I had a studio in this neighborhood for 3 years. Just take your camera and spend a couple hours walking around admiring the colors and people and odd shops. 

Old theater that shows obscure and rare movies, and holds events.

Grocery-store carts and trash litter [Ballona Creek], joined by flotillas of foam-plastic cups after rainstorms. — Jane Engle, Los Angeles Times

The best

Salton Sea is not technically LA, but is a by-product of its history and my first-choice escape from the city: one of the world's largest inland seas and lowest spots on earth, a man-made lake in the midst of the Colorado desert, a resort area in the twenties turned in one of the worst ecological disaster of the past century.