Lifestyle
Take an epic trip along the West Coast in 2024. Here are the top 10 places to visit now
I couldn’t help it. In the course of scouting out great adventures for West Coast 101 — our new guide to essential destinations in Baja, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia — I found myself compiling a personal top 10.
I’ll get to that list shortly. But first, an honorable mention.
Even if you’ve never seen “The Big Lebowski,” you’ve probably heard someone mention the rug that tied Lebowski’s room together. Well, Harris Ranch does that for California.
This I-5 stop for food, gas, lodging and bathrooms (not necessarily in that order) might not make anyone’s bucket list. And I’ll admit that if the wind blows the wrong way, it smells like cattle. But if you’re driving north-south through the San Joaquin Valley, which just about every Californian does sooner or later, you’re going to need to stop somewhere.
Harris Ranch faithfully awaits, 184 miles south of San Francisco and 200 miles north of L.A. City Hall, the pride of Coalinga. Over the years, I’ve pumped gas at its Shell station, slept in its comfortable hotel (no resort fee or room tax), conducted interviews in its Horseshoe Lounge, lingered over breakfast in its Ranch Kitchen (excellent) and grabbed a sandwich from its Express BBQ (adequate). I’ve even bought bonsai from Hyo Kim, who peddles delicately coiffed junipers, olive and pine trees ($25-$500) from a stand on the dirt shoulder across the street.
I’m not saying cattle ranches are good for the planet’s future — definitely not. But I’m just realizing that for about 45 years now, Harris Ranch has been the rug tying together my adventures in the vast living room that is our West Coast.
Your rug might be different. After all, these lists are subjective.
Of our 101 best West Coast experiences, these 10 resonate most for me. I’d recommend them to just about any California newbie and I’d grab at a chance to visit them again — some for basic beauty, others for the stories they tell or the memories they tie together.
10. Rady Shell, San Diego
Symphony goers watch a performance of the San Diego Symphony at the Rady Shell April 12, 2024, in San Diego.
(Denis Poroy / For The Times)
I have a hard time imagining a more pleasant place to see an outdoor concert. Well, maybe the Red Rocks Amphitheater outside Denver. But on the West Coast? I’ll take this sleek bayside shell in downtown San Diego. And I’ll try not to be resentful that nobody thought of this while I lived down there.
9. Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn
Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn in Santa Cruz, Calif., Tuesday, April 19, 2022 in Santa Cruz, Calif., Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023. (Nic Coury/For The Times) Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn in Santa Cruz, Calif., Tuesday, April 19, 2022. (Nic Coury/For The Times) Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn in Santa Cruz, Calif., Tuesday, April 19, 2022. (Nic Coury/For The Times)
What are we going to do about Highway 1? Since that coast road was built on the slopes of Big Sur in the 1930s, we’ve treasured it. But as any acrophobe, geologist or engineer could tell you, those slopes crumble and slide relentlessly. Year after year, Caltrans moves mountains to keep that two-lane road navigable. Then comes another slide. Since January 2023 it’s been impossible to drive from San Simeon to Big Sur via the coastal route. (Caltrans announced partial reopening May 16. Check before you go. ) Whenever I worry about the highway, I think of Deetjen’s, which is basically a roadside time capsule clad in weathered wood. It opened about the time the highway did and won over generations of road-trippers with its rustic rooms and restaurant. Before Helmuth Deetjen died in 1972, he set up a nonprofit organization to keep the place running in old-school fashion. I’ve been stopping there since the 1980s. You have to call to make a reservation. And when you get there, you have to expect paper-thin walls along with the Norwegian woodwork, the crackle of the fireplace and the portrait of Deetjen on the wall. It’s a priceless place. And Nepenthe and the Henry Miller Memorial Library are just down the road. We just can’t take Deetjen’s or that road for granted.
8. Yosemite Valley
Bridalveil Fall and the Merced River Thursday, April 27, 2023, inside Yosemite National Park.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Does this need explaining? Probably not. If you’re arriving from the south, you emerge from the long, dark Wawona Tunnel to see El Capitan and Half Dome looming above a green, wet world of its own. Waterfalls roar left and right. The valley stretches for seven miles, framed by granite walls that Ansel Adams had to shoot and Alex Honnold had to climb. The Merced River meanders through. Even if you don’t have $600 to spend a night in the Ahwahnee Hotel, you can pop by for a snack, gaze up at painted rafters that go back to 1927 and warm yourself by one of the big fireplaces.
