Mid-City

Mid-City is a swath of real-estate cut from the middle of Santa Monica to indicate the highly urbanized area at the heart of the city. Sometimes it includes downtown Santa Monica, although I will mainly be reviewing the area east of Lincoln.

One thing that you find a lot of in this area are car dealerships—something that makes it rather ugly for residents and visitors. This is certainly not the area where tourists come to visit and take pictures.

You will also find a lot of apartments and lower end hotels in this section of town, catering to tourists who cannot afford the high beach prices but still want to enjoy Santa Monica. Residents tend to live in the many Seventies style apartments that populate the area. Most streets have pleasant palms and are clean, but this is certainly not the leafy areas north of Montana. They are really fairly average and mainly have the proximity to the ocean and other spots in the city going for them.

The major freeway in the area is the Santa Monica 10 that cuts right into Downtown LA, so you are right near the heart of just about everything.

Along Santa Monica Blvd. you will also find Saint Johns Health Center, a very solid medical facility that serves this area. The hospital also means that many of the nearby Santa Monica apartments are occupied by nurses and interns who want to be close to work so that when they are paged in the middle of the night they don’t have far to go to be at work.

One of the notable companies that calls Santa Monica home is the Playboy Publishing Group that has offices on Broadway.

The real action however are at the smattering of night clubs that take advantage of the slightly lower rents in the area. Notable are V Lounge and The Room. V Lounge is one of those slick looking, glassy dance lounges while The Room is one of those dark, dungeon like red bricked deals with big drinks.