Things to Do in Manhattan Beach

In 1956, a mining company sold some unproductive facilities to the County of Los Angeles, thinking it had taken everything worth taking from the land. The county wanted to reclaim the site as a natural habitat, but civic demands at the time dictated that it become a sanitary landfill. Then, in 1961, a group of private citizens headed by Frances Young convinced the Board of Supervisors to reclaim the site as a botanic garden. By April of that year, the one-time mine and former landfill bloomed with more than 40,000 donated trees, shrubs, and other plants, officially completing its rebirth as the South Coast Botanic Garden.

Today, the garden's 87 acres of land support more than 200,000 plants representing more than 2,500 different species, including 100 extremely rare mature plant specimens and globe-spanning plants from Australia and Africa. The robust growth sprawls across several theme gardens, including a dry-soil cactus garden, a traditional Japanese garden sculpted around centuries-old stone lanterns, and a Mediterranean garden inspired by the sultanates of antiquity. The diverse plant life provides shelter for an equally diverse population of birds and bugs, with 200 avian species spotted each year, matching the 200 yearly squeals from grown men who encounter a particularly large beetle.

Contestants use more brainpower than brawn to master CityRace Urban Adventure Hunts. Taking place up to three times each month, these three-hour adventures combine the brainteasing clues of a scavenger hunt with the timed pressure of a footrace. Inspired by The Amazing Race, events send teams of two or four speeding through the streets of a Los Angeles neighborhood on foot, by car, or via other unique methods. Participants can explore the diverse architecture of Little Tokyo, steep themselves in history in 200-year-old Old Pasadena, and ski down Hollywood’s snowbank-like piles of discarded screenplays. The team that finishes with the most correct answers wins a bronze trophy, assorted books and gift cards, and a picture in the Winners' Circle on the race website.

Buses coast down sunny avenues lined with palm trees and pastel-colored buildings. Many of these buildings boast complex histories—as music venues, film studios, boarding schools for stuntmen, and more—that synced audio tracks and charming tour guides divulge during Rockin Hollywood Tours' interactive excursions. On each tour, groups pass more than 70 sites around the streets of Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and West Hollywood. Guides expound on well-known landmarks such as the Hollywood sign, the Jim Henson Company lot (the former home of Charlie Chaplin Studios), and the Playboy Mansion. They also lead riders through musical history and Elton John's personal diaries as they pass venues including Whisky A Go Go, the Troubadour, and Capitol Records studios. Driving through residential areas, guides also point out the past and present homes of celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Eddie Murphy, and Nicolas Cage.

If you walk into The Little Knittery and its floors and tables are neat and tidy, don't worry. They won't be for long. The knitting shop is usually abuzz with a flurry of activity and scraps of material as student stitchers learn to purl, crochet, mold felt, or even spin their own yarn in a slate of weekly classes. A kaleidoscopic selection of yarns from Wool and the Gang, Ecobutterfly, and Jade Sapphire line the walls, their neat piles often collapsing as customers grab a favorite style to start a knitted scarf, a crocheted coaster, or a likeness of their own hand, knitting as professional instructors offer tips and guidance. Project patterns developed by the shop's yarn-impassioned staffers, meanwhile, provide the basis for more advanced group or private lessons.

Hollywoodland Tours escorts guests through Tinseltown's star-studded streets during a trio of informative adventures. Aboard the company's shaded, open-air van, tour takers snap pictures and revel in the close proximity of famous landmarks as knowledgeable guides dish out facts about passing sights. The Beverly Hills Star Home tour showcases the castles of more than 70 celebrities, including Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts, before coasting over to the Sunset Strip, where industry big shots dine, shop, and teach their wax likenesses how to use chopsticks. Patrons can also hitch a ride on the Hollywood tour, which sails past the sites of historical films, television series, and radio studios, while the Hollywood Sign tour grants picturesque photo opportunities and the chance to ask the typically reticent "H" for its autograph.

Under instructor James Brown, all of the teachers at the YogaPoser studio are 500RYT graduates of the YogaPoser Teacher Training, where they learned how to excel at tailoring their attention and tips to the particular needs of each practitioner, helping students to cultivate self-awareness, stability, and strength during classes offered seven days a week. The studio’s schedule of classes includes offerings to help ease beginners into yoga practice, including foundations classes, which steadily equip attendees with the yogic knowledge needed to master an array of standing, twisting, and inverted poses while reciting the Bill of Rights backwards. Students flow through poses in the Total Poser class with instructor's help, or attend the hybrid AssKicker class, which blends yoga, cardio, and plyometrics. Poser Tech workshops taught by senior teacher training faculty, and open to all, deepen students' understanding of a particular type of pose. Classes take place in a Santa Monica studio, rendering sessions relaxing and cozy as up to 24 visitors stretch out on yoga mats (may bring their own or have one provided) and mortgaged floorboards.