Palms

Wedged like a pizza slice to the southwest of the junction between the Santa Monica Freeway and the 405, Palms is a diverse lower middle class neighborhood that lies between slightly snooty northern neighbors and the new fangled gentrification of Culver City. Since it is the closest neighborhood to Westwood with rents to accommodate those with limited means, many of the residents are UCLA grad students (a smaller amount are USC driven to live here because of financial constraints—although there are also lots of relatively well-off residents in northwest Palms, where most of the houses are, and a number of single moms, gay couples, and struggling artists in the area.

The dividing line between Palms and the posher neighborhoods to the north is the Santa Monica freeway that functions like a great dividing line between Palms and those neighborhoods. The blocks closest to the intersection of the 405 and the 10 are widely considered to be the most attractive of the neighborhood, even though they are fairly unremarkable to most.

The diversity of the neighborhood is an unmistakable part of its character. One 2 of 5 of the residents are white, one quarter are Latino, and about one in five are Asian—largely Korean spillover from nearby Koreatown. This rich mix gives the main throughfares a real international feel with a number of Korean outlets and multi-national restaurants along the major arteries.

Many of the residents of the area dislike Palms because of the high density housing, with thin walled apartments and noisy parties that can disturb and also because of the high number of homeless that occupy the area because of the nearby shelters. Some residents claim the homeless are particularly aggressive in this area, though many feel they are no more or less a disturbance than those in other parts of the city—like Santa Monica, for instance.

There is also a bit of crime which seems to drift into the area. There has been slightly more than one murder per year, every year—with a pair of Police shootings and a pair of random stabbings. Residents of the area, however, mostly complain and about car break-in and rowdy drunken behavior.

Despite these problems, many residents of Palms are quite happy here and consider it a step up from many other neighborhoods. Many of the UCLA students, however, seem less than happy with their surroundings and seem to have high hopes for their post-graduate lives away from this little slice of LA.