A Town Of Techies, Craft Beers, Trendy Restaurants & Dive Bars
The Los Angeles Times, once as big a part of downtown LA as one-way streets and whose editor even gave the Southern Cal athletic teams the nickname Trojans, is moving to El Segundo.
El Segundo!?
Johnny Carson must be laughing so hard we can hear him from heaven. Carson once made fun of El Segundo about as often as he did Burbank.
But don’t laugh now – El Segundo is today a techy town. It’s home to several cutting-edge companies that are involved in the movies, TV production and high-tech consumer goods. It’s also the home of ImFORZA, the website host company of PubClub.com.
Of course, every newspaper reporter and editor needs a good watering hole and El Segundo has them: the locally-made El Segundo Brewery craft beer, a speakeasy-like small distillery, the Gene Simmons-owned Rock & Brews, a few trendy restaurants and traditional dive bars like Main Street Tavern and The Office that traditional journalists love the most.
There’s even a tiki bar, the Purple Orchid.
It was even used as the high school for Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher video. Oh, and Hall of Fame baseball player George Brett is from Gundo. And The Lakers and Kings practice in El Segundo. It’s also very close to the new Rams/Chargers NFL stadium being built in Inglewood.
Employees, who spent most of Friday the 13th in shock when incoming owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shlong made the announcement, may have started out in near revolt over El Segundo, but they will come to quickly like it.
El Segundo has several advantages over downtown. For starters, it’s far less congested and easy to get to, if that can be said for any place in L.A.
It’s right off the 105 freeway. There’s a Metro line in the vicinity. With another one being built now. The Commuter Express bus goes almost non-stop between downtown and El Segundo.
It’s less than 10 minutes from LAX and that’s almost door-to-door.
It has a bus that only costs a buck – I refer to it as the “Dollar taxi” because so few people are ever on it – that goes through town, to the airport and to the south to Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo Beach.
Oh yeah, Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo Beach. Those fun and beautiful places are adjacent to Gundo.
So employees, don’t go running off the roof of the Times downtown building; give Gundo a chance. There’s a very good chance you’ll wind up really liking it.
LA Times El Segundo Building Location
The Times permanent will be near the intersection of Aviation Boulevard and Imperial Highway, which is right an an on-ramp for the 105 freeway and about a mile from the 405.
It’s about four or five Vegas-length blocks from the current Metro Green line, tho to walk there will need to be better access for pedestrians because now it’s a very busy area with multi-lane streets.
See this map of the location.
In July, it will move into a temporary location near the permanent one, at 2300 E. Imperial Highway.
Neither of these locations is conveniently located near downtown El Segundo (in other words, you can walk there for lunch or an after-work drink) tho the “Dollar Taxi” does have pickup on Imperial Highway across Sepulveda Blvd., for those who don’t mind crossing this busy street (there is a light and crosswalk).
Do not know because I don’t know where the building (campus) will be located in El Segundo. If it’s by the Lakers/Kings facility (which is a mile or so from the buzzing downtown) then there is a Metro stop right there on the Green Line.
How close is the site of the new Times HQ to the Green Line, or the Crenshaw Line set to open late next year?