The hook
A seventeen-ton bronze bell in an ornate Korean pavilion sits on a windy bluff above the Pacific in San Pedro, a bicentennial gift most Angelenos have never seen.
01Why it's worth it
In 1976 the people of South Korea gave Los Angeles a bell, and not a small one: seventeen tons of bronze, twelve feet tall, cast in the pattern of a temple bell from 771 AD and hung in a pagoda-style stone pavilion that thirty craftsmen were flown over from Korea to build on the spot. It sits in Angel's Gate Park on the San Pedro bluffs, out at the far southern edge of the city where hardly any tourists get, with the ocean spread out below and the pavilion's painted eaves framing the view. The bell has no clapper; it's struck from the outside with a log, only a handful of times a year on special occasions. The rest of the time it's a quiet, grand, slightly surreal thing to come upon at the end of the land.
02How to experience it
It's in Angel's Gate Park in San Pedro, about six hours from the Bay. Free, open during park hours, with room to walk the bluffs. Come on a clear afternoon for the ocean and the light on the pavilion. It pairs with Sunken City and the tide pools nearby along the Point Fermin bluffs.