In its own contradictory ways, Griffith Park is a reflection of Los Angeles itself. The park gets more annual visitors than Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, and millions of people have seen the park in films and television, but you’ll still find long-time Los Angeles residents who have no idea where it is, what’s in it, or how to get there. Griffith Park is both an urban oasis and an untamed wilderness, a manicured garden and smoldering chaparral slope. It is a home for hikers, stargazers, cyclists, golfers, equestrians, train enthusiasts, Shakespearean actors, drum circles, museum patrons, kayakers, dog walkers, people walkers, environmentalists, developers, gardeners, charlatans, anarchic trail-runners, secret handshake practitioners, ghost hunters, eloteros, zookeepers, dreamers, and everyone in between.

Its best-known building—on a park cliff above Hollywood Boulevard, where it’s often easier to see a star on a sidewalk than in the night sky—is the nation’s third-oldest planetarium, which has been educating the public about our place in the cosmos for generations. Near the park’s northern and eastern boundaries runs the Los Angeles River, once this famously drought-prone city’s primary source of water. This river was first feared, then despised, then dammed and forced into a concrete tomb—only to be loved again and, in the future, set free.

Even the park’s namesake donor, Griffith J. Griffith, who gave more than 3,000 acres in 1896, is himself a story of contradictions, wrapped in scandal and philanthropy, attempted murder and successful generosity, regressive ideas about people and progressive ideas about parks.

The park’s 70-mile network of trails can be explored on foot, wheel, or hoof. As a journalist and hiker, I’ve produced a guidebook of 30-plus Griffith Park hikes, with photos I took myself. I hope you have as much fun discovering the park as I continue to do.

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“Cloud watching” is not just a data point for researchers like myself, it’s also a critical moment for Marlon, who had recently been “on vacation” (a local euphemism for being in prison) and had come to the park to gather his thoughts. Something about listening to the wind rustle tree leaves and staring at the clouds drew him to the park.

Many civic leaders and organizations are working to make more parks and community gardens in South Los Angeles, but in my sociological research, I’m trying to figure what actually brings people to these places. How do people use these sites to create a sense of place and belonging? What are some of the social benefits?

Los Angeles is said to be the most park-poor big city in the nation. But in reality, there is lots of beautiful open park space here—it’s just located far away from the neighborhoods where it’s needed most. Griffith Park, with over 4,000 acres of natural wilderness areas, hiking trails, shady picnic areas, and recreational facilities, remains distant from the low-income urban neighborhoods where most African Americans and Latinos live. The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is even more distantly located.

Of particular concern is South Los Angeles, a sprawling metropolis of its own, spanning across 45 square miles, much of it lacking tree canopy and green spaces where local residents may gather.

The City of Los Angeles and L.A. County, aided by non-profits and philanthropic efforts, have been trying to create more parks. Starting with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to add 50 parks and continuing with L.A. County’s current Parks Needs Assessment study, public agencies, sometimes assisted by non-profits and supported with private funding, are making progress—building new parks and improving the infrastructure, especially in poor communities where people of color live.

But what’s going on at the parks and community gardens that already exist in those neighborhoods?

For over a year now my students and I have been going to public parks and community gardens located in Watts, the historic South Central Avenue district, and the Vermont Square-Slauson neighborhoods. For months, we visited at different times of day, and different days of the week, recording our observations. Finally, I selected four sites where we are conducting conversational, audio-recorded interviews with park users and community gardeners.

So far, we’ve found that the men of South L.A. are going to the parks and community gardens, in part, for these meditative, therapeutic moments, for solace and sanctuary, to get healthy, to have fun with friends, and to enjoy close-up encounters with plant nature. We’ve also seen that there are far more men and boys than women and girls using the public parks and the largest community gardens.

Why? First, there’s still a fear factor. In the aftermath of deindustrialization in the 1980s and 1990s, public parks and streets in South LA became violent, dangerous spots. Crime is now down, gang violence has subsided, and today one is much less likely to come across gang fights than in the past. But fear remains. Growing up in South LA, many youth were explicitly instructed by their parents to avoid the parks, and this is especially true for women and girls.

In an ideal world, women and girls would feel free to be here too, but our gardens and parks reflect society, and we have a society where women face sexual harassment and unfair domestic burdens, restricting their activity at parks and community gardens. Many women also don’t think these parks are safe.

In another series of interviews conducted with community residents, a number of women told me they prefer to drive to parks in more affluent neighborhoods to jog, power walk, or take their kids to the playground.

When women and girls do come, it’s typically in the company of children and family. This is an extension of domestic duties—supervising young children on playgrounds, watching kids at soccer or baseball practice, or attending a family picnic. Some of the parks feature recently installed exercise equipment, and you might see a mother and daughter or two friends using the equipment. But the indoor Zumba classes that have proliferated in storefronts and rec centers around South L.A. seem to be more popular alternatives for women’s exercise.

