Los Angeles Skate Spots, Grouped by Cluster
City Guides ·
The 508 Los Angeles spots on SkateApp sorted into nine real geographic clusters, with measured distances so you know what you can skate in one session.
Forty-three of the 508 Los Angeles spots we have mapped sit within a 0.6-mile radius of the Heath Hydrant on South Olive Street. No other point in Los Angeles comes close to that density. Meanwhile the full set of coordinates spans 42 miles north to south and 29 miles east to west. A ranked top-10 for a city that shape tells you nothing useful, because the entries would be an hour apart in traffic.
So we clustered the raw latitude and longitude instead. Nine groups fell out, and because two of them are both in the Valley they share a section below. For each one: what it holds, and which spots inside it are close enough to walk between.
Downtown, Little Tokyo and USC: 125 spots
The biggest cluster, and the tightest: half its spots sit within 1.1 miles of the centre. The Financial District core is a single walk. Library Gap, Arco Rails, City National Plaza, Macys and the Public Library belong to a 13-spot group whose furthest two points are 0.36 miles apart.
Push 1,390 feet uphill and you hit the next group: Downtown Triple Set, the Heath Hydrant, MOCA 20 stairs rail and Pershing Square, all inside 0.35 miles of each other.
LA Brick Volcanos anchors Little Tokyo, 0.85 miles northeast of Library Gap and 1,200 feet from four smaller spots. South of the freeway, Convention Center and Staples Center sit 740 feet apart. USC Ledges is the outlier at 2.4 miles south, though Bing Theatre is 980 feet from it on the same campus. Six of the 30 parks we list in Los Angeles are in this cluster, including Hollenbeck Skatepark out in Boyle Heights.
Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire and Hollywood: 102 spots
Wilshire Boulevard does most of the work. Wilshire Rails and Saint Basil Church are 410 feet apart, part of a seven-spot run along Wilshire that also takes in Normandie Station and measures about 1,000 feet end to end. JKwon is 1,090 feet further west. Those two carry 198 photos between them, and no other pair of spots this close together anywhere in Los Angeles comes near that.
Los Angeles High School sits 1.5 miles from JKwon. Hollywood High School is 3.3 miles north of Wilshire Rails, close enough to pair only if you drive, and 1,300 feet from Blessed Sacrament Church.
The Fairfax block is worth its own stop. Supreme Los Angeles, Rip N Dip, Diamond Supply Co and HUF Los Angeles are strung along 125 feet of North Fairfax, with Fairfax High School a quarter mile up the street. Twelve of the 27 shops we have in Los Angeles are in this cluster.
West LA, Westwood and Century City: 63 spots
West LA Courthouse has 99 photos, the most on the Westside. Stoner Skate Plaza is 0.48 miles away and is the only park in this entire cluster. University High School is 0.61 miles from the courthouse, with World Savings 1,620 feet from that. Those four are one long afternoon on foot.
Century City is a separate pocket: Avenue of the Stars, Hubba and Century Park among six spots inside 0.35 miles, with Avenue of the Stars and Hubba only 270 feet apart. On the UCLA campus, Kirchart rail and UCLA gaps are 330 feet apart.
The northern edge thins out fast. Kenter Canyon Elementary School and Paul Revere Middle School are 1.1 miles apart up in the canyons and have almost nothing else near them. This cluster has no skate shops at all.
Venice, Mar Vista and Westchester: 34 spots
Venice Skatepark and The Pit share an address and are 90 feet apart. Add Venice Originals and Natas Hydrant and you have five spots inside 1,040 feet of beachfront. Main Street Hip is 0.71 miles north with St Clement School nearby.
Inland, Venice High School is 2 miles from the skatepark, 0.29 miles from Walgrove Elementary and 0.62 miles from Mar Vista Ranch Market. Westchester Skate Plaza and Westchester bump (rip) sit 110 feet apart at 7200 West Manchester, but that is 4 miles from Venice and reads as its own stop. The cluster centre is 4.6 miles from the Westside centre, so combining the two in a day is realistic.
Northeast LA, Echo Park to Highland Park: 55 spots
Baxter Ledge and Elysian Heights Elementary are 620 feet apart on Baxter Street, with Elysian Park 0.78 miles on. Highland Park holds the tightest set: Burbank 16, Burbank Middle School 7flat2 and Garvanza Skatepark are four spots inside 940 feet, and Franklin High School is 0.92 miles from them.
Spread further and you get York Bump, Occidental College, Nightingale Middle School and Huntington Drive High School. Four parks here, including Lincoln Park Skatepark, and zero shops. The centre is 4 miles from downtown, which makes this the easiest cluster to bolt onto a downtown day.
The San Fernando Valley: 78 spots
Two clusters, not one, and their centres are 8.5 miles apart over the hill from everything else. The eastern half runs from Sun Valley to Sylmar: Pink Motel has 95 photos and is listed private, Van Owen Bump is 3.4 miles south of it, and Sylmar High School 5.3 miles north. Also here: Sepulveda Dam, Los Angeles Valley College, Van Nuys Courthouse 1.6 miles from the college, and six parks including Hansen Dam Skatepark and North Hollywood Skate Plaza.
The western half is more scattered still. Frost Middle School kinked rail and Frost Middle School are 270 feet apart in Granada Hills, but Tarzana Park is 8.6 miles south of them, and El Camino Real Charter High School another 5.3 miles west of Tarzana Park. Only the four spots around CSU Northridge, inside 1,100 feet, form anything walkable. Half of this cluster's spots are more than 3.5 miles from its own centre. Drive, or don't bother.
San Pedro and the Harbor: 32 spots
The most isolated cluster on the map: 21 miles from downtown and 36 miles from the west Valley, the largest gap between any two clusters in Los Angeles. It still has more mapped spots than South LA does.
Pedro Park is the anchor, with Peck Park 0.94 miles away and Bandini Elementary School 0.71 miles. Dana Middle School and San Pedro High School are 950 feet apart, 1.7 miles from Pedro Park. Downtown San Pedro holds four more inside 1,350 feet. Further out sit Korean Friendship Bell and the Angels Gate Bunkers, one of only six DIY spots we list city-wide. Ambassador Skate Plaza is over in Wilmington, 0.33 miles from Wilmington Waterfront Park. No shops in the cluster.
South LA: 19 spots
We have 19 spots mapped across South LA and that is almost certainly an undercount. Half of them are more than 2.7 miles from the cluster centre, and Horace Mann Junior High School, the most photographed of the group with 11, has nothing else within 1.2 miles. Only two walkable pairs exist in the whole cluster: Evelyn L Dayman Auditorium and Locke High School, 840 feet apart in Watts, and Monitor Skatepark with the hydrant on East Imperial Highway, 1,100 feet apart.
The rest is worth knowing anyway: Bethune Middle School, Diego Rivera Learning Complex, Crenshaw High School, WLCAC Skatepark, and Neighbors Skateshop on Degnan. If you skate this part of the city, our map has more room to grow here than anywhere else on this list.
Picking a base
Downtown is the only cluster where a full day on foot makes sense, and it is 4 miles from Northeast LA and 4.6 miles from Koreatown, so it also travels well. Base on the Westside if you want the courthouse-to-Uni-High walk plus a short drive to Venice. Treat the west Valley and San Pedro as their own trips. They sit in opposite directions but at almost identical range, both about 21 miles from downtown, with 36 miles and the whole basin between them.
One caveat on the data. Every spot above is named and 467 of our 508 have photos, but none of them carry obstacle tags yet, so we cannot tell you from the data what is a rail and what is a bank. Open the spot page and look at the photos before you commit to a drive across the county.