Bike Ride! - Alhambra

Downtown Main St. > Valley Blvd./Atlantic Blvd. (1hr each way)

Click for Map

Rode Main St straight thru past Union Station, Phillipe's The Original & into Chinatown, on across that sorta gnarled section of the LA River beside the train tracks. Came upon "The Historic San Antonio Winery!" a few blocks later, a large & fancy (on the inside) complex offering free tours and lots of expensive wine. It will be added to me increasingly long list of "spots to return to when the wallet is fatter." A giant shady-looking beer brewery from what must've been the early 1900's was down a dirt alley a few streets over and has been added to my only one-item-long list of "spots to google the safety of before returning to."

Then things took a turn for the random... As this is West-ish East LA, the neighborhood was obviously turning a bit ghetto & industrial and amidst the freight trucks, freight trains and century-old graffitied factories was a strange sight. Groves of trees, grassy knolls, what looked like a real lake (not a hole dug in the ground & filled with sewage & called a lake ala McArthur Park), seagulls chirping, an old fashioned fair ground etc etc. This was, as I soon found out, a place called Lincoln Park... now my favorite park in all of LA. Granted it's competing with like, nothing, but alas it was still quite a romantic little spot.

Continuing the theme of randomness was a giant (about as big as Leavey) pagoda situated between a bunch of truck warehouses a few blocks farther. This was the "Los Angeles Center for Buddhism" or something like that, forgot the exact name, really wanted to go inside but opted out due my gym shorts & tattered t-shirt seeming inappropriate attire for a religious building. It wasn't that far past the LA River, I'll return here sometime too.

The warehouses and freight trucks disappeared, the street changed its name from Main to Valley, wound over a hill past some nifty pottery shops and through a bunch of old battered houses, and whalla I was now in residential East LA. It was badly run-down but not in a ghetto dangerous-looking way. Expecting to be biking another hour or so to reach Historic Alhambra I started peddling faster, but turns out the Metro Map was a bit off scale and Alhambra wasn't so far out after all. The little "500 Places to See Before they Disappear!" Fodors guide hyped this as a charming time capsule back to 1930's half-developed SoCal and under threat of demolition, sounded purtty neat. What I found was a delightful, very well kept middle(?)-class suburb no different than any of a dozen similar neighborhoods in San Diego (Coronado in particular) and elsewhere-LA. It was nice and all but a bit anticlimactic, though I'm no architecture buff so maybe some of the historical charm flew over my head.

Stopped at the local CVS to refuel with some chocolate milk (my last $2! omgz) and turned back the way I came. Nifty if minor discovery on the way back: passed a bustling Mexican restaurant across from the USC Health Sciences campus, was like "hmm this place looks really good", turned the corner to check it's name, lo and behold: "The Original Chanos." Every USC campus must have its own Chanos I guess, heehee.

Overall... the journey was definitely better than the destination here, but a pleasant journey it was.