HTLA: Where to Catch the Best LA Sunsets Episode 36

Mallory Carra  00:00

There's this one point where the sun just gets so, so bright that you know, even looking at it-- It's hard but you want to so badly because it's so beautiful.

Brian De Los Santos  00:13

[music in] Hey y'all. This is How to LA, the podcast that drops a little knowledge about the city each episode. I'm Brian De Los Santos.

Brian De Los Santos  00:22

Today is gonna be a little bit different. We want to bring you some joy and talk about the most LA thing we can think of- our city's beautiful sunsets, because [music out] you can see the sun go down from all sorts of vantage points here. We figured most people in LA probably have a favorite place to watch the sunset, right?

Brian De Los Santos  00:40

[music in] I remember when I got my first big boy job in Santa Monica, I would wait out that Friday traffic every so often and catch the sunset at the beach. When the sun rays begin to fade, it's the most romantic thing, even if you're by yourself. I don't have to be at a certain beach to enjoy the sunset. I just have to be by the Pacific. Spots like this are something a lot of Angelenos can connect over. So that's why we didn't just want to hear about my favorite spot. We wanted to hear about yours. [music out]

Brian De Los Santos  01:15

We reached out on Twitter and Instagram to ask y'all, "What's your favorite sunset spot?" We got some replies, and we also got some dope stories, stories about Angelenos finding escape from the LA hustle, about coming to love it, and about missing it. So next up, you're gonna hear sunset story from Mallory, Steve, and Nicole.

Brian De Los Santos  01:37

Mallory Carra first moved to LA in 2010 for graduate school. [night market ambi] In searching for new spots to hang out, she followed the recommendation of a Facebook friend and ended up at the Yamashiro Night Market, perched above Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Heights.

Mallory Carra  01:52

Walking in, you're just surrounded by these vendors, this liveliness and joy, and you hear the sizzling of the food being cooked and you hear the murmur of the crowd, you hear the live music that's going on in one of the tents, and I felt like when I walked in there, all the troubles of the earlier week melted away because I was here, I was gonna eat some good food, [music in] try something new, I was gonna watch a great sunset. You can always tell because the colors start to illuminate in the sky, like these pinkish and blue hues that just start to move across the sky and just get brighter and brighter. And [ ] there's also this one point where the sun just gets so, so bright that you know, even looking at it-- It's hard, but you want to so badly because it's so beautiful and it's just hard, so you're kind of like, do I put on my sunglasses so I can see the colors but I also can't see them through the sunglasses because it's dark out. The thing is it's always a surprise. Sometimes it's orange and blue. Sometimes there's some pinkish hue. I remember not wanting to leave until I was sure that it wasn't going to get more majestic. [music swells]

Brian De Los Santos  03:13

Though the restaurant Yamashiro is still around, the Yamashiro Night Market eventually closed down because of COVID, and Mallory moved to the west side. [music out] She says that because of traffic, it's less convenient to get to the spot. That's another thing I know a lot of us have in common- sitting in traffic. Our next sunset story is from Steve Cha, and his is kind of unusual because his favorite spot to see the [traffic ambi] sunset is actually from his car, inching along Sunset Boulevard heading west while sitting in traffic. When Steve first came to LA in 2008, he worked at Sunset Gower Studios. Like so many others, he just wanted to be part of the entertainment industry.

Steve Cha  03:56

I would be driving towards West Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard. It'd be a commute to Rage. [laughs] It'd be a commute to Rage, which was a club in West Hollywood, and I would go specifically on Friday nights for a weekly event called Game Boy, and Game Boy was marketed towards and patroned by gay Asian American men. That was my weekly pilgrimage at one point. One of the reasons I moved down was because LA has the most Koreans outside of Korea. I also wanted to connect with Queer Korean Americans, and I thought if I was gonna find any, they're gonna be [music in] here in LA, and lo and behold, I found a few of them. I found several Asian Queer API communities, and I thought these are rare in the United States. I would say it's actually probably rare in Asia too, to find this opportunity to feel less alone. Well, whatever you want to find in LA, I think it's here. You have to drive to it, which is annoying, but I think LA has a community for everyone. And so, I stayed. The city was something that I have come to love, like the sunset. It looked like the postcards where it effortlessly looked beautiful. The reality was actually more beautiful than the fantasy that you see in the images about LA. And that specific image, the way the dark silhouettes of palm trees in the distance and like the way it lead to the skies, it helps you deal with traffic.

Brian De Los Santos  05:48

And that's LA for you. [music out] There's something here for everybody. Okay, one last sunset story. It's from Nicole Va. She grew up in the South Bay and her favorite spot? [beach ambi] Well, I've been here too, and I have to say it's so pretty. It's Redondo Beach. She used to go there as a kid, but after college, she followed jobs to other cities, Phoenix, then Washington, DC. [music in] But when she left LA, she always felt something just wasn't quite right.

Nicole Va  06:19

And when I was in DC, I did a beach weekend out to one of the Delaware beaches. And it was the strangest thing to me being at an East Coast beach at sunset time, and seeing the sunset in the opposite direction, not on the [laughs] water. I had never thought about that until I was there, and I was like wait a [laughs] second. Growin' up near the beach and seeing the sunset from there, that just feels like home. Sometimes we would go to Old Tony's on the pier. Even sometimes just after dinner at home, my dad would suggest taking a walk down to the pier and then take a walk in the sand. It gets windy at the beach at night. I would still be in jeans and a hoodie and just kick off my shoes. My dad would hold my shoes so that I could dip my toes in, rather than me holding them myself. [sound of seagulls and people in background] I would squish my feet in the sand, be mesmerized by the water rolling in, and then feel the pull as it rolls back, washing the sand off a little bit, and then my feet would sink in deeper. Sometimes it would come in a little higher, get a little splash on my jeans unexpectedly, and the back and forth of the water coming in, coming out. I'm not even saying that this is the best thing about LA but being able to go to the ocean is the part that is home for me. [music swells]

Brian De Los Santos  08:15

Okay, I definitely know what she's talking about because I love an ocean breeze too. [music out] I mean, who doesn't? We hope you enjoyed their stories as much as I did. And maybe you love LA even more after listening to them. I know I definitely have to hit up Redondo Beach again. It's been far too long for me.

Brian De Los Santos  08:32

[music in] If you want to visit any of the locations mentioned in their stories, please visit LAist.com/How to LA. There, you will find directions to each spot, plus a few other places you might want to check out. All right LA, see you soon.

Brian De Los Santos  08:46

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. [music out]