If many great cities have their cinematic love letters and satires, Los Angeles has the 1991 romantic comedy 鈥淟.A. Story.鈥 A moment in that film wanders to mind: Steve Martin emerges from his home, walks purposefully to his car, drives for about two seconds to his neighbour鈥檚 house and gets out. The streetscape is lavished in sunshine and decorated with palm trees, but the pedestrians are as rare a sighting as snowflakes or, say, bread baskets.
The punchline is as clear as a SoCal day: This is not a place you want to be walking or, worse, be seen walking. Locals do their walking in the privacy of the Hollywood Hills, not blithely on city streets.
Except if you head west of Los Angeles to . In this city, which sprouted into a seaside resort town in the early 20th century, everyone is walking, running, lunging, box jumping, kettlebell swinging, slack lining and downward dogging, seemingly at all times of day. If Southern California has long been a toes-in-the-sand plein air laboratory for healthy living, exercise trends and fad diets, Santa Monica has emerged as the birthplace of wellness. While Google is based in Silicon Valley, Gwyneth Paltrow鈥檚 Goop empire is headquartered in Santa Monica.
As soon as I check into the , its interiors courtesy of design darling Kelly Wearstler, I can almost feel my adrenal system taking to a lounger and ordering a mocktail. The lobby spills into the living-room-like Palma restaurant, where guests mindfully sip matcha amid an easeful expanse of nubby textiles, potted palms and a sun-bleached palette of creams and tans.
Every detail of the Santa Monica Proper Hotel is a valentine to the coastal setting.
The IngallsEvery detail, divined to downregulate your nervous system, is a valentine to the coastal setting: A wooden reception desk is carved with seashell-like striations; oak floors are patterned after an open beach umbrella; and in the spacious guest rooms, radial upholstered headboards evoke Pacific sunsets.
I pedal my way to the actual beach with Erik Hines, my guide from . Santa Monica is eminently bikeable, it turns out. Last year, while unveiling a new network of curb-protected bike lanes and Dutch-style intersections, then-Mayor Gleam Davis declared, 鈥淲atch out, Amsterdam! We鈥檙e going to be the bike capital of the world!鈥 But as we wheel through the grand boulevards fringed with towering palm trees, this doesn鈥檛 feel like Northern Europe. 鈥淪anta Monica is like Beverly Hills by the beach,鈥 Hines says, as we roll along Ocean Avenue.
Beverly Hills, with its gated mansions and manicured hedges, is famously grandstanding in its wealth, all artifice and gilded flash. But Santa Monica (also egregiously expensive, let鈥檚 be honest) feels more intimate, cosier and accessible, even if it isn鈥檛. 鈥淚n Beverly Hills, it鈥檚 鈥楧o I belong here?鈥 and in Santa Monica,鈥 Hines says, breathing out, 鈥渋t鈥檚 鈥業 belong here.鈥 鈥 Quite frankly, so do I.
Santa Monica is eminently bikeable, from the boardwalk to the new curb-protected bike lanes.
AboutImagesI think of an Instagram meme that resonated: 鈥淢y toxic trait is that every time I travel somewhere, I think I should move there.鈥 Santa Monica鈥檚 toxic trait is that it convinces you that you should, and somehow could, move there.
If I did live here, I鈥檇 surely spend a great deal of time at , which stretches to spectacular effect atop sandstone bluffs. Here, locals in weighted vests speedwalk the path, past views of sea, mountain and sky. Even the Palisades Park squirrel community strikes me as especially petite and tight-bodied, as if they, like everyone else, are tracking macros, have functional-medicine doctors on speed dial and belong to beach volleyball leagues. The city is the birthplace of beach volleyball as a two-person sport; the first permanent nets were installed in Santa Monica Beach in the 1920s.
Santa Monica Beach is also home to the , where exceedingly fit people swing on travelling rings with the agility of circus performers or vervet monkeys. One man, Mr. Hong, after several turns at the rings, tells me he comes nearly every day. He鈥檚 86 years old, he tells me twice (because I don鈥檛 believe him the first time) 鈥 a fact that seems somehow only believable in Santa Monica. 鈥淚t鈥檚 all about the PMA!鈥 Hines remarks, gazing at the surf. I have no idea what he鈥檚 talking about. 鈥淧ositive mental attitude!鈥 he chimes.
I didn鈥檛 come to Santa Monica with a wellness agenda. But all roads 鈥 and bike paths and travelling rings, etc. 鈥 lead to wellness here. Even my Uber drivers tell me about their plant-based diets, and one cheerfully shares the Netflix documentary (鈥淔orks Over Knives鈥) that changed his life. I wander streets embroidered with crystal shops, organic teeth-whitening bars, and independent bookstores where literary categories are not, say, 鈥減arenting鈥 but 鈥渕aternal malaise.鈥
Compared to gilded Beverly Hills, Santa Monica feels cozier and more accessible.
debbalbaSanta Monica tourism blogs suggest cultural visits to the or the St. Monica Catholic Church. But I resolve to pilgrimage to another house of worship: the cult grocer , a Californian gastronomical Vatican, where instead of altars and pews and bastioned walls, there are aisles of adaptogenic chocolates and liposomal supplements and celebrity-collab status smoothies.
Grain-free crowds dressed in Alo yoga wear, the kinds of people who might have complicated feelings about seed oil, gather around the 鈥渢onic bar,鈥 gazing at the smoothie menu (Santa Monica鈥檚 version of religious scripture) in a kind of hushed, devotional wonderment, the way others might behold the Sistine Chapel. I order the $22 strawberry probiotic smoothie and it is a creamy, sweet, tart delight.
I鈥檒l admit that when I arrived in Santa Monica, my mood and morale were not in peak form. But after about a day of sipping the sunshine, the smoothies and the PMA, my early-winter mal de vivre begins to lift, like the fog off the Santa Monica Mountains.
I take my improved mood to the mall 鈥 in this case, the adorable red-clapboard . Gwyneth Paltrow, who grew up traipsing around the mart, opened Goop鈥檚 first stand-alone store here in 2017. I pop in and a radiant, cashmere-swathed store clerk tempts me into buying a $300 skin balm made from wild-foraged Sicilian olives, because all of this wellness can rock a person鈥檚 better judgment.
Instead, I enjoy a visit to the Proper hotel鈥檚 Recovery Suite, outfitted with a private outdoor sauna and ice bath. I cold-plunge and detoxify and surf a dopamine high. But all of this was weeks ago now, these feel-good wellness roads now relegated to memory lane. I鈥檓 still in recovery.
Olivia Stren travelled as a guest of and Santa Monica Travel & Tourism, which did not review or approve this article.
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