It is intended as a resource for those avid swimmers out there who want the low-down on where to go (and where not to go) for some acquatic action in our fair city.
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(via Daily Express: Real-life mermaid with a £10,000 tail she uses to swim with sharks)
All I can say is, of course this girl and her tail are from LA!! It may also be worth noting that, contrary to the headline, she is not actually a ‘real life’ mermaid - I’d say she is more like a Hollywood fantasy. Well, at least she is promoting ocean conservation!
Source: express.co.uk
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CURBED LA MAP: 17 OF LA’S AWESOMEST AND DOUCHIEST POOLS AND SWIM SPOTS
It’s been awhile since I last posted a pool review, and despite the fact that it’s mid-winter, all this beautiful Southland weather has me feeling both guilty and inspired. I’ve therefore decided to split the difference, and post a link to Curbed LA’s map from last summer, wherein local swim spots are ranked by their difficulty to access, and, in turn, by the relative factor of douche or awesomeness displayed at each.
There’s something for everyone here, including a few places previously mentioned on this blog, as well as a number of pools I’m keen to explore further and report back to y’all on in upcoming installments, so stay tuned. Airbnb in Alhambra, anyone??
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KENDRICK LAMAR - SWIMMING POOLS (DRANK)
This is a newish rapper from LA that all the young whippersnappers really like right now. I think the song is just alright, but I do like the idea of getting “a swimming pool full of liquor then you dive in it,” as he says in the hook. I know it’s only a metaphor for getting really wasted, but I still they wish they would’ve dramatized this in the video! Well, at least they got a pool in there…
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Swim vote
( Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times / November 6, 2012 )
How cool is this? Only in LA! Happy election day, Angelinos!!
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At the Echo 8/29! jamz.
http://www.ticketfly.com/event/146007/
Poolside - Only Everything
Great new daytime disco tunes, and they’re from LA too! How appropriate.
Source: SoundCloud / Ihearthype
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L.A.C.E.S. AQUATIC CENTER (guest post by Ric)
5931 West 18th St., Los Angeles, CA 90035 (map)
(Just off La Cienega, part of the LA Center for Enriched Studies magnet school campus)
323.933.8345
http://www.laparks.org/dos/aquatic/facility/lacesPool.htm
SUMMER LAP SWIM SCHEDULE (until 8/10/12, check website above for updates!)
MON-FRI 8-9pm
SAT-SUN 12-1pm
SCHOOL YEAR LAP SWIM SCHEDULE
MON-FRI 7-9pm
YEAR-ROUND / INDOOR / HEATED (81-83 degrees)
25 meters x 25 yards (8 lanes), 3-13 ft. depth, 2 diving boards
COST: $2.50 / $2.00 with LA library card
$55 pass for 30 admissions
FREE FOR CHILDREN / SENIORS / ADAPTIVE
Hi All,
Ric here. Sorry for the incredibly long lag in posting: Chiara asked me back in, like, January if I could write the post on the pool at LACES (Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies) over here in the Pico-Robertson area. Winter is long over and we have long been back swimming outdoors (well, technically I have been frequenting the Culver City Plunge since the new year, but Chiara steadfastly refuses to get in the water when it’s a “freezing” 75 degrees outside) – nevertheless I figured I’d finally get on it.
When we moved here from Echo Park about a year ago, we were pleasantly surprised to discover a pool so close to our house. Culver City is fairly close as well but it tends to be chaotic at all times (I’m talking 4-8 people per lane regularly). LACES, just a few blocks east of the intersection of La Cienega and 18th, provides a lovely little substitute for the winter months when the sun descends at 4pm. We’re academics and thus can occasionally make our way to the pool midday, but most days during the school year we have to swim in the late afternoon or early evening when it’s legitimately starting to get cold. Hence our pleasure in finding a relatively low-key pool to visit in the evenings. For some reason Chiara never seems to have made it to LACES with me, but apart from my general melancholy at swimming without the wifey I’ve always enjoyed my experiences there.
