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Immediately north of Venice, Santa Monica is the oldest and biggest of LA's resort areas, perched on palm-tree-shaded bluffs, or "the palisades," above the blue Pacific. Once a wild beachfront playground, it's now a self-consciously healthy and liberal community, with a large expatriate British contingent of writers and rock stars, ranging from Rod Stewart to John Lydon. The Santa Monica beachfront grew into a giant funfair city when it was linked to downtown LA by the suburban streetcar system. It was the location for many of the underworld stories of Raymond Chandler, most memorably as "Bay City" in Farewell My Lovely , but today Chandler wouldn't recognize the place. The gambling ships and bathing clubs have gone, and Santa Monica is now well known for its tight rent control policy and stringent planning and development regulations. For these perceived infractions, local right-wingers refer sneeringly to the city as the "People's Republic." Santa Monica reaches nearly three miles inland, but most things of interest are within a few blocks of the beach. The visitors center (daily 10am-4pm; tel 310/393-7593, ), in a kiosk at 1400 Ocean Ave, makes a good first stop. It can be found in Palisades Park , the enjoyable, cypress-tree-lined green strip along the top of the bluffs, where the homeless mix with the yuppie elite and the whole area seems to be under constant threat of eroding down to the beach below. Two blocks east of Ocean Avenue, the Third Street Promenade , a pedestrianized stretch popular with street vendors and itinerant evangelists, is the closest LA comes to having an urban energy, though colorless chain stores are crowding out many of the quirky boutiques and oddball shops - especially north of Arizona Avenue, now a fully corporatized dead zone. On weekend nights the Promenade brings together visitors and Angelenos of all ages and accents, and it's by far the best place to come for alfresco dining, beer-drinking or people-watching. The real focal point of Santa Monica life is down below, on the beach and around the once-decaying and recently refurbished Santa Monica pier , which boasts a well-restored 1922 wooden carousel (daily 9am-6pm; 50c) - featured, along with Paul Newman, in the 1973 movie The Sting . Although the familiar thrill rides of Pacific Park (Mon-Fri 11am-6pm daily, weekends closes at midnight; $16, kids $9), the pier's walled-off amusement zone, may first attract the eye, save your money for the UCLA Ocean Discovery Center (weekends 11am-5pm, summer also Tues-Fri 3-6pm; $3; ), just below the pier at 1600 Ocean Front Walk, where you can find out about local marine biology and get your fingers wet touching sea anemones and starfish. The grand beach houses just to the north of the pier were known as Hollywood's "Gold Coast"; the largest, now the Sand and Sea beach club, was built as the servants' quarters of a massive 120-room house, now demolished, that belonged to William Randolph Hearst. In the adjacent villa of MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, the Kennedy brothers were later rumored to have had liaisons with Marilyn Monroe. Five miles north along the curving Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) from Santa Monica, a huge mock French chateau inadvertently marks the easily missed entrance to the opulent Getty Villa , 17985 PCH ( ), the original site of the Getty museum. A fake Roman villa poised high above the ocean, the complex is currently closed, until it re-emerges as a showcase for Getty antiquities.
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