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By Marc D. Graff, M.D.
October comes to Los Angeles amid sunny skies, balmy temperatures, and endless possibilities. Temperatures downtown average 80 degrees during the day and 60 degrees at night. Humidity is low, and rain is rare. Home to almost 10 million people, Los Angeles County encompasses exuberant multiethnic communities and is the largest U.S. port and the world's entertainment industry center.
APA members attending the 1998 Institute on Psychiatric Services in Los Angeles will find they have a broad diversity of places to visit, appealing to families as well as adults. Those interested in lighthearted entertainment will want to visit Universal Studios or Disneyland. For those seeking culture and education, there are almost 300 museums and historic attractions. Among the recently opened sites are the Getty Center, which is perched spectacularly above the San Diego freeway (free admission, but parking reservations are required), the rebuilt and expanded ScienCenter near downtown in Exposition Park, and the new Long Beach Aquarium.
World-class art collections can be found at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard's "museum mile," home of a small flock of other museums including the famed La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum and the entertaining Petersen Automotive Museum, all near the multiethnic Fairfax district and Farmer's Market. Other art museums include downtown's superb Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), only a short walk from the institute's headquarters at the Bonaventure Hotel; Pasadena's famed Norton Simon Museum; the Huntington Library, which has impressive art and botanic collections; and UCLA's Armand Hammer Museum.
More specialized tastes may be satisfied by the ethnic collections of the three major Jewish museums (Skirball, Wiesenthal, and Holocaust museums); the six major museums displaying Asian collections, especially Japanese and Korean; the major Mexican center in downtown, El Pueblo de Los Angeles at Olvera Street; and additional museums featuring African-American studies, native American collections, and world folk art.
In addition to MOCA and the sights of Olvera Street, other downtown attractions include Little Tokyo and Chinatown; the Los Angeles Central Library, which is across the street from the Bonaventure Hotel and will be hosting special events during the institute weekend; the Music Center with its associated theaters; the Civic Center; the Children's Museum; Grand Central Market; and the Museum of Neon Art. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra will be in town, and an array of theater productions will be on stage in Hollywood, downtown, and Century City.
Visitors will also enjoy the area's great outdoors. Los Angeles has a wealth of beaches, arboreta, and parks including Griffith Park, only a few miles from downtown. Nearby is the ocean, and just an hour away are 10,000-foot peaks.
Outdoor dining opportunities and ethnic food are easy to find. Restaurants specializing in the cuisine of the Pacific Rim-from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean to Thai, Cambodian, and Vietnamese-abound, and the traditions of Mexico and Central America are amply represented. California cuisine is still easy to find, and classic continental restaurants emphasizing Italian and French are plentiful as well.
Downtown dining experiences include my personal favorite, ABC Seafood in Chinatown, A Thousand Cranes in the New Otani Hotel in Little Tokyo and Yagura Ichiban nearby, Cafe Pinot outside the Central Library, Bernard's in the Biltmore Hotel, and Mayor Riordan's restaurant, the Original Pantry. A restaurant guide compiled by local gourmets, with up-to-the-minute dining recommendations, will be available on site for institute registrants.
There are plenty of guidebooks available on Los Angeles to help you plan your stay. My favorites are Access L.A. by Richard Saul Wurman, Discover Los Angeles by Leticia Burns O'Connor, Museum Companion to Los Angeles by Borislav Stanic, and, for those who can't get enough, Los Angeles A to Z by Leonard and Dale Pitt.
If you prefer to get your information the electronic way, I recommend two Internet sites: The Web site of the Los Angeles Times posts a calendar of events and information on Southern California restaurants and local attractions. Its address is www.latimes.com. A Web site for downtown Los Angeles, created by the University of Southern California department of geography, can be found at www.usc.edu/dept/geography/lawalk/dtb.html.
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