Downtown Culver City, Culver City, CA

Downtown Culver City is where the city's movie history and its restaurant scene sit on the same few blocks. The Sony Pictures lot, once MGM, runs along Washington Boulevard, the neon sign of the Kirk Douglas Theatre lights up Culver Boulevard, and the brick flatiron Culver Hotel still has live music on weekend nights. Housing downtown is mostly condos and loft-style apartments above or beside the storefronts, with a few streets of older single-family houses at the edges. Almost every home is within a short walk of dinner. Main Street is the center of gravity for Downtown Culver City. It closes to cars for the Culver City Farmers Market every Tuesday afternoon, and it carries a long row of restaurants, including esme, IPPUDO and BottleRock for wine. Open space downtown is more plaza than park. Town gatherings happen on the Culver Steps, which hosts concerts and yoga, and Culver City Park is a short bike ride away. The Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, with its stairs up the hill, is the closest real climb. Daily life works without a car more easily here than anywhere else in the city. Trader Joe's and Erewhon are just east, the Culver City E Line station connects to Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles, and the Ballona Creek path connects by bike toward the coast. The tradeoff is the crowd. Weekend nights and studio events bring heavy traffic and full parking structures, and the restaurant rows stay loud until late. On a weekday morning, the plaza is quiet enough that the Tuesday market setup on Main Street is the biggest event of the morning.