Wilshire/La Brea Station

Everyone thinks they know Wilshire Boulevard — the museums, the traffic, the postcard version. But the new D Line station at Wilshire/La Brea opens onto a stretch most people walk past without a second look: a Charlie Chaplin-built 1928 courtyard building that’s now home to a James Beard-winning pastry chef’s morning bakery counter, an Ice Age fossil site where new specimens are still being pulled from the ground for free, and a legacy Indian restaurant so committed to its red-curtained dining room it feels like a different decade. There’s a reason people who’ve lived here for years keep finding new favorites.