Not only are the parks sites of conviviality and relaxation primarily for men and boys, but the big expansive community gardens in Watts—Stanford Avalon Community Garden and the Greater Watts Community Garden—are also predominantly male. At these sites, there are some women who are very dedicated, talented gardeners, but they are fewer in number, Men over age 55 predominate.

When I ask the male gardeners why there aren’t more women tilling the soil, they say the women are tied up with looking after kids, and cooking and cleaning, or that the women are lazy and don’t want to do the work. It does take substantial time and hard labor to cultivate here. Some of the garden plots span 1,500 square feet, and that takes lots of muscle, dedication, and time to do the work.

We were surprised to find that men are using these green spaces to create therapeutic moments of tranquility and time for reflection. One Sunday afternoon as I traipsed around Stanford Avalon Community Garden, I noticed Jose, whom I had interviewed several months before, sitting in silence by himself at the back of his plot, eyes-downcast. Now in his 40s, Jose was born in Mexico and started working in L.A. factories full-time at age 14. He now works in construction six days a week. On Sunday he dedicates all day to his garden, where he grows a spectacular array of vegetables including squash, chile, corn, Swiss chard, and strawberries. On this particular afternoon, he had finished with the hard labor of turning soil, and he sat in Zen-like solitude, intently and skillfully de-thorning nopale cactus paddles, preparing these as food gifts for relatives. Growing food here, he told me, allows him to express his “amor por la tierra,” his “love of the land,” and these quiet moments watering, weeding, or de-thorning nopales bring him peacefulness.

Just south of this garden, also below DWP power lines, African-American gardeners, the majority of them men over 60, are growing vegetables from heirloom tomatoes to a wide variety of collard greens, feeding themselves, family, and community members, and finding tranquility and connection in the process. As 63-year-old James explained to me, he enjoys the “freedom of mind,” he finds at the garden. “It’s like yoga, but it’s more physical,” he explained. “It gets me that sanctuary, that freedom of mind and free thought.” He said he takes pleasure in giving away about 95 percent of what he grows.

The public parks and community gardens of South L.A. are also places where men can experience themselves as responsible family men, a claim that can be tenuous for some. At the parks, fathers can take their kids to soccer games, baseball practice, or family picnics, and at the community gardens, they can grow food for their family members. There are many activities t hat draw men and boys together too, including sports, skate parks, drum circles, playing dominoes or cards, or just hanging out and enjoying one another’s company.

The right to congregate in public outdoor spaces in the city has not always been a given for African-American and Latino men in South L.A. neighborhoods. Many have faced danger on the street or police harassment. Relaxing at the park feels like an achievement, both for the individual and the community. The street violence and crime that ruled South L.A. a couple of decades ago has now declined. Sure, there is still danger, and men, especially younger men, need to negotiate threats and turf disputes at the public parks.

Even Crip-controlled parks can serve as healing sites. Charlie, a 55 year-old veteran of violence on mean streets, prison, and military service, found a comfort zone in such a park. “We all started outside,” he said. “I feel like everybody needs to have a space for green. If you can’t breathe, then it’s some place you don’t feel comfortable…That’s what we come out here for.”

Moments of chill and relajo—that’s what the men of South LA are finding in green spaces. This speaks to the power of plant nature, to the therapeutic aspects of being outside, where you can “blow off steam,” inhale fresh air, and touch soil with your hands, or like Marlon, hit the pause button to gaze as a cloud rolls by.

While urban planners, public health officials, and park advocates have publicized the role of parks and community gardens in combatting obesity and diabetes, maybe we also should recognize the parks and community gardens as assets for improving overall mental health and well-being too. After decades of divestment in parks and gardens, the people of South LA need the new and improved green spaces they are starting to get. Everyone does.

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I’ve experienced a few area codes around here. After growing up in the 818, high schooling from 310, working in 213, shackin’ up at 323, and eventually getting my own place in 626, the majesty of L.A. living had left me nonplussed. But then in April 2001, far too late in life, I visited Griffith Park for the first time, and learned to love life in Los Angeles.

At 4,210 acres, Griffith is the nation’s largest municipal park with an urban wilderness area. The park would be significantly larger, had Griffith J. Griffith not frittered away so much of his ancestral pueblo to settle gambling debts. Playing host to four golf courses, three trains, an observatory, the Greek Theater, the zoo, the old zoo, a museum, pony rides, equestrian trails, semi-pro baseball, academy soccer, Walt Disney’s go-to merry-go-round, a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, and Shane’s inspiration, Griffith is more regional excursion center than mere park. Tell your San Francisco friends to look down their noses at that.

