The Westside as seen looking north from Loyola Marymount University . The 405 Freeway is invisible on the far left side of the picture, and the large buildings in the distance are mostly along Wilshire Boulevard in the Westwood district. The tall buildings on the right side of the picture are in the Century City district. The Santa Monica Mountains are to the north. Many of the major educational, retail, cultural, and recreational attractions of Greater Los Angeles are located in the area, as is a large portion of the entertainment industry. Century City is the major business hub of the Westside, comprising many of the major companies and agencies making up what is known as the film industry today. In fact, more of Hollywood's deals get done on the Westside today than in the actual city of Hollywood itself. The Westside rivals downtown Los Angeles for the number of people commuting to it from other areas, particularly the San Fernando Valley to the north and the South Bay to the south.
The Westside's traffic congestion is legendary. Although once served by the Pacific Electric Railroad's streetcars, it was the first region of Los Angeles to be developed largely around the automobile, and is notorious for its lack of significant public transportation. (Its residents are also noted for their NIMBY attitude toward transportation projects--q.v.) The traffic-choked Santa Monica and San Diego freeways are the primary transportation corridors in the region, and much of the area's commercial development is along them. The proposed Pacific Coast, Beverly Hills, and Laurel Canyon freeways undoubtedly would have sped up the region's traffic flow, but went unbuilt in the face of massive community opposition; unfortunately, a great deal of high-density development took place in anticipation of these roadways' construction, resulting in significant congestion on the area's surface streets. In particular, getting to Hollywood from the West Side is notoriously difficult, with all major east-west streets between the regions jammed during virtually all waking hours.
Cultural perceptions
The Westside is generally thought of as the white part of the city of Los Angeles, in contrast to the Latino-dominated East Side, the Latino and Asian areas such as Pico-Union and Koreatown in and around downtown, and the black and Latino neighborhoods of South Central. Despite the two areas' proximity, most Westsiders rarely cross the Santa Monica Freeway into South Central,
or at least no farther East or South than USC and the Coliseum. In fact, a popular longstanding phrase amongst snooty natives is "Life ends east of Sepulveda."
Area code 310 covers most of West Los Angeles and is commonly synonymous with it: young people often refer to the region as "the 310." Ironically, area code 310 also covers some of the poorest communities in the Los Angeles area, such as Gardena and Compton.
The "Westside" was often mentioned in West Coast rap and gangsta rap music, especially during the mid-to-late 1990s.
West Side communities
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