According to its website LACES is a magnet school, which means you’re likely even at lap-swim hours to run into a decent number of highschoolers involved in extracurricular or athletic activities. Don’t be scared of the little monsters! Locker rooms are standard-issue LAUSD chic, but because it’s a school there aren’t any lockers for personal use. There is, however, an attendant who will trade you one of those pin-tabs for keeping your bag in a small locked room. Since I’m a control-freak, and since experience has taught me that showing up even 5 minutes after lap-swim begins means competing for lane space, I’ve always found myself arriving early. Unlike, say, the swim stadium near USC (our favorite pool in the city still by far), where even if you are the only soul on the deck you have to wait for the exact minute, my 15 minutes of down time prior to starting are always entertaining: kids taking swim and diving lessons and, best of all, a girls’ synchronized swim team. For what look to be 10-14 year olds they are damn impressive! Equally entertaining is the coach, a 20ish-looking young woman harriedly starting and stopping music, counting strokes and miming very exact hand-and-finger movements. Good times! With almost Germanic zeal and precision this all comes to an end exactly at 7pm.
The pool itself, one of the newest in the city (built in 2004), has 8 lanes and is 25 meters in length. For better and worse, 2 of those lanes are reserved: one for swim lessons and another for a local youth swim team. (I’ve butted heads, literally and figuratively, with a few of these hellions on occasion.) Which means the remaining 6 lanes can get a bit cozy. I mostly went on Tuesday nights when the crowd wasn’t terribly large, though there were a few times when I shared a lane with 3 others. Lanes are marked “Slow”, “Medium” and “Fast”, but really I can’t think of a pool where people really observe those distinctions, and in the case of LACES everyone seemed to be mixed.
LACES provides kick-boards, pull-buoys and even flippers (which make butterfly much more enjoyable!). I find the water a bit too chlorine-y, but that I suppose is to be expected of a pool that caters primarily to hormonal teenagers.
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Graphic of the Day: David Hockney
What says ‘Swimming in LA’ better than a David Hockney swimming pool painting? (One of these days I will have to write a proper post about these…)
I miss summer!
Oh and new content coming soon, I promise!!
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BOOT CAMP H20 AT THE WESTSIDE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER (WJCC)
[Watch more segments here and here.]
Ric and I recently bit the bullet and signed up for twelve sessions of Intermediate/Advanced Boot Camp H2O at the Westside Jewish Community Center (WJCC). I’ll admit I was pretty nervous about it – I think working out is hard enough without someone barking orders at you while you do it – but it turned out to be a rewarding experience. Intense, but rewarding. I may even go back, if I can scrape the money together! Unlike the real army where they pay you to join, Boot Camp H2O costs a fair bit of coin, though for the workout you get it’s worth it. We found a discount deal on Daily Candy, and there always seems to be some type of discount offer posted on the Boot Camp H2O website.
You can find all the specific information on rates and schedules there too, but basically how it works is you buy a package of classes (4, 8, 12, 16 on up to 36 – the more you go, the cheaper it gets) and you have 8 weeks to complete them at any of the three locations and at any of the times classes are offered, though most people tend to pick a class or two and stick with them. So, for example, I might purchase the 16-course package for $340 and go twice a week, Tuesday and Friday at 10am. Note that the 8 week sessions are on a fixed calendar, so if you start late in the session, you have less time in which to use up your classes. You are responsible for reserving your spot in the class on the online scheduling system, but it is easy to use and through it you can cancel and schedule a make-up class as well. They really encourage you to let them know if you plan to miss, so that someone else can take your spot, as there are only 9-15 people per class.
Now, about the workout. This is some serious stuff that has forever changed the way I see swimming. Every day is different and the odds are good that you will not even be able to do everything that is asked of you, but Lana and Igor will hustle you into trying. We mostly took classes from Lana, who is a strict taskmaster, but her and Igor are really cool and approachable. (There are a few other instructors who help out too.) We would begin with lots of variations on crunches, planks and pushups that warm up the lungs and core. It’s not a bad idea to stretch and warm up a little on your own beforehand, because things start with a bang! After ten minutes of this, we would jump in the pool and swim 2-3 warm-up freestyle laps. At this point, it gets crazy. Maybe a set of “deck-ups” for one minute, then swim “running” to the shallow end, then hand weights for one minute, then “V sit skulling” back to the deep end, then treading water for one minute holding a 10-pound medicine ball, then sprint swim to the shallow end and flipper kick hard on the wall for one minute. Now repeat this cycle three times and that’s just the start. Brutal! To see what some of the exercises are like, check out the videos and say a prayer for that Gayle lady.
