Los Angeles Hidden Gems: Secret Spots Locals Love

Los Angeles is so large that its genuinely local spaces exist in permanent parallel with the tourist circuit, often within walking distance of the famous landmarks. The Self-Help Graphics and Art studio in East LA has been a hub of Chicano art since 1972 and hosts public printmaking workshops, gallery openings, and community events that feel nothing like the polished gallery scene of West Hollywood. Nearby, Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights is one of the oldest in Los Angeles and contains the graves of city founders, silent film stars, and Chinese railroad workers — a fascinating and entirely unvisited corner of LA history.

The Dunbar Hotel on Central Avenue in South LA was the first hotel west of the Mississippi built specifically to serve African American guests during the era of segregation, hosting Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Cab Calloway when they performed in the city. Today it operates as affordable housing with a small museum; the stretch of Central Avenue around it preserves the legacy of the West Coast jazz scene that flourished here from the 1920s to the 1950s. For a different kind of discovery, the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City presents an extraordinary collection of exhibits that blend genuine natural history with elaborate, deadpan fiction — it is one of the most singular museums in the world and deeply beloved by Los Angeles intellectuals and artists.

The Tujunga Wash Murals in Studio City stretch for half a mile along a flood control channel, painted by community artists with scenes from San Fernando Valley history — beautiful, local, and entirely off the tourist map. Langer's Delicatessen near MacArthur Park has been serving what many consider the finest pastrami sandwich in the United States since 1947; eating there is a genuine LA experience that crosses every demographic and neighbourhood boundary the city's geography usually enforces. The Huntington Library in San Marino admits visitors to one of the greatest botanical gardens and art museums in California — with a collection that includes the Gutenberg Bible and Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy — at a fraction of comparable institutions' prices.