The Griffith Park Excursion

A random Saturday a couple weeks ago turned into one of the more fun and interesting days I've had in Los Angeles in a while. My roommate and I were sitting at home bored and frustrated because we felt that we didn't have anything to do. If I told any friends from back home this, I'm sure they would reply, "but Los Angeles is so big and there's so much to do, how could you be bored?!" Well, unfortunately Westchester is nowhere near exciting, and Los Angeles' traffic is often prohibitive to accessing other parts of the city. Well, this Saturday when we decided that we were not going to let traffic limit our enjoyment of the city in which we live. We were going to drive past Downtown to Griffith Park and go take a hike.

We swooped up another friend of ours and began our journey. It was not soon after we got on the 110 Freeway that we hit our first bout of traffic, but a quick lane change over to the carpool lane solved that problem and we were cruising steadily. Upon our arrival, we realized none of us had ever been to the area of Griffith Park we were currently in. We decided instead of driving over to the Hollywood sign area we would stay where we were and try to find some trails. We ended up finding some, and by our stroke of luck it turned out to be more than just some trails through the natural LA landscape. We had stumbled upon remnants of the old Los Angeles Zoo, which has been closed down since the 1960's according to the signs. We got to stand where animals once were caged, and see how the old buildings and structures have decayed over the years and become targets for people to practice tagging. After continuing our quest up the trails we came to a peak with a tall metal tower residing at the top. The peak was tall, and had a view of Downtown on one side and a view of the valley on the other. Seeing the city from a view like this makes you look at it differently; it helps you piece together the different neighborhoods based upon landmarks you can see and more than anything else makes you realize how close many things in the city are to each other and that it shouldn't take as long as it often does to travel between them. After this Saturday, I promised to myself that I would try to go on more of these spontaneous excursions to new places in the city whenever I was feeling bored or feeling that I had nothing to do. The best way to enjoy a city is to get to know it the best that you can, and that is what I hope to accomplish.


--Derek Dellovo
photo: me