Low wood and stucco apartment buildings run down narrow streets to the sand, with a shopping block on Main Street behind them.
What Ocean Park looks like
Main Street runs a block inland from the beach, lined with two and three storey buildings in stucco and painted wood siding, shops at street level under the floors above. A painted bike lane runs along the kerb, and cars park at the curb outside the storefronts.
The complex, Frank Gehry's grey metal clad storefronts and a stepped tower built between 1984 and 1988, holds the block north of the library. The holds a corner farther south at 2525 Main Street, its Streamline Moderne front curving around a marquee and porthole windows over the storefronts below.
The holds the corner at 2601 Main Street, a pale blue stucco building with an arched pediment over its entrance and a tall palm at the door. A few doors down, the California Heritage Museum occupies the 1894 Roy Jones House, one of the street's oldest buildings. ZJ Boarding House, a surf and skate shop with a wave mural on its side wall, runs three storefronts together further along the block.
On the side streets running toward the sand, Hollister Avenue and carry low apartment buildings close to the sidewalk with little space between one lot and the next. , a white stucco courtyard building from 1919 with arched doorways behind an iron gate, stands at 140 Hollister Avenue. Most of the surrounding blocks are two storeys, wood frame and stucco, with a mix of painted and unpainted facades.
Shot in Ocean Park
Dogtown and Z-Boys, then Lords of Dogtown, filmed the storefront at 2003 Main Street when it was still Jeff Ho Surfboards and Zephyr Productions. The building is now Dogtown Coffee, on the same block as the library.
Lords of Dogtown, 2005
Lords of Dogtown filmed the storefront at 2003 to 2011 Main Street, the real building where Jeff Ho Surfboards and Zephyr Productions operated from 1971 to 1976. Dogtown and Z-Boys, the 2001 documentary the film is based on, used the same storefront three years earlier. Street View
What Ocean Park can double for
Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach, California
Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach lines a similar few blocks of low wood and stucco apartment buildings against a pedestrian strip of storefronts a short walk from the beach, the same close grouping Ocean Park has. Hermosa's pier and its wider promenade read differently in a wide shot, so tighter street level framing keeps the two towns from being told apart. Try searching Pier Avenue storefronts now.
Ocean Beach in San Diego, California
Ocean Beach pairs the same narrow beachside streets of low apartment buildings with a walkable strip of storefronts a block or two inland, on Newport Avenue instead of Main Street. Ocean Beach's pier is still standing and its houses run more to wood shingle than stucco, so keeping the pier and shingle siding out of frame holds the match better. Try searching Newport Avenue storefronts now.
Rockaway Park in Queens, New York
Rockaway Park's beach blocks carry the same low apartment buildings close together a short walk from the sand, an East Coast equivalent for the same present day look. Its buildings run to brick and wood shingle rather than stucco. The elevated A train sits nearby, so a tight frame on a plain block holds the match better than a wide one. Try searching Rockaway Park beach blocks now.
