Plan

A two-car funicular that has climbed the Bunker Hill slope since 1901, moved one block south in 1996 and returned to service in 2017 after a long shutdown. The ride is under a minute and the fare is a dollar fifty, or seventy-five cents with a TAP card. The lower station sits beside Grand Central Market and the upper one opens onto California Plaza.

Daily, 6:45am to 10pm

Built in 1893 to a design by draftsman George Wyman, with a glass roof over a court of open-cage elevators and wrought iron stairs. It is a working office building, so the public sees the ground floor and the first landing. Admission is free and the whole visit takes ten minutes.

Mon to Fri 9am to 5pm. Sat 10am to 5pm. Closed Sunday

A horseshoe counter inside Grand Central Market that has been serving the same American-Chinese menu since 1959. You sit on a stool under a neon sign and order wonton soup or chow mein. The market around it dates to 1917 and the stall has outlasted most of its neighbors.

Daily, roughly 11am to 8pm. The market itself runs 8am to 9pm and vendor hours vary inside that window

Twelve acres stepping down from the Music Center to City Hall, opened in 2012 and renamed in 2023 for the county supervisor who pushed it through. The pink chairs move and the Arthur J. Will fountain is open to anyone who wants to stand in it. It is open from before dawn until 10pm.

Daily, 5:30am to 10pm

Two floors of new and used books inside a former bank on Spring Street, with the old vault still in place upstairs. It opened downtown in 2005 and moved into this building in 2011. The 11pm close on most nights is unusual for a bookshop anywhere.

Mon and Tue 11am to 8pm. Wed to Sun 10am to 11pm

Ten and a half acres on a hill above the Harbor Freeway, built on a former oil field and opened in 2008 as the first new park in this part of the city in a century. There are oak plantings and a stream running through a meadow, and the skyline view from the top is the clearest in downtown. A playground and a soccer field sit at the lower end.

Daily, sunrise to sunset. Listings vary between an 8pm close and dusk, so treat it as daylight only

Claud Beelman's thirteen-story tower, opened on September 12, 1930 after nine months of building, clad in glossy turquoise terra cotta trimmed in deep blue and gold. A four-sided clock tower carries the word EASTERN in neon and is topped by a smokestack with four stylized flying buttresses. The sidewalks on the Broadway and Ninth Street sides are multi-colored terrazzo laid in zigzags and chevrons, and the recessed two-story entrance holds a blue and gold terra cotta sunburst.

Sidewalk, at any hour

The liquor license here dates to 1905, which is why the bar can sell sealed bottles to go from a window on Eighth Street. Inside there are gopher lamps, a back patio and a jukebox. It opens at 3pm every day of the year and runs to 2am.

Daily, 3pm to 2am. Happy hour 3pm to 8pm

Hank tapped the first kegs here in 1954 and the bar has sat in the lobby of the Hotel Stillwell on Grand ever since. Red walls and a fish tank, with newspaper clippings on the wall and free popcorn on the bar. Booths in the back are the good seats.

Daily, roughly 11am to 2am. Third-party listings disagree on the opening time, so call ahead for a daytime visit

The last of the great American railway terminals, opened in May 1939 to a Donald and John Parkinson design that blends Spanish Colonial, Mission Revival and Art Deco into something usually called Mission Moderne. The main hall runs about 140 feet by 80, under six bronze Art Deco chandeliers that weigh over 3,000 pounds apiece, with thirty-foot windows and red quarry tile underfoot. There are 254 original-pattern wooden chairs and nobody minds if you sit in one. It stays open from 4am to 1am.

Daily 4am to 1am

Two sisters from Japan opened Suehiro in Little Tokyo in 1972 and ran it on First Street for fifty years until an eviction in 2023 pushed it to Main Street. Same family, same curry, in a bigger space. It serves until 1am on weeknights and 3am on Friday and Saturday.

Mon to Thu 11:30am to 1am. Fri 11:30am to 3am. Sat 8am to 3am. Sun 8am to 1am