The Port, Secret Cities of the South Bay

If you’re a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson, your idea of fun probably doesn’t include a stroll around the docks. The thought of prowling around a lot of dank, shadowy, creaky wharf dives and rubbing elbows with ill-tempered men with cutlass scars and parrots on their shoulders would make most people opt for dinner and a movie.

Fortunately, the Port of Los Angeles is more civilized than that. It hasn’t been home to a place like the Admiral Benbow since Richard Henry Dana passed through more than a century ago and described the boggy area in “Two Years Before the Mast” as “the hell of California.”

What a difference a century or so makes.

Today, the Port of Los Angeles is the busiest in the nation for cargo and the busiest in the West for cruise ship passengers.

It’s also busy as a destination for tourists, browsers and day-trippers. And the surrounding neighborhoods in San Pedro and Wilmington continue to be something of a secret enjoyed by locals and those who have made the journey and discovered that ships and shipping are only one piece of the action at L.A.’s southwestern tip.

If, however, you are a ship fancier and love to watch them arrive and depart, the best spot in the harbor may be one of the most enduring: the Villages at Ports o’ Call, which were built to resemble New England fishing villages and contain 75 specialty shops and 15 restaurants.

For years, this 15-acre complex of shops and restaurants on the western side of the main harbor channel in San Pedro was known as Ports o’ Call Village, but today there are three segments: the original Ports o’ Call, Fisherman’s Village and Whaler’s Wharf.

Ports o’ Call Village is home to a handful of harbor cruise, sportfishing and charter boat operators, which offer such packages as dinner cruises around the harbor and even weddings at sea.

For an even more commanding view of the area, however, there are helicopter rides that leave from the villages and fly over the harbor and surrounding areas. South Bay Helicopters will fly you around the Port of Los Angeles for five minutes for $25 per person. Other flights are longer and more expensive and cover wider areas of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and harbor area.

The Villages at Ports o’ Call are at the foot of the Harbor Freeway, at Harbor Boulevard and 6th Street, and are open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. (restaurants until 10 p.m.). For information, call (213) 831-0287.

The port may be worth a visit even if you hate salt air and would much rather spend the day in, say, a museum. In San Pedro/Wilmington area, there are five:

The Los Angeles Maritime Museum allows you to wallow in the salty life without ever feeling a deck under your feet.

On the waterfront adjacent to Ports o’ Call, the 75,000-square-foot museum--largest of its kind on the West Coast--features exhibits relating to the history of recreational sailing, the merchant marine, the Navy, tall ships, the whaling industry, commercial shipping, maritime arts and crafts and nautical lore.

The museum houses nearly 700 ship models (including a cutaway of the Titanic), displays 64 types of seaman’s knots and a life-size mock-up of the flying bridge of the World War II heavy cruiser Los Angeles and maintains an amateur radio station for visitors to listen to radio traffic from ships in the harbor.

Parking at the museum--at the foot of 6th Street at Berth 84, San Pedro--is free, and admission is by donation. The museum is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Information: (213) 548-7618.

The Ft. MacArthur Military Museum is a relic of an age when harbor mouths were protected by guns mounted on adjacent heights. Situated at 36th and Gaffey streets in San Pedro, the museum is what remains of the original battery at the fort: a mount for the crane that was used to unload shells, a plotting room, the battery commander’s station, a protective trench dug during World War II, a telescope mount and a decontamination room. Walking tours are available during museum hours, which are noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Information: (213) 548-7705.

At the Cabrillo Marine Museum, visitors can handle marine life in a tide pool “touch tank” when they tire of watching the sea animals and plants in the other 38 glass tanks. The museum also features multimedia shows, workshops, whale-watch and grunion programs in season and a display dedicated to the California Gray Whale. Situated on the beach at 3720 Stephen White Drive, San Pedro, the museum offers free admission but not free parking. Information: (213) 548-7562.

The Civil War-era Drum Barracks, 1052 Banning Ave., Wilmington, are the only remnants of a Union Civil War fort that was established in the harbor area; they are open to the public Tuesdays through Thursdays and on Saturdays. Tours are conducted Tuesdays through Thursdays at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. and noon and on Saturdays at 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m and 2:30 p.m. A donation of $1 is requested. Information: (213) 548-7509.

The 1870s-era Banning Residence Museum, 401 E. M St., Wilmington, once was the elegant home of the early harbor and transportation developer Phineas Banning. It is open daily except Mondays and Fridays. Tours are conducted Tuesdays through Thursdays at 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. by appointment. Saturday tours are at the same times (on Saturdays the 3:30 p.m. tour is a regularly scheduled one). Donation, $2 for adults, children under 12 free. Information: (213) 548-7777.

If you’re not feeling particularly historical, the harbor can entertain you if you arrive with money in your pocket.

Downtown San Pedro has been extensively refurbished in recent years and is known today as “Old San Pedro,” a collection of restaurants, bars, gift shops, antique stores, galleries and boutiques. The Warner Grand Theater, one of Southern California’s last palatial Depression-era movie houses, is there.

The district is bounded, roughly, by Pacific Avenue on the west, Harbor Boulevard on the east, 5th Street on the north and 7th Street on the South.

The glory of San Pedro, however, may be the abundance of spectacular ocean and harbor views. The very best of these, said Clint Miller, the assistant executive director of the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, may be at the high ground of Angels Gate Park, west of Gaffey Street near the Point Fermin lighthouse.

Apart from the sea view, the park is home to the Korean Bell of Friendship, a huge bell--the largest Oriental bell in existence--housed in an Oriental belfry atop a bluff, a Bicentennial gift from South Korea.

With all the sightseeing to be done, the port continues to chug on, and the center of most of that activity is Wilmington. Long considered a bit of an ugly duckling among Southland cities, Wilmington is made up largely of docks, shipyards, warehouses, refineries and other businesses ancillary to the port. It is a working town.

Still, said Miller, Wilmington has its own rough appeal and may be in the first stages of turning into a kind of swan.

“Wilmington has traditionally been industrial,” said Miller, “which makes it a sort of a learning-style tourist attraction, because it’s been sort of the backbone of the port for a long time.

“You have contact with heavy industry, but you also have a chance to see that Wilmington is not just trucks and heavy cargo moving,” he said.

“There are people who live there who have made their homes there for generations. Almost no place else in Greater L.A. do you find that. It has a lot to do with the sea and the jobs down there. It’s strange--and very difficult to describe. You have to come down and be around it.”

And, said Miller, within the next few years Wilmington may have a marketplace-style promenade similar to Ports o’ Call, around Berth 184. As the port expands and other cities in the South Bay become more crowded, he said, Wilmington is being seen more and more as a possible tourist and weekender destination.

The other South Bay cities, he said, “are basically at capacity, and the pleasure of going there is taken out by the long waits and the traffic and too many people trying to get into a limited area.”

Wilmington, therefore, is ripe for commercial and tourist development, Miller said, although he added that it would be “a few years” before the completion of the promenade.

“Wilmington and San Pedro,” he said, “are sort of secrets to people who know about them.”