The topography is diverse, breezes sublime, and little known fact: Magic hour—that last hour of beautiful light before sunset that cinematographers adore—occurs here all year-round. Each day spent near Griffith beckons a hike, or a bike ride. Big sky perspective is easily re-discovered along its trails. When tragedy struck September 11th, this shattered Angeleno found his salvation in deep meditation undertaken all over its hills.

So in May 2007, while plumes of forest fire smoke spiraled upward all around from the worst blaze to ever hit Griffith Park, my wife and I bought a house a few hundred yards from the park. And I’m unafraid to confess, since the very first time my drive home from work was punctuated by that glorious Park (capital “P”) flanking my left, I have never once uttered a disparaging word about life in L.A.

The area’s steep and narrow winding streets have proven less than conducive to children at play, and the Los Feliz Boulevard traffic on weekends can be unnerving. Still, there is a locals-only shortcut to get around said traffic. And Griffith Park remains an overall wonderful place to live, experience nature, and send your kids away to school.

If you’re into celebrity spotting, the park’s perimeter ranks second to none. On one insider’s drive, you pass by homes belonging to Katy Perry, Colin Farrell, Megan Fox, Flea, Natalie Portman, George Lopez, and, rumor has it, Mad Men’s John Hamm along with his pet falcon. There are the creators of The Sopranos and Pretty Little Liars, the bassist from No Doubt, manager of the Beastie Boys, and hair care magnate Chaz Dean. To be clear, this is all just on one street.

Of course, with celebrity comes scandal, and scandal runs deep in Griffith Park. The Prohibition-era house bombing of an L.A. Times publisher happened here, as well as a Manson Family murder. Charlie Chaplin—no stranger to scandal—lived up in the Oaks, as did Madonna.

To be clear, one cannot fully appreciate Griffith Park without accessing the neighborhood that surrounds it. The architecture is world-class. You’ve got Richard Williams’ landmark links-style designs, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock and Ennis Brown houses. And, for natural splendor, Griffith Park is tough to beat. There’s Dante’s Peak, Blake’s Grove, Eucalyptus Alley, Pacquiao’s Trail, and the Ferndell trail (that feels like a slalom course), to name a few.

Los Feliz, or, ‘The Happys,’ was Beverly Hills before Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford introduced their Pickfair estate in the real Beverly Hills, initiating an era of westward celebration migration. But it was the 1996 movie Swingers that made us famous. The swing dance mecca The Derby has long since met its demise, along with swing dancing. But jazz singers Marty & Elayne’s trademarked brand of vintage swing continues to hold sway at the Dresden restaurant. We have multiple Scientology centers and a Chabad—ya know, for balance. And the irreverent Upright Citizens Brigade, an improv theater and school, is housed nearby to disrupt said balance. This town is money, and it knows it.

Los Feliz Village commands more than its fair share of legitimate top L.A. bites and diversions. There is always a compelling new bistro coming online, and three or four stellar spots I can’t wait for an excuse to return to. In the concentrated area between Los Feliz Boulevard to the north, south to Hollywood, from Vermont on the west, over to Hillhurst, you have the Vista, one of America’s first suburban movie theaters, and the Los Feliz 3 (where this author’s father took this author’s mother on their first date 50-plus years ago) as well as Yuca’s, the nation’s lone James Beard Award-winning taco stand.

People think L.A. is flat, and overly concrete. And if you reside on the Westside, then—apart from the moving pedestrian walkway that is Runyon Canyon—I’m afraid this is true. But Griffith Park is not flat and plenty grassy, a literal and figurative breath of fresh air. Just please don’t share this with any Pasadena riffraff.

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This is the kind of project I’ve found myself doing every summer for the past decade. The Shakespeare festival my husband and I put together has grown, but up until this year, we couldn’t afford to hire a prop master—someone with actual skills who wouldn’t need to Google “how to make fake meat.”

The Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival has been an unexpected success. Looking back, our Independent Shakespeare Co. ended up exactly where it was meant to be—offering a particularly Los Angeles version of the venerable summer tradition of outdoor Shakespeare—but the process involved more happy accidents than calculation.

When we started, we were so grateful to anyone who turned up that we’d try to thank every member of the audience personally. We still try to meet as many people as we can, and to preserve the festival’s freedom and exuberance. But last summer, more than 43,000 people came to our free performances. Just as astonishing for us to contemplate is that the city of Los Angeles is planning to build a permanent stage at our performance site in Griffith Park.

My husband, David, and I first started making theater in New York City as a couple of (mostly) unemployed actors. We decided to put on a play ourselves—and the Independent Shakespeare Co. was born (we picked the name because David thought it sounded like “a group you should have heard of already”). Our production of Henry V opened in February in an unheated theater on the Lower East Side. We came on at 10 p.m. on Tuesdays, following a production of Pigoletto—a sort of sequel to the opera Rigoletto featuring a man in a pig suit. Only five people attended our first performance, but we found ourselves in love with producing plays and creating close collaborations among actors. Despite the small audiences and our rather extraordinary lack of knowledge, we just kept going. We were sure that what we were doing mattered! (As actors, our natural state tends toward optimism. Really, it’s a job requirement.)

