Reachable on the Red Line subway, the dilapidated patches of green and large lake of MacArthur Park are the nearest open spaces to the sidewalks of downtown, and teem with immigrant street vendors, homeless people and busy residents, under the disused old sign of the Westlake Theatre. On a nearby street, the Grier-Musser Museum , 403 S Bonnie Brae St (Wed-Fri noon-4pm, Sat 11am-4pm; $6), provides a vivid glimpse of the old days when this was a middle-class suburb of downtown, and the area's Victorian houses boasted neo-Gothic turrets, Italianate windows and gingerbread ornament. Surprisingly enough, some homes in the neighborhood still do. Just don't jump out of your car to investigate; the crime rate is among the city's highest. Half a mile west in a safer zone, the seminal Bullocks Wilshire department store, 3050 Wilshire Blvd, is the most perfectly realized example of late 1920s Art Deco in LA, with a colossal copper tower, and has recently been reincarnated as the law library of adjacent Southwestern University .

Inside the Ambassador Hotel , 3400 Wilshire Blvd, the Cocoanut Grove club flourished from the Twenties to the Forties, and the large ballroom (now closed) featured in the 1937 and 1954 versions of A Star Is Born . The kitchen, however, was the scene of the hotel's most notorious event. Bobby Kennedy was fatally shot here on June 5, 1968, after his victory in the California Democratic Primary. Converted into a filmmaking location, nowadays the Ambassador is also closed to public view ( for more details).

The so-called "Miracle Mile" continues west from the Ambassador into the Mid-Wilshire district that runs along that boulevard into West LA. South of Wilshire, along Olympic Boulevard between Vermont and Western, Koreatown is five times larger - and far more genuine and lively - than the more tourist-oriented Chinatown and Little Tokyo, and is home to the largest concentration of Koreans outside Korea.

MacArthur Park

• MacArthur Park

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