Ryan Trahan walked onto Santa Monica Pier on day eight of his cross-country mission to personally test and rank the top 10 tourist attractions in America, and Los Angeles immediately threw a carnival at him. With one day to cover an entire city famous for eating entire days in traffic, Trahan had picked three targets: Santa Monica Pier, the Hollywood sign, and a Dodgers baseball game. The stakes were simple enough. Two more cities remained after this, New York City was sitting in first place, and Las Vegas was buried at the bottom. Something in Los Angeles had to move the needle.
A carnival on the beach and tacos worth the detour
Santa Monica Pier arrived with a reputation problem. Reviews online ranged from mild disappointment to Ezra’s assessment that ‘the GTA 5 Santa Monica is 100% better.’ Trahan and his wife Haley ignored the warnings, pocketed a Cat Mario plushy from one of the games, and squeezed into a $5 photo booth before the ferris wheel conversation became unavoidable. Haley had made her position clear on the flight down. The ferris wheel happened anyway, Mario the plushy in tow, and the view from the top was the kind that makes a person forget they were ever nervous.
Right off the pier, a taco spot called Taco 1986 solved the lunch question. The al pastor tacos arrived on corn tortillas that Trahan called some of the best he had ever eaten. One hour of Los Angeles traffic later, they reached Lake Hollywood Park, sat in the grass, bought a cup of fruit from a stand near the parking area, and stared at nothing in particular. Trahan admitted it was the first time in the entire trip he felt like he could simply sit still. The Hollywood sign appeared on the hike up, and a photo was declared fridge-worthy on the spot.
Dodger Stadium and the moment the whole day snapped into focus
They arrived at Dodger Stadium two hours early, which turned out not to be early at all. The stadium was already filling. A station near the entrance let visitors print custom baseball cards of themselves, sleeved in protective plastic. A fellow fan named Ricky passed along the kind of local knowledge that makes any trip: first-time visitors who stop by the fan services counter get a pin that reads ‘First Dodger.’ Trahan collected the pin. He also collected two Dodger dogs, a stadium burger, and one cup of ice cream served inside a miniature baseball helmet.
Shohei Ohtani got a base hit and scored a run. The entire stadium did the wave. The Dodgers won. Haley put it simply: ‘This really does feel like an American bucket list item.’
Back at the hotel, the scrapbook page for Los Angeles went up against the existing rankings. On a three-category system of experience, scenery, and magic, Trahan and Haley counted down simultaneously for each score. Experience landed at 7, with Trahan noting that two and a half hours of traffic had cost the city a point. Scenery came in at 8. Magic settled at 7, anchored almost entirely by the energy inside Dodger Stadium. The total put Los Angeles level with Washington D.C. on raw points, but they slotted it just below at number six overall.
A baseball card in a protective sleeve
Somewhere in a stack of Dodger Stadium souvenirs, a mint-condition baseball card sits in the clear plastic sleeve a machine pressed around it that evening, Haley’s image slightly dented from where she tapped it on the counter before anyone could stop her.
Two attractions remained on the list, the next one requiring five and a half hours of travel before a further two-hour drive to reach it. New York City was still in first place. Los Angeles had given them tacos, a fridge-worthy photo, and a baseball game that, as Trahan put it, was ‘the most magical’ thing they had done all day in a city full of things competing for that title.
