For a primer on what a scary place one of the West Coast's most popular tourist destinations was 40 years ago, one could do far worse than to check out Stacy Peralta's 2001 skateboard documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys."
There, with the menacing arpeggios of Led Zeppelin's "Achilles Last Stand" as a soundtrack, Santa Monica in the area of its namesake pier is revealed in the mid-1970s to have been a decrepit, neglected beach community, marked by vagrants in the streets, piles of trash on the beach and, most illustriously, the remnants of the rusting and shuttered Pacific Ocean Park Amusement Pier, its jagged wooden pylons sticking out of the water.
So, when our recent visit to the area included sipping wine from a balcony at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel overlooking a pink sunset and the pier's massive lit-up Ferris wheel while my kids watched "SpongeBob SquarePants" on a flatscreen from the bathtub, let's just say we got a whole new perspective on the area.
Such is the power of the staycation, a term coined during the past decade to describe what happens when cash-strapped folks skip the plane flight in favor of exploring their hometowns on their days off. It's an idea that continues to be attractive in the face of surging airfares, the prospect of a thinning TSA staff at airports and, of course, two bored kids two hours from landing and the laptop's battery already depleted.
And while the idea of springing for a night or two at a local hotel might seem frivolous, there's something to be said for avoiding the "clock strikes 12, carriage turns into a pumpkin" feeling that always hits when the kids wear down and we have to head home.
In this case, the locale was Santa Monica, a 19.5-mile trek from our home that can make for a day's travel if you leave the house at the wrong time.
Often derided as "The People's Republic" for its city government's unabashedly liberal leanings, the beachside community of 90,000 has long grappled with two diametrically opposed forces: the effort to keep its artistic, boho-beach cred (rent control has enabled some longtime residents to pay pennies on the dollar relative to market rents because of grandfathered rental agreements) and the attempt to accommodate ambitious investors looking to capitalize on its proximity to both the coast and so-called "Silicon Beach" tech companies like Google, Yahoo and Electronic Arts, which have set up shop nearby.
For our purposes, Santa Monica served as a great jumping-off point to explore the coast. In our case, that meant about a five-minute drive (though quite a bit longer to find parking) to Venice, its slightly funky canals and its Ocean Front Walk. This is the place where the phrase "turban-wearing, roller-skating guitar player" (his name is Harry Perry, for the record) doesn't raise an eyebrow.
A 15-minute drive north on Pacific Coast Highway took this wannabe-surfer to Topanga Beach, unofficially the only off-leash dog beach in Los Angeles County and a decently friendly place to paddle out if the surf is small (if it's big, locals can be less than hospitable).
As for Santa Monica, the area just south of the pier offers as good a microcosm as any for the community's Jekyll-and-Hyde vibe, and it provided enough entertainment and activity for a stay far longer than the one we were allotted.
For every relatively posh place like the high-end Italian restaurant Capo or the poolside Cameo Bar at the Viceroy Santa Monica, there was a relatively scruffy counterpart, like the original Hot Dog on a Stick and Big Dean's Oceanfront Cafe at Muscle Beach or the iconic Chez Jay on Ocean Avenue.
And lest one be fooled by the gentle breezes and the familial atmosphere of the pier's Pacific Park amusement park, there's always the warbling of an amateur singer at a microphone trying to tackle Celine Dion (not literally, of course) or a muscle-bound graybeard looking to pick a fight with a newbie near the exercise equipment. Such unintentional amusements will liven things up a little more than necessary.
Our accommodations ensured that things were plenty genteel once we were indoors, though. When it opened in 1989, the 342-room Loews Santa Monica Beach, where guests are greeted by a businessman-cum-surfer statue, became the first of about a half-dozen larger hotels to debut just south of the pier within a dozen-year stretch.
The hotel, which got a $7 million face-lift in 2010 and is in the midst of a $4.5 million facade renovation, struck a luxury-beachy balance with its stylish lobby filled with tunes from the likes of Crosby, Stills and Nash and the Police. Its reception desk is backed by seven giant contiguous flatscreens showing -- what else? -- the beach.
Requests ranging from a mini-fridge to toothpaste were granted happily and pretty much immediately, while his-and-hers kites and a TV tuned to the Disney Channel upon our arrival ensured that the kids got the royal treatment, as well.
All of which created a festive weekend capped off by the completion of the Los Angeles Marathon a short three blocks away, with its ensuing parade of tired-but-triumphant competitors.
While those 24,000 or so runners were undoubtedly relieved that their crosstown voyage had ended, we begged to differ.
Contact Danny King at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @dktravelweekly.