West Los Angeles

West Los Angeles, also called the West Side, is generally considered to be the portion of Los Angeles, California and its suburbs that lies east of the Pacific Ocean, west of Fairfax Avenue (varying definitions place the eastern boundary a half-mile west, at La Cienega Boulevard, or a mile east at La Brea Avenue), south of the Santa Monica Mountains, and north of the Los Angeles International Airport. Confusingly, "West Los Angeles" is also the name of a neighborhood-level district of the city of Los Angeles, located in the vicinity of the junction of Santa Monica Boulevard (California State Highway 2) and the San Diego Freeway. Much like South Central Los Angeles, the name of a specific area gradually came to encompass the culturally similar areas around it; thus, this article concerns the West Side as a whole.

Many of the major educational, retail, cultural, and recreational attractions of Greater Los Angeles are located in the area, as is a large portion of the entertainment industry. The West Side rivals downtown Los Angeles for the number of people commuting to it from other areas, particularly the San Fernando Valley to the north and the South Bay to the south.

The West Side's traffic congestion is legendary. Although once served by the Pacific Electric Railroad's streetcars, it was the first region of Los Angeles to be developed largely around the automobile, and is notorious for its lack of significant public transportation. (Its residents are also noted for their NIMBY attitude toward transportation projects--q.v.) The traffic-choked Santa Monica and San Diego freeways are the primary transportation corridors in the region, and much of the area's commercial development is along them. The proposed Pacific Coast, Beverly Hills, and Laurel Canyon freeways undoubtedly would have sped up the region's traffic flow, but went unbuilt in the face of massive community opposition; unfortunately, a great deal of high-density development took place in anticipation of these roadways' construction, resulting in significant congestion on the area's surface streets. In particular, getting to Hollywood from the West Side is notoriously difficult, with all major north-south streets between the regions jammed during virtually all waking hours.

Cultural perceptions

The West Side is generally thought of as the white part of the city of Los Angeles, in contrast to the Latino-dominated East Side, the Latino and Asian areas such as Pico-Union and Koreatown in and around downtown, and the black and Latino neighborhoods of South Central. Despite the two areas' proximity, most West Siders rarely cross the Santa Monica Freeway into South Central.

Area code 310 covers most of West Los Angeles and is commonly synonymous with it: young people often refer to the region as "the 310." Ironically, area code 310 also covers some of the poorest communities in the Los Angeles area, such as Gardena and Compton.

West Side communities

• Bel-Air
• Beverly Hills
• Beverlywood
• Brentwood
• Century City
• Cheviot Hills
• Culver City
• Holmby Hills
• Malibu
• Mar Vista
• Marina del Rey
• Pacific Palisades
• Palms
• Playa del Rey
• Rancho Park
• Santa Monica
• Sawtelle
• Venice
• West Hollywood
• West Los Angeles
• Westchester
• Westwood