Carless in LA

27 March 2023, Los Angeles, USA –

It was a late night arrival into LAX after flying half way across the country. We were relieved to check into a reasonably nice, quiet room in Hawthorne, not far from the airport. We woke this morning to blue skies – we seem to be dragging warm weather around with us. It was time to explore.

We’ve been to a number of extremes on this trip – sailing to 72 degrees south, standing on ice floes, driving to the very bottom of both Florida and Texas – but today we took deep breaths, plucked up our remaining reserves of courage, and bravely tackled something almost unheard of for overseas tourists – the LA public transport system (betcha didn’t know they even had one). For the princely sum of 35 cents apiece, plus $2 for the TAP card, we could take a trip one way. The system is a hodge podge of transport modes – we started off on a light rail, the Green Line; then transferred to an express bus running right up the middle of a freeway – the Silver Line. Despite our misgivings, we survived to tell the tale.

Our destination was the California Science Center, in Exposition Park. The drawcard was seeing the second of three flown space shuttles, and we also found Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules, along with other aircraft, space suits and meteorites.

Endeavour was built as a replacement for Challenger; when the program ended, the shuttle was transferred – very slowly and carefully through the streets of LA – to the Science Center, where it has been on display since 2012. There are grand plans to display it upright, along with the external tank which currently sits outside, in a new purpose built Aviation and Space Museum. This will bring together a number of exhibits which are either housed in one section of the Science Center, or scattered seemingly randomly outside other, non-aviation or space-related buildings.

We really liked this display because you can get much closer to the actual shuttle. The Atlantis display at KSC is a lot flashier and has a certain “wow” factor, but here you can walk right underneath, and see everything in detail, right up to the codes on each individual heat tile, almost close enough to touch. It was very easy to while away a couple of hours.

Exposition Park is home to some other museums, including the Natural History Museum, and a rose garden. After looking at these, it occurred to us that there was a rather famous landmark very close by. “Where were the LA Olympics held?” I quizzed Ian. After a quick google, we realised that we were standing right outside the main arena for both the 1932 and the 1984 Olympic Games – the Los Angeles Coliseum. I hadn’t done my research – I had no idea it was here – so it was a nice surprise to be able to add another Olympic stadium to our list (Athens, Helsinki, Melbourne, Munich, Montreal, Barcelona, Sydney, and London).

However, the section we were standing outside featured a large steel fence, and no view of the stadium itself. So we began walking anticlockwise around it, in search of a glimpse of something that reflected the stadium’s past glories. We got more than halfway around seeing nothing, until we passed the Swimming Stadium, which has the Olympic Rings affixed to an outer wall. We pressed on, puzzled that there was so little recognition of the Coliseum’s significance. Finally after almost completing our circumnavigation, we came to an open gate. Inside was a large plaza, with some distinctly faux-Roman marble columns. The lone security guard waved us in and said we were welcome to take photos and have a look around.

All the history was here – the boards honouring the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Champions (very few Australians at either); large bronze plaques commemorating such notables as Jesse Owens; and the grand entrance to the stadium. We even found a plaque recognising Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, who have played here many times, to millions of people. The Coliseum will host athletics in 2028, but the ceremonies will be elsewhere.