Cheap Los Angeles – How to get by without spending a dime (well a lot of dimes)

Uber and lyft was 7-8$ on the cheap? Now it's around 38-66$ now. It's crazy they have're allowed to have a duopoly.

Even with a budget, it will still be hard to live in LA

are the subways full of homeless?

you are amazing very good inf you sharing keep it up. thanks

L.a have a dollar or 99 cent stores to buy food, or knick nacks. There ubiquitous

Hello Walter. Will be bringing the family to LA soon. Would you know where are the public rest rooms / comfort rooms / toilet in the hollywood blvd and sta monica beach? Is it true that in venice beach they smoke marijuiana? Need to keep the kid the family away from marijuina other drugs.

As someone who was born and raised in Los Angeles I can tell you that you will diffently need a car hire while visiting Los Angeles. It is spread out and you can't get very far without a car. When you buy a flight ticket from say the U.K. (where I now live) you can also book a car hire. When you get to LAX you simply get in one of the car shuttles that circle the airport. They will drop you off, for free, to one of the many car hires just outside the airport.

I know people are saying split your stay but not suggesting where. For a 5-7 day trip, any suggestions which areas I should look for ?

Hidden gem…Venice Canals.

I live very close to Manhattan Beach. I grew up in this area. MB has gotten much more expensive since a studio moved in here. Street parking, especially durinng the summer, has always been terrible. Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach are cheaper. By just going a little inland parking becomes easy and lodging much cheaper. The area is quite safe and we all have the advantage of beach weather, though parts of the year can be foggy. Our local diners and restaurants are good. For hime style food Joe's in Redondo Beach is a local tradition. When I was a kid John Wayne used to dock his boat in the local marina on some weekends and duck in there to grab a meal. They still serve his favorite special. I occasionally run into film and TV people in the area but don't expect to. The Kettle in Manhattan Beach, on the road running to the pier, is a 24 hour coffee shop with decent food that's also a local tradition. My favorite sushi place, assuming it's survived the insane pandemic restrictions here, is hidden away on the Manhattan Beach Pier. They even have excellent happy hour sushi. Never trust a sushi restaurant where the sushi chef isn't trained in Japan or trained by a Japanese sushi chef. If the menu is in Japanese, usually with an English translation, and the majority of the customers are Japanese, Japanese Americans or obvious locals then you should be golden. Some of our local Chinese restaurants are so tuned into Asia that new trends in Shanghai or Beijing restaurants appear here within weeks or months of their introduction in China. Our Thai restaurants are usually run by Thais. We have a sizable Vietnamese American population resident here for at keast a half century. Vietnamese food is becoming a staple here. Stip and eatat a pho (soup) restaurant and I think you'll like it. We have all kinds of good Mexican food. By eating outside of Hollyweird and the West Side you'll pay local prices, not tourist or rich people prices. Check out some of the exotic foods in our local groceries. We don't even realize they're exotic. Shop in a Latin or Asian supermarket. They cater to all the locals and things will also be in English. Many of our Japanese supermarkets are part of Japanese chains so it's like shopping in Japan, with Japanese goods at normal retail prices. One of mine has a good food court where I get extremely fresh and cheap packaged sushi and shashimi. I can combine it with a plate lunch of tempura and soup, or a ramen bowl, and tea from another food stall. I can get a Japanese dessert, like an adzuki bean stuffed waffle, from a third food stall to finnish the feast off. This only costs a few bucks, everybody in our family gets what they want, there are indoor tables to eat on and you get a huge restaurant quality meal for a fraction of the price. A lot of the customers are typically Japanese. You can do things like this a lot in LA.. Unlike New York, where many immigrants are from Europe, we get a lot of people from all over the Pacific rim from Chile to Australia. Generally we're a friendly bunch, though we all prize politeness. Being rude like a New Yorker is a good way to get into trouble. Don't do it. In every public establishment I've ever been in my lifetime here English can always bee spoken and there's no need to be uncomfortable about it. The clientele are always going to be the normal mixture of locals and we all have to use English to get along with our lives.

Your tips are great. It makes LA much more reasonable. I always loved driving by their beaches

I live here in LA. The museums that have their once a month free days put those tickets go online for one day a month before and they are gone in about an hour. So if you want to take advantage of those free tickets you have to plan ahead! also because of covid they are limiting entry. So keep that in mind. Also there are no walk up's for free days.

LA is price-yyyyyyy! Thanks for the tips, Mark!