weekends downtown

Thursday, July 15, 2004, at 09:13AM

By Eric Richardson

Yesterday there was a post on blogging.la asking the oft heard question:

So, blogging.la, what would you say is "The" Los Angeles attraction that must not be missed?

In the comments be sure to look for the suggestions of Will Campbell. His day plan sounds tiring, but amazing.

But then you get a couple comments by "Mike", derriding other suggestions in favor of just going surfing (not bad in and of itself, but in his context a bad comment). One of his comments includes

Have you been downtown on a weekend? Did you like sharing your lunch with the 20 homeless guys sitting next to you?

Funny thing about that... One of the most surprising things to me about moving downtown was that downtown on a weekend is absolutely packed. I live on Spring, between 6th and 7th. One block west is Broadway, where Will suggests seeing the old theaters. Broadway these days is home to a huge range of shops selling cheap clothing, electronics, basically anything you can imagine. And on the weekends people come there in droves. D4 and I walked up the street to Grand Central Market this past Saturday, and the sidwalks were so full it was hard to get around.

Yeah, you'll definitely see the homeless people around there at night once the shops close, but during the day you're going to have a tough time picking them out from the mass of other people milling about.