West LA, CA

The West LA on this page is a very different place from the West LA most Angelenos mean. The campus reads in sections. One part holds the medical center and the old soldiers home grounds, where a long-range plan is adding housing for veterans among buildings that date back generations. Another is given over to the Los Angeles National Cemetery, whose rows of headstones run out toward Sepulveda Boulevard. Open space is what the area gives the Westside. Heroes Golf Course is open to anyone on a walk-up basis, with free rounds for veterans and a pickleball center on the grounds. UCLA's baseball team plays at Jackie Robinson Stadium on leased campus land, so spring weekends bring crowds and the crack of the bat. Restaurants are all outside the fence. Food means a short drive or walk to the Japanese restaurants and cafés along Sawtelle Boulevard, or to Westwood Village and Brentwood for everything else. Getting here is a Westside exercise. The 405 and Wilshire carry most of the traffic, buses run along Wilshire, and a new D Line subway station is under construction at the campus edge, which will link the grounds directly to Koreatown and downtown by rail. Housing on the campus is reserved for veterans, and the everyday business of groceries, schools and shops all happens outside it. What it offers the neighborhoods around it is room, with lawns, fairways and quiet ground where the rest of the Westside is wall-to-wall buildings.