"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."
Crash is a must see movie before you go to LA imo...
UCLA is in West LA, this is important because LA is huge. Most cities in the western US are sprawling rather than built up with a lot of Skyscrapers. Downtown LA has skyscrapers, but Downtown is barely any of LA at all. I would estimate it takes about 35 minutes to get from UCLA to downtown LA in typical traffic and it takes forever to get anywhere in LA in general as traffic never ceases. Housing near UCLA itself (westwood and brentwood) tends to be very expensive, researchers, doctors, and faculty tend to occupy large houses in these suburbs. Your best bet is probably West Hollywood off of Santa Monica Boulevard or Melrose (30ish minutes from campus by car including the time it will take to find parking, 50 mins by bus, 40 minutes by bike and these are unavoidable standard commute times for getting from point A to B in LA, also no one bikes in LA so you'll be the only one :/). LA is actually pretty safe near UCLA.
I really recommend just getting University housing, as finding housing is hard when you don't already live in the vicinity (landlords wont take you seriously or theyll think youre a scammer on craigslist etc). Check out UCLA's facebook page, they probably have a housing group where other students will be looking for roommates should you choose not to live on campus. As I said above, look for places off of Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose, check out Culver City too.
to be really clear: there is no convenient or fast or cheap, public transportation in LA so I would bite the bullet and take university housing.
There are a lot of cool places to go in LA I will keep these reasonably close to UCLA:
The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a museum for middle ages' and early modern period 'science'.
Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Nuart Theatre, if youve never seen rocky horror. be careful about hitting on people here as a lot of people cross dress for the show.
The Japanese American National Museum- Located across the street from Little Tokyo, this is a good place to take a date, though the museum is a little sad.
The Staples Center: Go see the Lakers/Clippers or the Kings.
Griffith Observatory- Tons of hiking nearby, on a scale from 1 to Beautiful it's a 'pretty' area, but that's as close as LA gets to beautiful for the most part.
Disney Hall- Has amazing acoustics and the LA philharmonic is top quality, so if you (or your date, as this place makes for a very good date) like classical music or just like concerts in general check this out.
Amoeba Records- The place for hipsters qua hipsters, it is worth going to once if you don't care about vinyl, if you do care about vinyl you'll be here all the time.
Avoid these places as much as possible and this may include avoiding driving nearby them too as many of these offer the worst traffic:
Universal Studios and the associated "City Walk"- expensive, crowded, everyone walks slowly as fuck, food isn't that good, youll probably get dragged here anyway. worst traffic in the city
Walk of Fame: this area and everything nearby is a waste of time, there are better, if not cheaper, places in Hollywood as you'll quickly discover.
LA Live/Nokia Plaza- Avoid just because of how bad the traffic is, but you will have to traverse it if you want to make it to the Staples Center. Overpriced.
Dodger Stadium- avoid driving near it when there is a game going on (i dont think youll have to worry about this in the winter/spring tho), also Baseball sucks and will suck even more as a foreigner, though you can be that one foreign dude making fun of the rules and swearing at the fat american players, I have been amused by this in the past.
Things to do on the west coast:
San Diego is about 2.5 hours from LA, if you have a 3 day weekend, find a friend with a car and spend a day at the beaches in La Jolla before you head for the border, as Mexico is the closest place you'll be able to drink if you arent 21.
Mammoth- Spring skiing in Mammoth is pretty good, way better than the local LA skiing ever gets. Do it on Superbowl weekend (February) when crowds will be minimal.
Santa Barbara- on the way from LA to Santa Barbara are many lovely state beaches, you might as well see Mission Santa Barbara too.
The Bay Area- 5-7 hours from LA, so it may be cheaper to fly than to pay for gas. Could dedicate another post to all the shit you can do here.
Not as familiar with outside of CA, but Oregon and Washington are very beautiful and they are much cheaper too.
