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WALKING in Los Angeles? Isn’t that like ice-dancing in the Sahara? In the car capital of the world, the locals treat their “vehicles”, as they call them, as casually as golf buggies. They jump in the car, drive to the corner to pick up their dry-cleaning and a cup of coffee, drive to their yoga class, drive home. Everyone wears trainers, but nobody dreams of walking.
But the times and increasing traffic gridlock are changing LA. As a visitor, you’re ideally placed to join in this cultural revolution, treading where Angelenos themselves no longer fear to tread…
From Kodak Theatre, home of the Oscars, a long staircase perfect for celebrity posing runs down to a grand piazza, which is a re-creation of a set from W.D. Griffith’s Intolerance. Decorated elephants on top of pillars raise their trunks while computerised fountains rise and fall randomly.
This is not a palace but LA’s democratic equivalent - a shopping mall. Built in the 1990s, the Hollywood and Highland Center was an attempt to redevelop Hollywood gone to seed. To see if it has worked, walk a mile or so down Hollywood Boulevard with its mix of tourist tat, tattoo parlours and gems such as the great ornate cinema architecture of El Capitan and Grauman’s Chinese, the dark, elaborate Spanish-style interiors of the newly chic 1927 Roosevelt Hotel, Larry Edmunds Bookshop - world HQ for movie memorabilia - and Musso and Frank, where neither decor nor the waiters has changed since Nathaniel West and William Faulkner sipped their vodka Martinis there.
Beneath your feet is Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, 2,000 star names set in brass in twinkling pink tarmac. Come back on the first weekend of each month for excellent, free tours of another new arrival in the area, LA’s Metro (www.metro.net/art). Each station is a work of public art by a local artist: the railings at Hollywood and Vine station are musical notes that play “Hooray for Hollywood”.

travel.timesonline.co.uk