Peeked into Surfridge
The land between LAX and the sea used to be a neighborhood of single-family homes. It was called Surfridge, and there are plenty of articles about this place online. It's now fenced off for LAX-related security reasons, and also for animal-related reasons - it's home to an extremely rare butterfly and now acts as a preserve.
I went to the area over the weekend to take some pictures. You can walk around the outside of the neighborhood and stick your camera through a chain link fence, basically. The roads into the area are fenced off, but you can walk up to the fence and get some good shots of spooky-ass abandoned roads. The day was extremely overcast, we were there close to sundown, and everything looked creepy as hell:
I found a big hole in the fence that people are obviously climbing through, but it seems an extremely dangerous game to play - the area was fenced off for security reasons after 9/11, and I wouldn't want to be caught in that kind of a place by an airport cop. Besides, the butterflies probably do deserve their peace and quiet.
I just took pictures of plants around the outside edge. It was fun! As we walked along the nature trail near the northern fenceline, it became pretty clear why people wanted to live here decades ago. The sea views are pretty nuts. Even with our extreme cloud cover, they were downright ethereal:
I have biked past this place before, but I've never spent so much time peering at it carefully on foot. There isn't much to see of the actual Surfridge neighborhood here, which is clearly the point. The creepiest shots are always from the air. Glad to have visited anyway! I got plenty of observations for iNaturalist...