University Park

An Indian kitchen on 23rd Street that has fed USC for years, with a menu that also carries Mexican and American plates because that is what the block asked for. The chicken tikka masala and the garlic naan are what most tables order. It is fluorescent and unfussy and the food comes out quickly.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

A bar on Figueroa that has been serving USC students and whoever else walks in since 1947, known locally as the Nine O. It serves wings and burgers across a long bar facing televisions. On game day it is unusable, but most nights it is simply the nearest place to get a drink after something at the Shrine. Two for one drinks run until nine.

Mon, 3pm to midnight. Tue to Thu, 3pm to 2am. Fri and Sat, noon to 2am. Sun, noon to midnight

Gilberto Cetina's Yucatecan counter inside Mercado la Paloma, doing cochinita pibil, panuchos and a lime soup that is the reason a lot of people drive here. You order at the register, take a number, and eat at a communal table in the middle of the market. The same family runs the seafood counter across the aisle.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

A seafood counter in the same market, run by Gilberto Cetina Jr., serving kanpachi tostadas, smoked marlin tacos and an octopus taco cooked in its own ink. It has a Michelin star and was the Los Angeles Times restaurant of the year, and it is still eight stools and a counter inside a market. Reservations exist for the tables, but you can put your name down and wait, which at lunch is usually twenty minutes.

Tue to Thu and Sun, 11:30am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11:30am to 10pm. Closed Mon

A coffee bar on 32nd Street a few doors from the Shrine, in a converted house with a patio out front. Espresso, drip, a short pastry case and a lot of students with laptops. It closes at three in the afternoon and does not open on weekends, which is the whole constraint on using it.

Mon to Fri, 8am to 3pm. Closed Sat and Sun

A northern Chinese noodle shop on Figueroa a few doors up from the Nine O, doing hand-pulled noodles, pork and chive dumplings and a beef noodle soup that comes out fast. It runs to eleven at night six days a week, which makes it the latest food anywhere near the Shrine. Plastic trays and paper menus. The line at the register keeps moving.

Mon to Sat, 11am to 11pm. Sun, 11am to 9:30pm

The oldest LGBTQ archive in the United States, on West Adams in a building that used to be a fraternity house. The ground floor runs free exhibitions drawn from the collection, which covers roughly a century of material, and the reading area upstairs is open to anyone who asks. Visits are short by design and the staff will tell you what is on the walls.

Tue, 10am to 5pm. Wed, 11am to 5pm. Thu to Sat, 10am to 5pm. Closed Sun and Mon

Old trees shade a triangle of lawn in the West Adams historic district, ringed by Victorian houses that survived the freeway. There are benches, a path and not much else. It is the nearest patch of green between the Shrine and Adams Boulevard.

Daily, sunrise to sunset

A small free museum on the USC campus, founded in 1939, with a permanent holding of Dutch and Flemish paintings and a changing program of contemporary shows. Two galleries, no ticket, and it takes half an hour unless something holds you. It keeps the university calendar, so it shuts for holidays and through the summer.

Tue to Fri, noon to 5pm. Sat, noon to 4pm. Closed Sun and Mon. Shut for university holidays and in summer