Hey Beauty” someone has spray-painted in sunny yellow letters on a house façade on the beach boardwalk in Venice. Venice, a coastal strip just under five kilometres long in the west of Los Angeles, is considered the cradle of modern physical culture. At Muscle Beach, heavily built men lift weights until their sun- or tanning-studio-bronzed bodies glisten with sweat. A few metres away, much cooler kids engage in a deliberately effortless competition in the skate park pipeline.

But Venice is more than a public spectacle. The Pacific beach, where tall, slender palm trees bend in the wind, offers endless space and is equally popular with joggers, cyclists, beach volleyball players, surfers, and walkers.

The urban artery is Abbot Kinney Boulevard, with hip shops such as Le Labo (perfume laboratory), Burro (art books, handbags, scented candles), and Jacques Marie Mage (sunglasses). The people eating lemon linguine at Felix Trattoria or sitting under pink bougainvillea with a cucumber-mint juice in front of the cult takeaway Gjelina look as if they were cast for a lifestyle show in Hollywood: young, cool, and happy.

The art scene is booming

Compared with New York museums and galleries, LA has not yet caught up, but even in the still-young Arts District—with galleries, murals, and art-oriented shops—it is clear where things are heading.

“Los Angeles is developing into the epicentre of the art world,” believes Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “More and more artists are coming to the city. We give them a place where they can show their work.”

Just this April, another such place opened: the amoeba-shaped, floating concrete structure of the David Geffen Galleries, designed by Swiss star architect Peter Zumthor. It stands next to the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, also part of LACMA and designed by Renzo Piano, and spans Wilshire Boulevard like a gigantic walkable sculpture.

Two more art highlights will attract attention this year: Dataland, the world’s first museum dedicated exclusively to art created by artificial intelligence (opening: 20 June), and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas, devoted to visual storytelling—from painting and comics to film art and photography (lucasmuseum.org, opening: 22 September). New York will have to brace itself.

Downtown Los Angeles

New York is famous for Broadway, but Los Angeles also has its own “Broad Way” that need not hide away. Broadway runs straight through DTLA (Downtown Los Angeles), once a neglected but now highly trendy district with imposing Art Deco buildings and historic movie palaces.

The recently deceased star architect Frank O. Gehry recognised the value of the district early on. It apparently took a Canadian-born architect to understand that Los Angeles, contrary to popular belief, does indeed have a real city centre. In any case, he wanted to place the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which he designed, in the “living room” of the city—Downtown. Since 2003, the music hall has stood like a shimmering silver giant sculpture on Grand Avenue. It would still take several years before concertgoers dared to walk there.

Today, that is no longer an issue. Even tourists stroll comfortably from the concert hall to the impressive Grand Central Market with its diverse restaurants and food stalls, and on to the Bradbury Building directly opposite, built in 1893 and known from films such as Blade Runner. Trendy Angelenos have moved into renovated old buildings with spacious apartments—when they were still available and affordable. Today, a 200-square-metre loft in the turquoise Eastern Columbia Building on Broadway costs over $15,000 per month in rent. You might even end up renting from Johnny Depp.

A foodie paradise

Los Angeles presents itself as a gigantic culinary melting pot and offers a food scene like no other. It is no surprise, as cultures and cooking techniques from around the world are combined here with excellent Californian produce.

Pine & Crane: A casually designed restaurant with exposed brick walls, concrete floors, and lacquered wooden tables. The kitchen serves mapo tofu, daikon dumplings, lotus root salad, and Taiwanese specialties such as Jidori chicken—a delicious braised dish cooked equally with soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine, served with chopped spring onions.

Sushi Samba: The London trend restaurant has arrived in West Hollywood. It combines Japanese, Brazilian, and Peruvian flavours—sashimi and sushi, ceviche and Peruvian tiraditos, as well as black cod and Japanese wagyu, both prepared on hot stones. There is also live entertainment with samba dancers, drummers, and DJs. 

Dear John’s: Even Frank Sinatra was a regular at this steakhouse, opened in 1962. Located in Culver City, it has retained the charm of a cosy Rat Pack-era club. Chefs Hans Röckenwagner and Josiah Citrin have modernised the menu with new dishes while refreshing classics such as the tableside Caesar salad.

Sonoratown: Teodoro Diaz-Rodriguez Jr. and Jennifer Feltham prepare their tortillas using flour from the Mexican state of Sonora. They are soft yet chewy and so good they can be enjoyed on their own. Best are the costilla tacos with steak and chorizo. Served with horchata (a rice drink) and agua fresca (fruit juice).

Manuela: This airy, spacious restaurant with courtyard terrace is part of the Swiss Hauser & Wirth gallery empire and located in its Arts District complex in DTLA. It offers Southern-inspired farm-to-table cuisine, including cream biscuits (warm flaky biscuits with country ham and whipped butter) and game burgers.