Tourist in Your Own Town

Seen in the movies, popularized on TV, books, magazines, legendary or fabricated attractions.  Acts of tourism.  Traveling, we instinctively seek out landmarks.  Why lapse at home.  picOweek keeps a sharp  eye on LA's tourist destinations.  Some icons, a few expected, many overlooked.  Tourist in Your own Town (TYoT) has suggestions on how to enjoy them anew you jaded Angeleno.

My friend Scott spotted the shadows on the Griffith Observatory steam shot.  Good eye, bringing up an important point.   Tourism in your town sometimes means getting there before the show begins.  Staff descends to the back entrance. The campus is a mecca for joggers, coffee sippers and one photographer rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.  Which is another tip to being a TYoT.  Skip the coffee, don't have a lot on your mind and everything is new, the banal most interesting.  Them sidewalks don't clean themselves, son.

The changing face of Hollywood.  It's coming down before your eyes.  Walk a few blocks, see what's left.

Get in the LA River.  Below the city, views of the bridges, trains, trees.  Stay on the banks when it's raining.

See how the local yahoos express themselves at the LaBrea Tar Pits, right down from LACMA.  R+M the next Basquiat?  Paleontology meets tagging. 

Walk around Bergamot Station after the galleries have closed.