Park West / Vets Park

Park West is dominated by two main features, Culver City Middle School and the Veterans Memorial Park. Culver City Middle School is one of the most diverse in LA with 2 of 5 students being Hispanic, and 1 of 5 being either white or black. The demographics seem to work well for the school, with its API ranking being 7 of 10, higher than average. It is also economically diverse with 40% of the population qualifying for free lunch, for example.

Veterans Memorial Park, next to the Veteran’s Memorial Building, is a great all-purpose park, complete with tennis courts, swimming pool, kids play area, barbecue area, baseball field, and cool shady trees. It is the kind of park where leagues meet to play and where summer camps are held. A great community resource (the only drawback being that the bathrooms are a bit sub-par—if you’re looking to pee, you are better off going a few extra blocks to Carlson Park in Park East—much better facilities for those purposes).

The major thoroughfares here are at the edges of the neighborhood at Sepulveda, Culver and Overland. Overland has three churches and two notable cafes—Café Laurent and Spot Café and Lounge. Culver, other than the meridian bicycle path, has surprisingly little to offer in terms of commercial interest at this location. Sepluveda on the other hand is packed with stores, churches and restaurants even though the avenue’s ugly appearance takes a lot away from our appreciation of it.

The neighborhood is largely characterized by Ranch and Prairie style homes and is virtually indistinguishable from areas of the San Fernando Valley along its wide leafy lanes, except perhaps for the vintage stone lampposts similar to those seen in Beverly Hills. A crop of newer, similarly styled Mission Revival homes station themselves just east of the Junior High along Overland, a taste of Culver City’s future, perhaps.