Main St, Ocean Park

Main street is not only a really cute street: it's a really fun street! There is tons of shopping, it's minutes from the beach on foot and there are about a million bars in a 6 block radius. You can spend a full 24 hours on this street and still not have done it all. It's one of my favorite weekend streets in the city. Although, it gets really crowded on the weekends so you have to prepare yourself. Going during the week is great because almost every bar has a happy hour and some of them have some pretty cool live entertainment too. The only bummer about this street is that, in my opinion, none of the restaurants are all that great. Some of the bars (like Library Alehouse) have good food but it's gonna be bar food.
O'Brien's on Main Street was one of the first Santa Monica bars I went to when I moved to the Los Angeles. It's a pretty laid back pub and they have this great Irish band that performs on Thursday nights, I believe. People go crazy for them and deservedly so. Finn McCool's is another great bar just a block down and they have an awesome happy hour as well. Library Alehouse is right in the thick of things and it's a bar that is a little calmer. Sometimes the bars on this street get a little rowdy or obnoxious on the weekends because the neighborhood is highly doused with just out of college kids. Library has the fewest young and rowdys out of all of them and a pretty sweet burger to boot. I could, seriously, go on and on about all of the bars on this tiny street that I love but pretty much all of them are great. And, this street makes for an easy pub crawl considering that there are so many within blocks of each other.
Main Street can be too dangerous if you are a lady who likes to drink a few beers and then shop. Planet Blue is a glorious but overpriced store where seriously everything in the store is cool. Dolce Vita sometimes has crazy sales and they have the cutest shoes. Those are the two stores I have to go into but there are a ton of amazing home stores and the staples like American Apparel, too, all within about six blocks.
Main Street is the best of all worlds. It's a beach community, it has a very eclectic crowd too. There is every kind of person on the street -- right down to field trips to the Heritage Museum. This street is awesome!