Here's the move behind every good list of things to do high in LA: sesh at home, get a ride over, and let the city do the rest. None of the places below allow consumption (museums, beaches, parks, none of them), so the plan is simple. Show up already lifted, with water and a charged phone. LA is weirdly great for this. It's a city built on spectacle, and spectacle hits different after a sesh.
What follows is grouped by mood, not by neighborhood. Some days you want to stare at the stars. Some days you want to stare at a dinosaur. Both are valid.
Griffith Park and the Observatory
Griffith Observatory
The single best stoned outing in Los Angeles. Not close. It's free to walk in, the building is an Art Deco spaceship, and on clear nights volunteers set up public telescopes on the lawn and let you look at Saturn's rings with your own eyes. The planetarium shows are ticketed and worth every second (lean back, let the dome swallow you, try not to say "whoa" out loud). Go for the last hour of daylight, watch the basin light up below you, then head inside once it's dark.
Parking up there is pure hell on weekends. Get dropped off, or ride the DASH up from the Vermont/Sunset Metro station. It's genuinely the easiest way.
The rest of the park
Griffith Park is bigger than some cities and stranger than most. Fern Dell is a shady creek trail with ferns and little bridges, about ten degrees cooler than the street. Bronson Caves is the Batcave from the old TV show and a short flat walk in. The old zoo ruins let you climb into abandoned animal enclosures and have a picnic where the bears used to live, which is a sentence that only makes sense here. And the merry-go-round is a vintage carousel that will make a grown adult giggle after a sesh.
For a real view, the Mount Hollywood trail from the Observatory gets you above the whole thing in under an hour. The outdoors guide has more trails like it, and the Silver Lake and Echo Park guide covers the food on the way down.
Museums that hit different
LA museums are underrated and, a little toasted, wildly fun. A few are free. Book ahead where you can, and go on weekday afternoons when the crowds thin out.
The Broad
Downtown, free general admission, and home to the Infinity Mirror Room, a tiny dark chamber of mirrored lights that turns into forever. You get about a minute in there. It's enough. Reservations go fast, so plan ahead. Next door, the Walt Disney Concert Hall has a free rooftop garden you can wander while the steel curves bend the light around you. Grand Central Market and the Downtown and Arts District guide are right there for after.
LACMA and the Miracle Mile
Urban Light (the forest of old streetlamps out front) is free to walk anytime, and at night it's the best photo op on Wilshire. Inside, LACMA is huge, so pick a wing and commit. The La Brea Tar Pits are next door, with bubbling asphalt and fiberglass mammoths stuck in the lake mid-panic, and the Academy Museum is a few steps the other way for anyone who wants movie history. If you only do one, do the Tar Pits. Something about ancient goo still burping up through Hancock Park after a sesh rearranges your sense of time. Then go eat on Fairfax; the Mid-City and Fairfax guide has the picks.
The Getty Center
Free admission (you pay to park, or skip it and get dropped at the bottom), and the ride up the hill on the little tram is part of the trip. White travertine, Van Gogh's Irises, and a Central Garden that spirals down into a maze of flowers. The real reason to go is the late afternoon, when the light goes gold over the 405 and the whole Westside looks like a painting of itself. Hot take: the view is the best piece in the collection.
Natural History Museum
Exposition Park. The dinosaur hall is enormous, and a T. rex growth series (baby, juvenile, adult) is somehow emotional when you're lifted. The California Science Center is right next door with the Space Shuttle Endeavour parked inside a hangar, and standing under a real spaceship is the kind of thing that should be on everyone's list. The Metro E Line stops right there.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology
The strangest museum in America, on Venice Blvd in Culver City. Dim rooms, tiny exhibits, and you will never be quite sure what's real. Microscopic sculptures inside the eye of a needle. Folk remedies involving mice. A rooftop tea room with doves. Go stoned and it'll feel like walking through someone's fever dream; go sober and you'll still leave confused. Plan an hour, end up there for two. The Culver City guide has Tito's Tacos and the rest of the neighborhood.
Books, records and the bright noisy stuff
The Last Bookstore
Downtown on Spring Street, in an old bank. Floor-to-ceiling books, a tunnel made of books, a bank vault full of books, and an upstairs maze where everything's sorted by color and vibe. It's the best place in LA to lose an hour stoned, and you'll leave with something you didn't plan to buy. Angels Flight and the Bradbury Building are both close if you want to keep wandering.
Record stores
Crate digging after a sesh is a pure joy. Amoeba Music in Hollywood is the giant everyone knows (aisles and aisles, listening stations, an entire room of film on disc), and it's worth one pilgrimage. But LA has dozens of smaller shops in strip malls and on side streets, from Echo Park to Long Beach, each with its own specialty bins and a clerk who knows everything about one genre. Follow your ears.
Arcades and bowling
LA's got old-school arcades, barcades and pinball rooms scattered all over the map, plus retro alleys like Shatto 39 Lanes in Koreatown and the restored Highland Park Bowl. Throwing a bowling ball lifted is a lot funnier than throwing one sober. Ktown also has private karaoke rooms everywhere, open late, perfect for a crew. See the Koreatown guide for where to eat after.
Beaches and boardwalks
The beaches and the pier don't allow smoking of any kind, so this is a sesh-at-home-first kind of day.
Venice Boardwalk
Ocean Front Walk is a sensory overload, in the best possible way. Skaters at the skatepark, guys lifting at Muscle Beach, street performers, a guy with a snake. At sunset the drum circle gets going near the sand and everyone sort of drifts toward it. Then walk ten minutes inland to the Venice Canals, which are dead quiet and look like nowhere else in the city. The Venice guide has the munchies, from Abbot's Pizza to Hinano Café.
Santa Monica Pier
Yes, it's touristy. Go anyway. Ride the Pacific Park Ferris wheel at golden hour and the whole bay opens up, Malibu on one side, the Palos Verdes hills on the other. Then hit the old carousel, which has been spinning since forever. Walk up to Palisades Park on the bluff after, for the best sunset bench in town. More in the Santa Monica guide.
Lookouts and easy walks
Not every high day needs a summit. These are the spots where you get the reward without the suffering.
Lake Hollywood Park puts the Hollywood Sign right over your shoulder with a grassy lawn below it. Bring a blanket. Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook is a steep set of stairs, and at the top you see the entire basin, downtown to the ocean; take the road up if your legs are noodles. Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood has the Hollyhock House and a sloped lawn that's a perfect sunset spot. And Echo Park Lake has swan pedal boats, which is a pretty genius activity to do stoned. You're on a swan. On a lake. In LA.
Hot take: Runyon is a gym with a view, not a hike. Skip it and do the Observatory loop instead.
Building the day
The best days mix one big thing with one small thing and a serious meal. A few that work:
- Eastside afternoon. Sesh at home, ride to Griffith, Fern Dell walk, Observatory at sunset, then something saucy from the LA munchies guide.
- Museum row. Tar Pits, Urban Light, then a slice on Fairfax.
- Downtown loop. The Broad, the concert hall rooftop, the Last Bookstore, Grand Central Market. Ride the Metro in and walk the whole thing.
- Beach day. Venice Boardwalk at golden hour, canals, then a late plate from the late-night LA guide.
Wondering where to actually light up before you head out? See where you can legally sesh in LA. And if you'd rather sit in the dark for two hours, the best movie theaters in LA is your next stop.