As you will see, there are lots of special techniques and lingo that have to be learned and some weird gear that has to be worn. All of it will kick your ass. We swam with small parachutes attached to our back, we used fins sometimes (you should bring your own), we used resistance bands, kickboards, ankle weights, you name it. As in the video, we hooked ourselves to a bungee cord and had to swim as hard and as fast as we could to touch the other side while someone else pulled it in the opposite direction. It doesn’t look like much, but its basically murder. Our classmates were all friendly and helped us get the hang of the weird stuff. Just accept that at first you will feel like a fish out of water, but you will adapt quickly. I’m sure the beginner class is probably more helpful in this regard, so maybe check that out first just to get a taste of it all.
The pool workout lasts about 40 minutes and obviously the focus is on building strength and stamina, but also on expanding lung capacity and increasing speed. There’s about 5 minutes of stretching at the end. Some days were more insane than others, and on those days I often felt tired all day, but some days I felt like a total superwoman! If you like swimming taken to the next level then I highly recommend this. I’m looking forward to returning to it someday soon…
Next time, Part 2: The WJCC pool itself!!
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SWIM, MEET: THE JOYS OF PUBLIC POOLS →
Today’s New York Times has a sweet little opinion piece on public pools by Doree Shafrir that is accompanied by a photo essay by Katie Orlinsky. It features a few recognizable SoCal locales, such as the Annenberg Community Beach House pool and the Banning pool, as well as images from various spots in New York.
With summer in full swing, there’s no bigger bang for your buck than the $2 LA pool admission fee. So go forth and swim, Angelenos!!
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WESTWOOD POOL
1350 SEPULVEDA BLVD. (map)
(South of Wilshire, part of the Westwood Recreational Complex)
LOS ANGELES, CA 90025
310.478.7019
http://www.laparks.org/dos/aquatic/facility/westwoodPool.htm
SUMMER LAP SWIM SCHEDULE (until 9/18, check website above for updates!)
MONDAY 9am - 12.45pm, 6 - 9pm
TUES-FRI 6.30am - 12.45pm, 6 - 9pm
SATURDAY 9am - 12.45pm
SUNDAY 10am - 12.45pm
YEAR-ROUND / INDOOR / HEATED (81-83 degrees)
25 meters x 25 yards (10 x 10 lanes), 3-16 ft. depth, diving board
COST: $2.50 / $2.00 with LA library card
$55 pass for 30 admissions
FREE FOR CHILDREN / SENIORS / ADAPTIVE
First off, apologies for the lack of active posting on my part - I know it’s summer and therefore crucial swim time, but it is also the only season when I am able to take off on an annual west-coast road trip! As you might imagine, I had some fantastic hot springs experiences that I intend to chronicle in the near future. But today I plan to discuss a horse of an entirely different color. That horse is the Westwood Pool - a place I’m sure you’ve driven past a million times but somehow never noticed as you trudged down Sepulveda in rush hour traffic. (That’s also because the entrance to the pool is on the “back” side of the building, adjacent to a huge park - FYI.)
Now, to continue the metaphor, I love horses, but this is no Lipizzaner stallion. It’s more like one of those horses attached to a carriage in Central Park - cute but haggard, seemingly made for a life of work. And work is probably all that you will want to do here. But before we get to that, let’s begin with the locker rooms.
As you can see, no frills here. It’s a little old, but I must confess, I’ve seen worse at other city pools. What’s different is the panopticon shape of the changing stalls - the attendant (who works on the safety-pin system) can see everything that is going on, as can everyone else – no curtains, my ladies! The showers are especially antiquated, but in a way that actually works out well, since they are faucet and not push-button. There were also several signs saying “don’t do this or that”, including a number that indicated no shaving or razors were allowed. I shuddered briefly as I imagined the situation that had prompted such a forceful display of concern…
But anyway, on to the pool itself! It’s pretty much a glorified garage: built in 1998, it’s a corrugated roof on a box with a few sets of bleachers. And yet, it gets the job done. My initial reason for coming here was that it has a wide range of lap swim hours, until 9pm(!) on weekdays, which is really nice in the winter. There are pull buoys and kickboards too. Of course, as a year-round city pool, a lot of other stuff is happening here at the same time: swim lessons, aqua jogging and, most importantly, SCAQ masters swim at 5.30am, 12pm and 7pm. What this means is that it is BUSY (though more in the fall/winter than in the summer). I’ve heard that the AM session is (overly) plentiful with bodies and I know that at night you can expect 3-4 people per narrow-ish lane by 7.30pm. In other words, if this is where you choose to swim, either out of convenience or necessity, push through your work-out, save the full-blown shower for home, and blast the eff outta there! I recommend arriving right at 6pm if you want an optimal experience. Good luck!
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