In L.A., I sometimes pine for a more walkable city, but that’s when I’m being unimaginative. Even in a county ruled by cars, there are pockets where you can ditch your car keys and immerse yourself in our region’s culture, food and entertainment on foot. The stadium district in Inglewood is a prime example. 

This newly branded “Los Angeles Stadium District” is bounded roughly by Century and Manchester boulevards between Prairie and LaBrea avenues. While the Kia Forum and Hollywood Park Casino are legacy venues, the corner of Prairie and Century has become exponentially more bustling in recent years with the opening of SoFi Stadium (home of the Los Angeles Chargers and Rams), YouTube Theater and Intuit Dome (the Clippers’ arena), Cinépolis (a luxury movie theater), CineVita (a live cinema venue), COSM (an immersive shared reality experience) and Iconix (an elevated gym).

What looks like a cluster of venues is actually one thing: Hollywood Park, a nearly 300-acre reimagining of the old racetrack that now wraps SoFi Stadium, a lakeside park, shops, apartments and more into a walkable district. 

During the early years of the pandemic, fitness instructor Claudine Cooper moved her free outdoor community workout from Inglewood’s Darby Park to Hollywood Park, drawing dozens of us from nearby neighborhoods and beyond. Back then, when we were the only ones milling around — taking pictures with the whopping SoFi Stadium sign and the new lake — it was hard to imagine thousands of people traversing the yet-unstained concrete. 

But as they say: Build it and they will come. 

My family and I aren’t big sports folks, but we do love moving our own bodies. On a recent Saturday, I took my usual athletic training class at Iconix, stopped by the Hollywood Park farmers market, drove less than 15 minutes to get home, then circled back to the stadium district with my college freshman, Sol, a few hours later to kick off our mother-son weekend.  

Sol offered to drive and got his first experience valet parking. Our nearby home-away-from-home was The Anthem, a lovely boutique hotel appropriately named for a sports-rich district. It is flanked by the Intuit Dome and situated right across the street from the Hollywood Park sign on Century. Sol handed the valet our keys and we didn’t see our car again until checkout time late Sunday morning. Getting through a weekend without tons of driving for errands and entertainment is unheard of for our family. 

The hotel’s stylish lobby and pool area were buzzing with excitement. Locals and out-of-towners were gathering for a weekend of fun that included Monster Jam at SoFi (which we were attending) and a sold-out Mike Epps’ comedy show at Intuit Dome. Adults and kids splashed in the pool, but we only had time to lounge a bit before getting ready for our walk to SoFi.

When I return for a solo stay or with my husband, I’ll enjoy a cocktail or two from Soundwaves, the pool bar, but with my teen, it was water and a quick coffee to rev up our systems for what I knew was going to be a long and loud evening with monster trucks and some 60,000 screaming fans. 

We had an Uber voucher, but chose to stick to our get-more-steps plan and walked 20 minutes to SoFi, falling in line with dozens of families doing the same. As we stood in line, we could hear a singer launch into the national anthem. The crowd’s cheers were quickly drowned out by the absolute roar of the first monster trucks. Sol and I looked at each other in hilarious panic. In all his years growing up, we had not attended a Monster Jam, but it’s never too late to make up for missed childhood experiences. 

A self-proclaimed foodie, he was eager to test the stadium’s food most of all, and used the time we stood in line to scan best-of lists online. We split up to pursue our different cravings, then reunited to find our field seats and enjoy the show. 

“Grave Digger is popular; I saw lots of people buying his merch upstairs,” Sol said as the black-and-green flame-painted truck roared onto the dirt-covered field. I was rooting for the Zombie truck simply because I thought the protruding zombie arms were innovative. As Zombie prepared to enter the field, I joined in with the rest of the attendees in the “zombie dance,” and my teen rolled his eyes. It was too loud to hear his snide remarks, though, so I laughed and danced anyway. And yelled like a true fan when Zombie mastered the backflip ramp.

In the end, Grave Digger won the overall championship, delighting thousands of fans, including little ones who were giddy to be out and about past bedtime. On our walk back to our hotel, the scent of churros and Sonoran and Tijuana-style hot dogs filled the air as vendors hawked their goods. I glanced at the lines of cars trying to get into the rideshare area and was thankful our hotel was so close. 

In the room, we took to our comfortable beds — him planning to study a bit, me planning to read. “Oh look,” I said, “there’s a white noise machine. What do you want to hear — ocean, a brook, forest…”

“Forest sounds,” he said, his eyes already closing.

And into the night we both went, with the soft sound of rustling leaves and the crystal call of crickets settling our nervous systems and our eardrums — a most welcome anthem after a long, loud and memorable day in Inglewood.

Cassandra Lane is editor-in-chief of L.A. Parent.