McLaughlin

McLaughlin is one of the two Culver City neighborhoods that creeps west of the 405 Freeway, stretching irregularly out to the southwest of the point where Venice Blvd. meets the freeway. It is primarily a residential neighborhood with slightly older Ranch and Mission Revival type homes that are common to this area. These make up the interior surface streets which are wide and leafy will modestly kept lawns and a slightly trapped in time feel to it (the neighborhood could easily be used to set a 1950s or 60’s kind of film if you just replace the cars.

Washington Place is apartment row, with a series of long paired buildings that stare at each other across grassy or asphalt courtyards. The buildings seem rather run down, somewhat dirty with stained stucco and partly dead lawns. Sawtelle Blvd. is an even more run down version of the same. Rents are moderate in the area, a 2 Bedroom going for about $1500 in the area.

Venice Blvd. is a bit like this as well, with slightly run down apartment buildings and all that, but it also has some restaurants as you near the freeway. There are no parks in the area and the neighborhoods don’t really have a family feel, however, if you want to be close to Venice Santa Monica, Culver City and one of the major freeway arteries north south, you can’t really beat this location (except for the freeway noise, of course).

Overall, there are some inexpensive places to live, but the gentrification that has remade Culver City in the last decade have done little to alter this section of the city.