indri

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Do we know in which part of Los Angeles the Hyperion is? Or would anyone care to guess?

Thanks in advance.

Edited to add: Actually, would anyone familiar with LA be willing to beta sometime soon? Just for geographical plausibility, if you prefer.

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From:

onetwomany.livejournal.com

I think it's meant to be Downtown, but I have no idea why I think that and it may well turn out to be a matter of fanon rather than canon. Which, er, probably doesn't help you...

From:

indri

It's a start! Did you see much of LA while you were there?

From:

onetwomany.livejournal.com

I've been to LA, um, four times now, so I know it reasonably well. Not as a local would or anything, but as a tourist does ;)

Problem with AI being Downtown is that just about everyone in Downtown LA is of Latino descent. And did you see you a Latino person on AtS?!

From:

indri

I only ever seem to go to the Bay Area, as that's where most of my friends are in California, so I've never yet been to LA, not even LAX.

I want to take a character for a walk in LA, which is bit of a problem unless I'm quite vague or do masses of research.

just about everyone in Downtown LA is of Latino descent

See? That's useful for me to know. My trusty Lonely Planet says that Downtown also includes Chinatown, Little Tokyo and the Financial District, but maybe they're defing Downtown quite broadly.

From:

onetwomany.livejournal.com

Hehehe. People don't seem to walk very much in LA...In fact, during the weekdays there are surprisingly few people wandering up and down the streets. Bumper to bumper traffic, but.

Going from my scatty memory...

Downtown is that area with all the skyscapers you see on the movies and TV shows. It's kind of set back from the beach cities of Santa Monica and Venice and Long Beach and such, and south of Hollywood. A couple of freeways whiz by, so you often pass the skyline driving back to Hollywood from some other destination or something...LA is so weird like that, you seem to spend more time of Freeways whizzing from area to area then doing anything much else.

The financial area and inner city of LA was pretty much 'standard big city', which a combination of towers concentrated about the middle and lower buildings in between and around the edges. It's kinda scrappy and a bit chaotic, like Sydney, and I could see the Hyperion fitting into the architecture. The really tall tower is Library Tower, which has a cable car kinda thing running up from the street and, I think, a park at the bottom and maybe a market or grocery store or something across the road - but, man, that was about three or four years ago I was there! The Town Hall is pretty to look at, and there are several other impressive, tall architectural pieces. I don't remember the Chinatown area being as hugely faux China-y as the ones in Sydney and SF, but there are a lot of the usual kinds of stores - gold-laden jewelry stores, electronics and that kind of thing. There's definitely also a sign with dragons. There's also lots of Chinese people in the Jewellry district, and lots and lots of gold! Broadway has all the major shopping, from memory. I also visited the fashion district area on the weekend on my trip last year, and my memories of that are of lots and scattered carparks, surrounded by mediumish tall concrete buildings, and many, many Spanish-speaking people. I think Alisa and I may well have been the only Anglos, and we got a few curious looks! Also, the streets actually had people on them!

Really, Downtown LA isn't much of a tourist destination, though. Most of the pretty areas, the good shopping, the nice restaurants and the inhabitable hotels seem to be elsewhere – Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Malibu, heck even icky West Hollywood. Still, if the traffic is anything to go by, a lot of people clearly work there, and it undoubtedly caters well to them on weekdays.

From:

indri

Well, I'll have to cobble this together from bits of cities that I know. If the Hyperion is on the fringe of Downtown and it's largely Hispanic, I can draw on SF's Mission plus bits of San Jose and San Antonio. The Financial Center I'll imagine as a bigger version of SF's, maybe. Freeways-Austin, given that we saw quite a few of them on foot. Chinatown should be easy enough, from your description. I can probably also draw from memories of bits of NYC and Oakland.

Thanks very much for this.

From:

thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com

On the SF comparison - I'd just add that the financial district in LA is a bit more spread out. Buildings in general are just farther apart. (Part of the reason why no one walks, I guess.)

From:

indri

I'll google for pics, but I was wondering what was between the buildings then? Plazas? Car parks? Enormously wide roads?

From:

thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com

As I recall, usually some ornamental lawn or plaza space between buildings. They're just not butted up as closely as in older cities, like San Francisco or New York.

From:

nwhepcat.livejournal.com

gwynnega is in LA, I believe. Or close enough to know stuff.

From:

indri

Ah, thank you. I may ask her once I've written a bit more.

From:

rahirah

Quoting a

spikewriter post on the subject I saved for just such occasions:

>> Did anybody get the address of Wolfram and Hart from the envelope shown in the first scene there? <<

1121 Spring Street, Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, the address doesn't exist. There is an 1121 N. Spring Street, which is smack dab in the middle of the railroad track junctions north of downtown. Spring Street and Main Street merge at Ninth, with Main Street as the continuing street. 1121 S. Main Street would be on the fringes of the garment district and one block away from the Los Angeles Examiner Building, home of the now-defunct Herald Examiner, a beautiful mission-style building designed by Architect Julia Morgan for William Randolph Hearst. It's also two blocks away from the United Artists Theatre, the picture palace financed in 1927 by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin as the flagship for their
studio. If Spike or Angel were in LA during the late twenties, early
thirties, they very likely might have seen a movie there. It now houses a church, but this has allowed the grand Spanish Gothic style to remain reasonably intact. The rest of the theatre initially housed offices for Texaco, but now have a variety of grimy little businesses, many importers of cheap clothing.

Given the view they're showing from the windows, it looks like they're either actually on Bunker Hill or just outside downtown proper on Wilshire Blvd.