boardwalk

That frees you up to dip into the human soup of the boardwalk for people-watching at its finest: pigeon-training, python-handling carnies, vendors who can write your name on a grain of rice or balance your chakras.

From the Venice Boardwalk to Rodeo Drive and Boyle Heights’ Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, these walks allow you to experience L.A.’s streets and sidewalks by foot.

As with many clichés, there is something comfortable about an oceanfront boardwalk.

You’ll traverse a variety of terrains, including a wooden boardwalk at the Santa Monica Pier, sand at Playa del Rey and Dockweiler beaches, a grassy promontory at Point Fermin Park and a boulder scramble as you arrive at the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

If breaking was to have a West Coast origin point, Venice Beach has as strong a claim as any to helping popularize the movement in the early ‘80s, and breaking returned to that cultural touchstone on Saturday as the Red Bull BC One USA National Final was held on the boardwalk. For several hours, b-boys and b-girls entertained crowds of onlookers at the site where scenes for the influential 1984 movie “Breakin’” were filmed.