Los Angeles
Downtown LA Story by Shauna Dobbie, photos by David Johnson
Our hearty tacos from Ana Maria in the Grand Central Market.
“W
hy?” a friend asked when I told him I was going stay in Downtown Los Angeles with my husband David when he went there on business. This friend had lived there about 20 years ago and figured I must be crazy. He thought of Downtown LA as a wasteland of empty buildings and scattered denizens of evil. Over the last decade, though, the area has been gentrifying, with the empty buildings becoming lofts, cafés and trendy restaurants. In 2015, a Whole Foods—the bougie supermarket— opened, sealing the deal: DTLA is now a happening spot. We spent a full day wandering around 34 • Spring 2020
DTLA hunting down sites from David’s favourite Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly. To be clear, our “full day” started with lunch at the Grand Central Market and ended with an early dinner at Musso and Frank Grill, in nearby Hollywood. We managed to see some of the most-filmed places in that limited time. The Grand Central Market has been on the main floor of the Homer Laughlin Building since 1917. Today it is a collection of stalls, most of them selling prepared food. There are a few Latino places, a couple of Chinese, Japanese and Jewish places, a Filipino place and one or two gourmet outlets, plus others selling barbecue or chicken or coffee. There are also some grocers
and a single jewelry shop. We opted for tacos from a place called Ana Maria, thinking they would be smallish, enabling us to try something else as well. Turns out “two tacos” is a heaping plateful of two taco fillings with tortillas on the side, so we were sated. But oh, it was so good! The Grand Central Market is located at the bottom of Angels Flight, which is a funicular running down from Bunker Hill and dating back to 1901, when Bunker Hill was an upper-crust residential neighbourhood. The funicular would give easy access to Bunker Hill servants to purchase groceries and goods on the high street, which was actually below. After lunch, we visited the Bradbury The Hub
