has since been labeled "original" to separate itself from Muscle Beach Santa Monica and Muscle Beach Venice.
The beach was simply known as another one of Santa Monica's parks, owned and maintained by the Santa Monica Parks and Recreation Department, until the moniker "Muscle Beach" became popular in the mid-1940s. Exercise equipment was installed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) at what is now known as Original Muscle Beach, where gymnastic and acrobatic shows were staged on a regular basis.
The beach park in Santa Monica became known as the place-to-be for celebrities, actors, stunt persons, and, of course, bodybuilders as news spread about the new and exciting beach attraction that was gathering athletes from a range of disciplines such as outdoor wrestling and even circus acts.
International popularity grew around this muscle beach in Los Angeles, and gymnasts and athletes from all over the world contributed by bringing their own gym equipment, such as bars, benches, and weights, to help expand the park's range of activities.
The athletes who practiced gymnastics were the most well-known at the Original Muscle Beach Santa Monica. In the region that gave rise to Original Muscle Beach's popularity, visitors will still discover plenty of classic gym equipment such as parallel bars, rings, and ropes.
Muscle Beach had gained worldwide acclaim by the mid-1950s, and it was the catalyst for a massive fitness movement in Santa Monica, which swiftly expanded to neighboring cities. The California fitness craze exploded, and in 1989, the city of Santa Monica renamed the area the Original Muscle Beach, which is still used by gymnasts, acrobats, and kids today.
Heal The Bay Aquarium
Heal the Bay Aquarium, formerly known as the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, is a private-public aquarium located beneath the Santa Monica Pier, adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, and operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors. Heal the Bay, a nonprofit group, has been in charge of it since 2003. Until 2003, it was known as the Ocean Discovery Center and was run by UCLA.
It is open to the public and receives more than 100,000 people from around the world each year as Heal the Bay's marine education, advocacy, and community science facility (approximately 15,000 are students). This facility offers marine conservation, pollution prevention, and environmental education educational programs, activities, and special events.
FUN FACT:
The two-spotted octopus managed to manipulate the pipe connection that drains the water tank in February 2009. The valve released 200 gallons of water, flooding the visiting area. The event drew a lot of media attention.
Cayton Children’s Museum
To build a future in which young people of all ages are nurtured to become compassionate, self-assured human beings with the ability to control their own lives and a drive to improve the world. The Cayton Children's Museum assist young people understand complicated ideas and produce their own ideas, nurture their moral compass, and encourage them to think critically and be responsible, involved citizens through discovery-based learning, arts education, and values-based inquiry.
The Cayton Children's Museum is the first of its type, with 21,000 square feet of discovery-based exhibits, immersive play, and discovery-based learning for kids aged 0-10. The museum is organized around basic universal ideals, allowing children, youth, and families a unique opportunity to practice becoming their best selves, with extensive public programs, workshops, classes, camps, and arts and cultural activities available seven days a week.
California Heritage Museum
The State of California is truly magical. Even the most uninterested onlookers can notice right away that it's a land of incredible diversity in terms of influences and locations.
After all, the state's stunning physical diversity, with vast coastlines, northern mountains, central forests, and inland deserts, is one of the reasons Hollywood became the motion picture mecca — with only a few hours' drive, one can film in every type of environment. There's even more to select from in terms of culture. There are numerous historic and contemporary Spanish influences. Celebrity glam collides with skateboarding culture. Hippies mingle with CEOs, farmland is crisscrossed by fiber optic cable, and a barren desert is dotted with solar panels.
You wouldn't be the first to think there should be a museum dedicated to all of these interconnected perspectives.
The California Heritage Museum is one such venue, with exhibits ranging from skateboarding origins to Mexican calendar girls - from the Golden Age of Hollywood to the ecosystem of the Pacific Ocean – where recent and distant cultural histories collide.
ROUTE 66 End of The Trail
Route 66, WHICH IS POSSIBLY THE MOST FAMOUS ROADWAY IN THE UNITED STATES, IS THE THING OF LEGEND.
Despite the introduction of the Interstate Highway System, the popular East-to-West migration line transported people out west during the Dust Bowl era, maintained economies all along its twists and turns when hard times hit, and 85 percent of the original roadway still survives.
Even if you've never experienced its winding course, you're definitely familiar with it because to the popular song that names all of its stops. Despite being able to recite a list of the cities it serves, little care is given to where it terminates, as it is frequently mistaken for a sun-drenched desert roadway.
Many people believe it simply flows into the Pacific. While it was required to end at a highway intersection (originally with El Camino Real at 7th and Broadway in downtown LA and later at Lincoln and Olympic to reach Pacific Coast Highway without plunging over the edge of the Palisades), the travelers, many of whom came from inland, continued until they reached the ocean.Dan Rice of 66 to Cali (who bought the logo to raise awareness of 66 through a souvenir shirt company and had created temporary end signs several months earlier), the Route 66 Alliance, and the Santa Monica Pier Restoration Corp. got together and dedicated the sign to mark the long tradition of 66 on the 83rd anniversary of the highway's inception.
Though it isn't an official highway sign because you don't want to crash into the ocean, the End of the Trail sign serves as a reminder to thousands of visitors each year that Route 66 is more than a relic of a bygone era; it's a journey through the heart of America where the meals are homemade and the neon still glows 35 years after it was officially decommissioned.
Before you go, be sure you're informed.
Take Colorado Ave. west until it comes to a halt at the Santa Monica Pier. Then walk for 200 feet straight out on the pier. Just past the Bubba Gump seafood chain and the 66-to-Cali Route 66 info booth, and before the Playland arcade, is the sign.
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