What to do in Los Angeles if you’re here on business (2025)

Photo: Jordan Michelman

4222 Vineland Street, North Hollywood, (818) 980-8000

The Valley isn’t just one place, either — it’s a collection of unique cities and subcultures that occupy the northern suburbs of Los Angeles. It’s the land of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, immortalized in the music of Tom Petty and Frank Zappa. If you’re in the Southlands to attend events in and around the television and film industry, or to check out the Universal Studios theme park complex, you’ll save time and money by staying nearby.

The Garland is your home port for valley adventures. This place manages the neat trick of being eminently modern and utilitarian: you can come here to lounge by the pool, enjoy the gardens, and hang out in crowded bars and restaurants, or you can use this place as a place to drop your bags among all the other things you’re in town to do. There’s an impressively beautiful outdoor pool (with a huge fireplace), guided tours of the neighborhood (the Brady Bunch house is nearby), and ample parking. The whole thing has a Spanish colonial feel with flashes of 70s tiki. This place gets double points if you’re traveling with your family, kids love Garland.

Photo: Jordan Michelman

8221 Sunset Blvd., (323) 656-1010

I don’t know why you’re here in town, or what personally qualifies as a business trip. The hotels I’ve recommended so far are all puffy, but I’ve included them first and foremost for reasons of practicality and geography. That’s not why you stay in the chateau. You come here instead for the legend, the history, the infamy and the iconic status of it all: here, where Duke Ellington composed “Swingin’ Suites,” where Stephen Stills wrote “For What It’s Worth” (“Whoa, wait, what’s that sound”), where Jim Morrison swung from the chandeliers, where Dominic Dunne lived while reporting on the OJ Simpson trial for Vanity gallery. God only knows what happens in these elevators, not to mention the guest rooms, which are set out like apartments, and come immersed in a spectral, metaphysical atmosphere haunted by the California sunshine.

You He can Work here; A lot of amazing work has happened here! Nicholas Ray and James Dean trained Rebellion without a cause here! Whatever your culinary project may be—a novel, a screenplay, a symphony, or just a humble presentation—I don’t think there’s a concept in the world that couldn’t be improved by injecting a little Chateau mystique into its DNA. You will see celebrities. You will find quiet moments to yourself among the ghosts; You’ll find yourself quietly thinking, alone in your room, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m really here!” There is no other hotel in the world even remotely similar to it.

Where to work

Los Angeles is an independent freelance hub, and the kind of place where working on your script (or whatever) from a bar or coffee shop has gained a kind of legendary status. The city has a lot to offer in the form of traditional coworking spaces, private clubs, and laptop parks. Here are some of my favorites.

360 AH, Second Street, Eighth Floor, (213) 433-2400

Centrl’s chain of coworking spaces is well represented throughout Los Angeles, with locations in Midtown and Marina del Rey, and two locations in the South Bay city of El Segundo, also known as “Silicon Beach” (at least one part of the broader massif known by that moniker). Each location has its own way of channeling the “creative campus” vibe, offering a variety of services from suites and meeting rooms to day offices, open co-working spaces, and virtual office options that allow for mail and package delivery. Centrl Office does what it says it says – that’s the classic approach to the co-working space model, and sometimes that’s exactly what you need, with supersonic Wi-Fi, printers, kitchens and lounges.

1370 AD. St Andrews Place, (323) 381-5996

Part co-working space, part event venue, The Preserve feels uniquely Los Angeles. A truly co-working campus, the facility includes over 6,000 trees and plants, a very impressive series of indoor and outdoor workspaces, a library, cottages, studio offices and meeting rooms, as well as an on-site café and soundproof phone rooms. The Wi-Fi speed here is 1 Gbps; There is valet parking, nursing rooms, wellness classes, and Corian offices. People run entire businesses out of this facility, and also host weddings. The building, which underwent a multi-million dollar, award-winning renovation in late 2010, was originally designed by Paul Revere Williams, a Los Angeles architecture and design patron whose other works include the iconic LAX spaceship tower and the Beverly Hills Hotel. If you’re looking for an LA experience to meet your coworking needs — perhaps with the intention of hunkering down for a few days, to really take in the totality of what’s going on here — then Preserve is the place for you.

5971 West Third Street, (323) 933-2112

Like the Sanctuary, Rita’s home here could only be in Los Angeles, but the two spaces couldn’t feel more different. Rita’s is located inside a 1927 Spanish Colonial building, originally built to design props and costumes for the Hollywood film studio industry. The building’s unique history goes back to the roots of coworking as a creative pursuit. There are monthly membership options, daily rates, and a real focus on content production, with dedicated rooms for self-tape auditions and podcast recording, as well as larger meeting and presentation rooms. Here you’ll find high-speed Wi-Fi and the amenities required in a business center, but they’re set within a space that feels more like classic Hollywood Boulevard than Sand Hill Road. Every great city has a coworking space that also serves as a hub for people monitoring and networking, and I think this is the case in Los Angeles.

4334 Sunset Blvd., (213) 200-0969

I love working in Los Angeles cafes, and Dinosaur is one of my favorite things about this particular endeavor. Located on the border between Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and East Hollywood, this place is a creative laptop collection of people whose names you’ve seen in the writer credits at the end of various movies and TV shows — or those who would like to one day become so. The coffee comes from Woodcat Coffee, whose flagship store is on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, and the store is bright and filled with good California light. It’s just feel Get creative here – get work done in the front yard, or listen to the interesting conversations around you. I visit almost every time I’m in Los Angeles.

Where do you eat?

How do I choose 10 places to eat in Los Angeles? How can anyone pick 20, 50, or 101 like they do every year in the LA Times Food? This section’s weekly (daily!) reports on food around Los Angeles should be something you start exploring now, in the weeks leading up to your trip, so you stay on top of the most interesting new things happening around the area. For me, these are 10 restaurants that I have personally visited and enjoyed, ranging in price, location and experience. They are not necessarily 10 favorite Los Angeles restaurants, but they’re all places I would gladly return to, and in a city completely spoiled for choice, that’s saying something.

2736 W Sunset Blvd., (213) 913-6850

Avish Naran has broken some hitherto unknown atoms when he opens Biga Palace in 2022. I guess it’s an Indian sports bar? But it’s also a kind of common Italian sauce, a cocktail destination that operates more or less entirely in its own creative language, a truly swell place to watch the Lakers lose their way through the dregs of the LeBron James executive-production era, and so on. There are green chili pickle masala wings, curry korma pizza, onion rings dosa (request required) and plenty of beers from near and far to enjoy it all. Don’t miss ordering a cocktail here – this is one of the most innovative cocktail programs in the city, which is saying something, because nothing is really quiet at Pijja Palace. Go here with a large group, or sneak into the bar alone. I wish it was three times the size, but I also don’t want to change anything about it at all.