Snorple's Assorted Adventures & Tales: Snorp's Downtown LA Walking Tour, Part I

Oh Downtown, how I love you, in all your diesel-N-pee smelling awesomeness. This halfway-gentrified mutant city-within-a-city can be an assault on your senses and (mostly) lungs at first, second, third, fourth, and fifth glance, but if you take the time to dig deeper and dig more than once, you'll find an almost bottomless trove of... lots of cool stuff. If you're lucky, it'll be cool forgotten stuff. Behind most of the grimey bricks and faded or newfound glory are stories. Great historical stories. None of which I know... but read this anyway. (I'll come up with a better intro in part deux)

Firstly, one must be aware that downtown is not one neighborhood. It, like a microcosm of LA as a whole, is an uneven hodgepodge of several different, completely distinct merging neighborhoods veering wildly from the cozy & chill (Lil Tokyo), the tragic (Skid Row) and the lame (the Financial District.) In an effort to make myself useful whilst procrastinating other writing I have to do, I makey this handy walkthru guide. May it guide you.

Someone else's picture of Ricky the Pirate, local hero & self-appointed graffiti patroller, his story is a good one
http://www.flickr.com/photos/someonewalksinla/2869105125/

First, a quick neighborhood breakdown: (skip if you already know this)

Arts District: Tiny, gritty but strangely cozy. Home to hipsters, quirky hidden coffee shops and a restaurant that sells rattlesnake meat.
Bunker Hill/Civic Center: Concert halls, City Hall
Chinatown: Pretty self-explanatory. Sits between Union Station/Olvera St & Dodger's Stadium. Broadway is its main drag, best during the day and lined with cool herbal medicine shops. The area kinda dies at night. Home to Phillipe's French Dip Sammiches.
Fashion District: Jam-packed during peak hours, hole-in-the-walls selling every nic-nac you'd ever need, like no other part of LA, expect mild culture-shock.
Financial District: Bank towers, some good restaurants, turns into a ghost town after dark.
Historic Core: The midsections of Spring & Main St, self explanatory, this is also where most peeps who live in downtown live, outside of South Park. Lots of good eats and bars here. Home of the Downtown Art Walk (lots of art galleries here too.)
Jewelry District: The area that sits between the Fin. District and the Historic Core, is a blend of the two atmosphere-wise, includes Pershing Square and lots of diamonds.
Little Tokyo: The oldest Japanese neighborhood in the country. Tiny but dense. This is the most reliable nightlife corner in downtown, cept in the "booming dance club" department. Home to a lot of really good food.
Olvera Street (El Pueblo): "Old Town", tacky tourist trap, home to Union Station
South Park: The shiny new lofts around LA Live.
Skid Row/Industrial District: Home to America's largest concentration of homeless people. Depressing place.
Toy District: Blocks of wholesale toy stores just below Little Tokyo. I'm not sure why this place exists but I'm glad it does. Do not ride a bike through here during peak hours, you will run someone over. Do not enter here off-peak, it is part of Skid Row.

k, here we go

Part Uno

Start: Pico Metro Rail Station @ Pico & Flower

Lotsa Glass, Steel & LEDs: South Park District

Directions:

Walk up the sidewalk parallel to the station, toward the skyline (North on Flower St)
Right on 11th St.
Cross Hope St

Points of Mild Interest:

Staples Center/LA Live (self explanatory)
@ Flower/11th: The Palm - Steakhouse-type restaurant in the $$$$ class, won the Downtown News's "best waiter service" award or something like that recently.
@ Flower/11th: Riviera - $$$$ classy Mexican restaurant on the ground floor of 'The Building w/the Trippy Neon Red Squares that Flash On & Off in Cool Patterns"
@ Hope/11th: Bottlerock - Mildly pricey wine bar, never been here, sry.
@ Hope/11th: Suggested Breakfast NOM - The Hygge Bakery. Recently opened by some famous dude from Denmark. Their hazelnut truffle things are to die for, their cinnamon buns are soft and fluffy if a little pricey. The baker personally recommends the fruit-filled danishes, they're cheap and tasty enough, though again I'm more partial to the hazelnut things. Never had a real meal from here but I've seen people order yummy looking sammiches. As bakeries are usually at their best during morning hours and the next closest affordable breakfast option is IHOP, you should grab fresh noms from the Hygge.

To the Fashion District!
Direction: Keep walking down 11th until Santee St. These few blocks are sparsely inhabited lands. If you're on foot it'll be a bit boring, if you're on a bike, good call.

Point of Interest: @ Broadway/11th: The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Building, the abandoned headquarters of LA's defunct second major newspaper. It's a strangely beautiful place, immense, almost temple-like, but sadly derelict. Commissioned in 1903 by William Randolph Hearst (Citizen Kane) and finished in 1914, more info can be found here: Here

Chaos, Taco Trucks & Bazaars of Olde: The Fashion District

Directions:

Right/South on Santee
Left/East on 12th
Left/N. up Santee Alley (you'll see the entry portal halfway btwn Santee & Maple)
Either turn on Olympic Blvd, doesn't matter,
Right on Santee or Left on Maple (depending which way you went)
Left on 9th
Continue to Main/Spring St. Wye

Points of Interest:

@Pico-Olympic, Midway btwn Santee & Maple St - Santee Alley, the main drag in this part of town, a seemingly endless pedestrian-only walkway jam packed with clothing shops, dirty dog carts, fresh juicers, and Angelinos from every walk of life. Mostly clothing shops. Even if you're not a shopper, which I'm not, it's an essential stop in downtown if only to soak in the atmosphere.
The Whole Area. Forget the turn-by-turn directions and just wander around at will. As with Santee Alley, you don't have to be shopping for clothes for the visit to be worthwhile. Bustling with the most foot traffic you'll find in LA, wholesale fabrics flowing in the wind, at least four different languages from Spanish to Arabic... it's a strange, trippy place, like someone carved a slice out of a developing world metropolis, dumped it into a forgotten corner on Downtown's fringe and threw it in your face anyway. Be prepared to bargain.
@ 7th/Maple - The SoCal Flower Market. There's no normal entryway, you have to wander into one of the shops on its outside and kinda squeeze your way back. It'll open up into a giant indoor flower market, really cool if you're a botanist or a girl. Expect to be charged a small fee if you don't have a merchant's pass, which you probably don't.
@ 9th/Los Angeles - The California Market Center. More cheap shopping craziness.