3rd St, Mid-City

Ok, yes, 3rd Street Promenade is overrun with tourists. Most of the people on the promenade are tourists, for sure. But, I still have a really soft spot for the Promenade. There are actually a lot of great stores on the street. And, if you can't find something on 3rd street proper, you can definitely find it within a few blocks. The thing that's great about the Promenade is that it's one block from the beach and the Santa Monica pier. On a nice day, you can, literally, spend the entire day right here and never run out of things to do. You can start out at the beach and then walk up to 3rd for some shopping!
There are great stores on 3rd! On what other street can you find an Anthropologie and an Urban! They're within a block of each other! There's also a French Connection, Gap, Banana, Sephora, Old Navy . . the list goes on and on. And, if that's not enough, there is an actual indoor Shopping Mall at the end of the street. I'm not a huge fan of the mall, but there's a BCBG and a massive Forever 21. The Promenade is great if you want to shop with pals and get a coffee on a nice day because it's entirely outside. There's even a movie theatre: I wasn't kidding when I said you could spend all day there.
The one thing I wouldn't do on the Promenade is eat a meal. The restaurants are all pretty sub par and definitely catered towards tourists. And, there are so many fantastic places to eat just a block up on Ocean. So, I would definitely just jump up there for a post shopping lunch or dinner.
But, like I said before, there are so many tourists on this street and parking's a little crazy so just be prepared for a long (and sometimes annoying) day. Oh, there's also a lot of homeless people on the Prom. But, other than that, I love this spot!