7. Venice Beach
Venice, CA – April 03: A man throughs a trick at the skate park at Venice Beach on Wednesday, April 3, 2024 in Venice, CA. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times) (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) Venice, CA – April 03: People enjoy a day at Venice Beach on Wednesday, April 3, 2024 in Venice, CA. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times) (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) Venice, CA – April 03: A man surfs at Venice Beach on Wednesday, April 3, 2024 in Venice, CA. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times) (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Yeah, I know. There’s plenty to lament in Venice. But when you hit that beach at the right time on the right day, it feels so emblematic of Southern California. On my last visit, the sun was just setting. My wife, Mary Frances, and I checked out the skateboarders, chatted with a few artists who were selling work along the sidewalk and did a double take at the Shul on the Beach (a.k.a. Pacific Jewish Center), an Orthodox synagogue where worshipers were just gathering for a Friday night Shabbat meal.
6. The whales of Baja’s lagoons
Tourists watch from a panga as a gray whale surfaces and spouts a misty jet of vapor at the Laguna Ojo de Liebre (a.k.a. Scammon’s Lagoon) on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023 in Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
It’s one thing to watch migrating gray whales off the Southern California coast, standing at the rail of a big boat, looking for spouts in the distance and perhaps drawing within 100 yards. It’s something else when you’re in a panga on the waters of a southern Baja lagoon — usually Ojo de Liebre (Scammon’s) or San Ignacio. These immense creatures, the cows and and the calves, get so close sometimes, it feels intimate. And maybe a little scary. The adults weigh up to 90,000 pounds.
5. Ferry Building and waterfront San Francisco
The Ferry Building in San Francisco, Calif., Friday, April 12, 2024. (Nic Coury / For The Times)
A couple looks at the Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point in San Francisco. (Nic Coury / For The Times)
I’m trying to think of a more successful architectural resurrection than San Francisco’s Ferry Building. And failing. Picture that 1898 waterfront building in the 1920s, when there was no Bay Bridge and no Golden Gate Bridge and up to 50,000 people per day were commuting by ferry. The Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street was the center of the Bay Area’s nervous system. Then the bridges went up, commuters abandoned the ferries, the building was rehabbed into ugly offices and decades passed. Finally, in the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, San Francisco leaders launched a plan to revive the building. It reopened in 2003 as a foodie-oriented restaurant and retail space, a thousand times more interesting to me than the souvenir shops of Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 (although at least you get the sight and sound of sea lions there). Apart from the food, it’s got great views of the Bay Bridge. (And with luck, that bridge’s nightly light show, which went dark last year, will resume in early 2025.) I think of the Ferry Building and the Golden Gate Bridge as the bookends of the waterfront.
4. Hidden Valley, Joshua Tree National Park
A rock climber is seen at the Hidden Valley campground inside Joshua Tree National Park.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
I’m not a rock climber or a boulderer. But I’m a sucker for sunrises and sunsets in the desert. And when that golden-hour light hits the jumbled boulders in Hidden Valley, it’s hard to resist.
3. Pike Place Market, Seattle
A view of Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington.
(Amber Fotus / For The Times)
This is always the first place I want to go in Seattle, a spot where people, colors, flavors and scents all come together. I walk past the mirrored bar of the Athenian restaurant, where my buddy Rick and I had beers in 1986, my first time in town. I go down below to make sure the bubble-gum wall is still in place. I mourn at the spot where the newsstand used to be. I kick myself for failing to buy an incredibly cool cigar-box guitar from the Soul Cat Guitar guy when I had the chance. (I thought I’d have another chance at his market stall when I visited in January, but he wasn’t there that day.) I listen to buskers and eat unhealthy snacks. I stick my head in the anarchist collective bookshop (Left Bank Books), which has somehow lasted 51 years. And like every other tourist, I linger near the fishmongers so I can see them flinging fish and hollering at each other.
2. Capilano Bridge Suspension Park, Vancouver
Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, Vancouver.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
On my first visit, a few years ago, it was raining and the park was packed. I wondered if the bridge would be closed. Nope. Open, and prone to slightly jiggle as I stood 230 feet above the Capilano River, surrounded by tall trees and mist. When I returned in February, it was snowing, the park was nearly empty and the bridge was still open. The vibe was part “Twin Peaks,” part “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
1. Badwater in Death Valley
Mike “Mish” Shedlock kayaks the calm waters of Manly Lake at sunrise in Death Valley. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) Park visitors kayak, paddle board and wade knee deep in Lake Manly in Badwater Basin. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) Unique salt structures form in the Badwater Basin at Death Valley National Park where water combines with the natural salt deposits at 282-feet below sea level, as seen in 2014. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
Badwater is hot and dry enough to kill you pretty quickly, but as long as you have water to drink, a little shade and a way out, you’ll probably live and have a story to tell. On my first visit, a summer day about 30 years ago, Death Valley was even hotter than usual, around 115 degrees. The power had gone out at our Furnace Creek hotel. Rather than crowd into the marginally cooler hotel pool with scores of young children (and their urine, most likely), I headed with my wife and friends for the vast, flat, salty, dry lake floor of Badwater with a Wiffle ball and bat. The game didn’t last long, but there are photos: Except for our 20th century leisurewear, we looked like biblical figures in the process of being turned to pillars of salt. So last year, when rains washed out roads, closed Death Valley National Park for months, refilled the lake bed and transformed the basin into a great big mirror, I was eager to get back there.