Five years, one pregnancy, and a move across the country later, we were still producing plays. We never considered doing anything but small productions that would be attended by, shall we say, a select few. But in 2003, our first summer in L.A., a friend suggested we look at an amphitheater in Franklin Canyon Park in Beverly Hills. We staged a weekend of free outdoor performances, which led to a city of L.A.-sponsored residency in Barnsdall Park in East Hollywood the following year. Only 14 people showed up for opening night of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, but the audience steadily grew over the course of the summer. That season was 12 performances long, and just under 1,000 people attended.

We were perpetually broke, so we ended each night by asking for money (we still do). One afternoon that first summer, a mother with two children in tow approached David to ask what we were up to. She and her kids returned that evening for the free performance. On their way out, she took David’s hand and thanked him: They didn’t have much money and often came to Barnsdall because the park was a free place to spend time. Then her son—who must have been about 9—reached into his pocket and gave a handful of change to David. Looking back, that was the moment we were all in.

Back then, we took reservations. It started out as our way of staving off anxiety about throwing a party that nobody would come to. But people did come—and not just our friends or members of the theater community. Angelenos who were already in the park came because they were curious. Or they saw a sign or read in the paper about the free performances.

The Independent Shakespeare Co. office was our garage, and the reservation line rang in our house. Within a few years, we were using the reservation list to turn people away, which precipitated our move in 2010 to the Old Zoo in the northeastern corner of Griffith Park. You can still see the old animal cages and, walking up the hill to the site, you really do feel you are getting away from the city. It is a magical spot, one we are grateful to inhabit for 10 weeks each summer with support from L.A.’s Department of Recreation and Parks.

We’ve been so lucky with our company of artists—people who are passionate about theater and even more passionate about Los Angeles. All of us at Independent Shakespeare Co. are crazy in love with our city and its boisterous, fluid, upbeat populace.

And we love the wild unpredictability of our audiences. Once, during intermission for Othello, a group of young people began chanting, “Othello, don’t believe Iago!” We like to run through the audience, pull people up on stage, and bring them into the action. Lots of young people come to the festival, many of whom are seeing a play for the first time. There are also families who have been coming for years and are now sending their children off to college—children we’ve seen grow up from summer to summer.

Performers in the 2014 production of The Taming of the Shrew

Still, I can’t always account for what I see and hear at the Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival. I once saw a woman get up in the middle of a scene to have a loud cell phone conversation in which she related in detail how great she thought the performance was. More than once, I’ve seen a couple who were clearly more interested in each other than in the performance (and covered with more blankets than are strictly needed in August in Los Angeles). The environment is chaotic and not-quite-contained: There are bees, muddy patches, bathroom lines, and—almost every night—the sound of coyotes, sometimes disconcertingly close.

I’ll confess that Independent Shakespeare Co. (like our audience) can be a bit rag-tag. We certainly tend toward the populist end of the art spectrum. I suspect that, like most of us onstage, people in the audience are a bit less well-heeled than a typical theater-goer. They look pretty much like a crowd at Dodger Stadium. And I think (in my more self-aggrandizing moments) that Shakespeare would be pleased to look out on a summer night at the Griffith Park crowd. There was, after all, a reason he called his theater “the Globe.” He envisioned a place that would encompass and embrace everyone. We’re doing our best to follow his legacy. And to make good on a little boy’s pocket change.

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Now, pushing 30 and settled in Los Angeles, I’ve revised my standards of what qualifies as a respite or adventure. A parking spot within walking distance of my destination seems magical; free-flowing traffic in the late afternoon provides a sense of wonder.

But then I stumbled upon a derelict fence while hiking in Griffith Park. It was the first indication that I was entering the Old Los Angeles Zoo. Now I hike there often. Exploring the trails and cages of the zoo, the foundations of bygone buildings marked with graffiti and overgrown by weeds, I regain my childhood sense of adventure. The foundations become Mayan ruins. The graffiti becomes hieroglyphics. I climb into a cage and discover a long dark stone staircase. I picture a cavern deep inside the earth, a trail that leads to the fountain of youth.

Despite our age of lawsuits and liabilities, these structures have been allowed to stand. Visitors can wander, unrestricted, through enclosures that once were homes for bears, lions, monkeys, and macaws. It’s freeing to know that there isn’t a meter running, that the nostalgia roused by this product of the 1930s doesn’t come with an entry fee or a time limit. This is a place that seems preserved only to inspire daydreams.

Levi Smock is a Missouri native and a screenwriting fellow at the American Film Institute.

*Photo by Daniel Marks.

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