3 Best Sights in Westside, Los Angeles

The surf and sand of Venice are fine, but the main attraction here is the boardwalk scene, which is a cosmos all its own. Go on weekend afternoons for the best people-watching experience; you'll see everything from Baywatch wannabes to break-dancers to TikTok influencers to would-be messiahs. You can also swim, fish, surf, and skateboard, or have a go at racquetball, handball, shuffleboard, and basketball (the boardwalk is the site of hotly contested pickup games). Or you can rent a bike or in-line skates and hit the Strand bike path, then poke around the gloriously tacky tourist and souvenir shops before pulling up a seat at a sidewalk café and watching the action unfold.

Frank Gehry is known around the world for his architectural masterpieces. In L.A. alone he’s responsible for multiple houses and buildings like the Gehry Residence, Loyola Law School, and Walt Disney Hall. But one of his most interesting creations, completed in 1991, is the Binoculars Building, a quirky Venice spot that is exactly as advertised: a giant set of binoculars standing on their end. While you can't tour the building, you can take a clever Instagram shot out front.

Bronzed young men bench-pressing five girls at once, weightlifters doing tricks on the sand—the Muscle Beach facility fired up the country's imagination from the get-go. The original Muscle Beach, just south of the Santa Monica Pier, is where bodybuilders Jack LaLanne and Vic and Armand Tanny used to work out in the 1950s. When it was closed in 1959, the bodybuilders moved south along the beach to Venice, to a city-run facility known as "the Pen," and the Venice Beach spot inherited the Muscle Beach moniker. The spot is probably best known now as a place where a young Arnold Schwarzenegger first came to flex his muscles in the late '60s and began his rise to fame. The area now hosts a variety of sports and gymnastics events, along with occasional "beach babe" beauty contests that always draw a crowd. But stop by any time during daylight for an eye-popping array of beefcakes.