Within days of the park’s reopening, I got to Badwater for sunrise and came back again at sunset. No Wiffle ball. Just the big sky, the mountains reflected in the lake and a handful of fellow travelers in silhouette at water’s edge. To those bold few who managed to kayak in Death Valley for the three winter weeks that it was possible, I envy you. I don’t know if I’ll ever see that lake again — as of May 1, it was just a few inches deep and shrinking fast — but now I have two layers of Badwater memories to carry with me.
Nick Reiner arrives at the premiere of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025, in Los Angeles.
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
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Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
LOS ANGELES – Alan Jackson, the high-power attorney representing Nick Reiner in the stabbing death of his parents, producer-actor-director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, withdrew from the case Wednesday.
Reiner will now be represented by public defender Kimberly Greene.
Wearing a brown jumpsuit, Reiner, 32, didn’t enter a plea during the brief hearing. A judge has rescheduled his arraignment for Feb. 23.
Following the hearing, defense attorney Alan Jackson told a throng of reporters that Reiner is not guilty of murder.
“We’ve investigated this matter top to bottom, back to front. What we’ve learned and you can take this to the bank, is that pursuant to the law of this state, pursuant to the law in California, Nick Reiner is not guilty of murder,” he said.
Reiner is charged with first-degree murder, with special circumstances, in the stabbing deaths of his parents – father Rob, 78, and mother Michele, 70.
The Los Angeles coroner ruled that the two died from injuries inflicted by a knife.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of death. LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said he has not decided whether to seek the death penalty.
“We are fully confident that a jury will convict Nick Reiner beyond a reasonable doubt of the brutal murder of his parents — Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner … and do so unanimously,” he said.
Last month, after Reiner’s initial court appearance, Jackson said, “There are very, very complex and serious issues that are associated with this case. These need to be thoroughly but very carefully dealt with and examined and looked at and analyzed. We ask that during this process, you allow the system to move forward – not with a rush to judgment, not with jumping to conclusions.”
The younger Reiner had a long history of substance abuse and attempts at rehabilitation.
His parents had become increasingly alarmed about his behavior in the weeks before the killings.
Legal experts say there is a possibility that Reiner’s legal team could attempt to use an insanity defense.
Defense attorney Dmitry Gorin, a former LA County prosecutor, said claiming insanity or mental impairment presents a major challenge for any defense team.
He told The Los Angeles Times, “The burden of proof is on the defense in an insanity case, and the jury may see the defense as an excuse for committing a serious crime.“
“The jury sets a very high bar on the defendant because it understands that it will release him from legal responsibility,” Gorin added.
The death of Rob Reiner, who first won fame as part of the legendary 1970s sitcom All in the Family, playing the role of Michael “Meathead” Stivic, was a beloved figure in Hollywood and his death sent shockwaves through the community.
After All in the Family, Reiner achieved even more fame as a director of films such as A Few Good Men, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. He was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards in the best director category.
Rob Reiner came from a show business pedigree. His father, Carl Reiner, was a legendary pioneer in television who created the iconic 1960s comedy, The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Chiefs
Aware of Dom. Violence Claims
… Made By Rashee Rice’s Ex
Published
The Kansas City Chiefs are addressing the recent social media post made by Rashee Rice‘s ex … where she claimed she was abused during the course of an eight-year relationship, including when she was pregnant.
The shocking allegations were made as part of a lengthy statement shared to the Dacoda Jones’ Instagram account on Wednesday … when said she kept quiet for years to protect her former partner’s image — but can no longer stay silent.
She did not name Rice directly … but certain details about the relationship match up. Rice’s own grandmother even commented on the post … and in a phone conversation with TMZ Sports, she said Jones lied about the abuse after a dispute over paying for an apartment.
In the post, Jones said her relationship ended recently … and “since then it’s been nothing but hell.”
On top of the abuse allegations, Jones claims her ex locked her outside of their home in freezing temperatures after he was caught cheating, damaged her clothes and shoes and showed up at her new home and broke her door.
Jones also claims the man abandoned her and their kids in Kansas and she had to “beg” him for money so she could drive them to Texas.
Jones says he is now trying to force her and their kids out of their home “for no apparent reason.”
“I’ve known this man for YEARS,” Jones said. “He tries to put on this persona like he’s dad of the year. He does the bare minimum and I have to beg for that.”
“I’ve protected his image too long and I’m done doing that. It’s time to protect my peace, protect my children and stand up for myself.”
Jones included images of her alleged injuries from the domestic violence incidents … as well as damage to her home.
