What to Do in LA if You’re Here for Business (2025)

Photography: Jordan Michelman

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

“The Valley” isn’t just one place, either: a collection of unique towns and subcultures that occupy the environs north of Los Angeles proper, it’s the land of the films of Paul Thomas Anderson, immortalized in the music of Tom Petty and Frank Zappa. If you’re in the Southlands for events in and around the television and film industry, or to visit the Universal Studios theme park complex, you’ll save time and money by staying nearby.

The Garland is your home base for valley adventure. This place has the advantage of being both hip and eminently utilitarian: you can come here to relax by the pool, admire the gardens, and wander around the lively bars and restaurants, or you can use this place as a place to drop off your bags in between all the other things you’re in town to do. There’s an impressively beautiful outdoor pool (with a huge fireplace), neighborhood tours (the Brady Bunch house is nearby), and ample parking. It’s all got a Spanish colonial feel with touches of 1970s tiki. This place gets double points if you’re traveling with the family: the kids love the Garland.

Photography: Jordan Michelman

8221 Sunset Boulevard, (323) 656-1010

I don’t know why you’re here in town, or what you personally consider a business trip. The hotels I’ve recommended so far are all superb, but I’ve included them primarily for practical and geographic reasons. That’s not why you stay at the Castle. Instead, you come here for the myth and the history, the infamy and the iconic status of it all: here, where Duke Ellington wrote “Swingin’ Suites,” where Stephen Stills wrote “For What It’s Worth,” where Jim Morrison swung from the ages, where Dominic Dunne lived while reporting on the OJ Simpson trial for Vanity Fair. God only knows what happens in those elevators, not to mention the guest rooms, furnished more like apartments and bathed in a ghostly, haunted metaphysical atmosphere, baked under the Californian sun.

You can work here; so much amazing work has been done here! Nicholas Ray and James Dean rehearsed Rebel without a cause here! Whatever project you’re planning – a novel, a screenplay, a symphony or just a humble pitch deck – I don’t think there’s a concept in the world that couldn’t be improved by injecting a little Castle mystique into its DNA. You will see celebrities; you will find quiet moments for yourself among the ghosts; you’ll find yourself quietly thinking, alone in your room: “Holy shit, I can’t believe I’m actually here!” There is no other hotel in the world that compares to this one.

Where to work

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

360 E. 2nd Street, 8th Floor, (213) 433-2400

Coworking space chain Centrl Office is well-represented across Los Angeles, with locations in Downtown and Marina Del Ray, and two locations in the South Bay city of El Segundo, aka “Silicon Beach” (at least part of the broader massif known by that moniker). Each location has its own way of drawing on the “creative campus” vibe, offering a diverse range of services from suites and meeting rooms to day offices, walk-in coworking spaces and virtual office options enabling mail and package delivery. Centrl Office does what it says: it’s a classic take on the coworking space model, and sometimes it’s exactly what you need, with supersonic Wi-Fi, printers, kitchens, and lounges.

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

Both a coworking space and event venue, the Preserve offers a unique feeling in Los Angeles. A true campus version of coworking, the property has more than 6,000 trees and plants, a very cool series of indoor/outdoor workspaces, a library, bungalows, studio offices and meeting rooms, as well as an on-site café and soundproof telephone rooms. The Wi-Fi here is 1 GB per second; there is valet parking, nursing rooms, wellness classes and Corian offices; people run entire businesses out of these facilities and also host weddings. The building, which underwent an award-winning, multimillion-dollar renovation in the late 2010s, was originally designed by Paul Revere Williams, a patron saint of Los Angeles architecture and design whose other works include the iconic LAX Spaceship Tower and the Beverly Hills Hotel. If you’re looking for a Los Angeles experience for your coworking needs – perhaps with the intention of basing yourself there for several days, to truly absorb the entirety of what’s going on here – the Reserve is for you.

5971 W. 3rd Street, (323) 933-2112

Like the Reserve, the Rita House could only be here in Los Angeles, but the two spaces couldn’t be more different. Rita is located inside a 1927 Spanish Colonial building, originally built to design props and costumes for the Hollywood movie studio industry. The building’s unique history dates 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-recording auditions and podcast recording, as well as larger meeting and screening rooms. You’ll find the requisite high-speed Wi-Fi and business center amenities here, but it’s in a space that feels more like classic Hollywood Boulevard than Sand Hill Road. Every major city has a coworking space that doubles as a people-watching and networking hub, and in Los Angeles, I think it’s here.

4334 Sunset Boulevard, (213) 200-0969

I love working in LA coffee shops and Dinosaur is one of my favorites for this particular activity. Located on the border between Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and East Hollywood, this place is a creative melee of people whose names you’ve seen in the writers’ credits at the end of various movies and TV shows — or those who would love to be there one day. The coffee comes from Woodcat Coffee, whose flagship store is on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, and the store is bright and full of that good California light. It’s just feels creative here: fool around on the front patio or listen to the interesting conversations all around you. I visit almost every time I’m in Los Angeles.

Where to eat

How do I choose 10 places to eat in Los Angeles? How could anyone choose 20, 50 or 101 like they do every year at LA Times Food? This section’s weekly (daily!) reports on food in Los Angeles should be something you start looking for now, in the weeks leading up to your trip, to stay on top of the coolest things happening in the area. For me, these are 10 restaurants that I have personally visited and enjoyed, running the gamut in price, location, and experience. It’s not even necessarily my 10th birthday favorite Los Angeles restaurants, but these are all places I would happily return to, and in a city where you’re so spoiled for choice, that’s saying something.

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

Avish Naran broke through a previously unknown atom when he opened Pijja Palace in 2022. I guess it’s an Indian sports bar? But it’s also a sort of red-sauce Italian restaurant, a cocktail destination working more or less entirely within its own creative language, a truly great place to watch the Lakers lose themselves in the dregs of the LeBron-James executive producer era, and so on. There are green chilli masala pickle wings, korma curry pizza and dosa onion rings (a mandatory order) and plenty of beer from here and abroad to enjoy. Be sure to order a cocktail here, it’s quietly one of the most inventive cocktail programs in the city, which is saying something, because nothing is exactly quiet at Pijja Palace. Go with a big group or sneak into the bar solo. I wish it was three times bigger, but I don’t want to change anything at all.