We reached out to Rice’s attorney, Royce West, who said his client has not been arrested or charged for domestic violence and hung up the phone.
The NFL declined to comment … but the Chiefs said they are “aware” of the claims made on social media and are in communication with the league.
Rice was suspended six games earlier this season for a 2024 hit-and-run crash in Texas … and teammates like Travis Kelce and Tyquan Thornton wore “Free 4” shirts in support of him during the ban.
He pleaded guilty to two felonies stemming from the incident — one count of racing on a highway causing bodily injury and one count of collision involving serious bodily injury … and was ordered to 30 days in jail and five years of probation.
We’ve reached out to Rice’s camp. No word back.
Timothée Chalamet plays a shoe salesman who dreams of becoming the greatest table tennis player in the world in Marty Supreme.
A24
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A24
Last year, while accepting a Screen Actors Guild award for A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet told the audience, “I want to be one of the greats; I’m inspired by the greats.” Many criticized him for his immodesty, but I found it refreshing: After all, Chalamet has never made a secret of his ambition in his interviews or his choice of material.
In his best performances, you can see both the character and the actor pushing themselves to greatness, the way Chalamet did playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, which earned him the second of two Oscar nominations. He’s widely expected to receive a third for his performance in Josh Safdie’s thrilling new movie, Marty Supreme, in which Chalamet pushes himself even harder still.
Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a 23-year-old shoe salesman in 1952 New York who dreams of being recognized as the greatest table-tennis player in the world. He’s a brilliant player, but for a poor Lower East Side Jewish kid like Marty, playing brilliantly isn’t enough: Simply getting to championship tournaments in London and Tokyo will require money he doesn’t have.
And so Marty, a scrappy, speedy dynamo with a silver tongue and inhuman levels of chutzpah, sets out to borrow, steal, cheat, sweet-talk and hustle his way to the top. He spends almost the entire movie on the run, shaking down friends and shaking off family members, hatching new scams and fleeing the folks he’s already scammed, and generally trying to extricate himself from disasters of his own making.
Marty is very loosely based on the real-life table-tennis pro Marty Reisman. But as a character, he’s cut from the same cloth as the unstoppable antiheroes of Uncut Gems and Good Time, both of which Josh Safdie directed with his brother Benny. Although Josh directed Marty Supreme solo, the ferocious energy of his filmmaking is in line with those earlier New York nail-biters, only this time with a period setting. Most of the story unfolds against a seedy, teeming postwar Manhattan, superbly rendered by the veteran production designer Jack Fisk as a world of shadowy game rooms and rundown apartments.
Early on, though, Marty does make his way to London, where he finagles a room at the same hotel as Kay Stone, a movie star past her 1930s prime. She’s played by Gwyneth Paltrow, in a luminous and long-overdue return to the big screen. Marty is soon having a hot fling with Kay, even as he tries to swindle her ruthless businessman husband, Milton Rockwell, played by the Canadian entrepreneur and Shark Tank regular Kevin O’Leary.
Marty Supreme is full of such ingenious, faintly meta bits of stunt casting. The rascally independent filmmaker Abel Ferrara turns up as a dog-loving mobster. The real-life table-tennis star Koto Kawaguchi plays a Japanese champ who beats Marty in London and leaves him spoiling for a rematch. And Géza Röhrig, from the Holocaust drama Son of Saul, pops up as Marty’s friend Bela Kletzki, a table tennis champ who survived Auschwitz. Bela tells his story in one of the film’s best and strangest scenes, a death-camp flashback that proves crucial to the movie’s meaning.
In one early scene, Marty brags to some journalists that he’s “Hitler’s worst nightmare.” It’s not a stretch to read Marty Supreme as a kind of geopolitical parable, culminating in an epic table-tennis match, pitting a Jewish player against a Japanese one, both sides seeking a hard-won triumph after the horrors of World War II.
The personal victory that Marty seeks would also be a symbolic one, striking a blow for Jewish survival and assimilation — and regeneration: I haven’t yet mentioned a crucial subplot involving Marty’s close friend Rachel, terrifically played by Odessa A’zion, who’s carrying his child and gets sucked into his web of lies.
Josh Safdie, who co-wrote and co-edited the film with Ronald Bronstein, doesn’t belabor his ideas. He’s so busy entertaining you, as Marty ping-pongs from one catastrophe to the next, that you’d be forgiven for missing what’s percolating beneath the movie’s hyperkinetic surface.
Marty himself, the most incorrigible movie protagonist in many a moon, has already stirred much debate; many find his company insufferable and his actions indefensible. But the movies can be a wonderfully amoral medium, and I found myself liking Marty Mauser — and not just liking him, but actually rooting for him to succeed. It takes more than a good actor to pull that off. It takes one of the greats.
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