Playa del Rey is a community of the City of Los Angeles, California.
It is the section of beachfront just south of the Ballona Wetlands and Ballona Creek and Marina del Rey; thus, the beach population is divided here. This makes Playa del Rey an enclave and keeps the crowds a little smaller, virtually "dredged-off" from Marina del Rey. Playa del Rey has a ZIP code of 90293 and an area code of 310. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west, Marina del Rey to the north, Playa Vista to the northeast, Westchester to the east, and El Segundo to the south.
One danger for beachgoers is the uncontrolled water runoff from the creek, and the occasional overflow from the giant Hyperion treatment plant to the south. Locals refer to the small area of housing south of Culver Boulevard and closest to the beach as The Jungle, a nickname given to a group of closely-built apartments built in 1956, within the bounding streets Trolley Place and Tolleyway Street on its east and west respectively, and including the streets Fowling, Rees, Sunridge and Surf. A clip in the opening sequence of one version of Gilligan's Island shows the S.S. Minnow powering out the marina channel that divides Marina del Rey from Playa del Rey, and may be the source of erroneous rumors that The Jungle was the setting for some early clips in the TV series.
Playa del Rey in the 1970s was known as a great Los Angeles area "surfing spot," but due to the many rock jetties that were built to prevent beach erosion, the good surf is mostly gone. The beach at the northermost end of Playa del Rey is still known as "Toes Over Beach", "Toes Beach" or just "Toes" by the local surfing community, a name derived from the toes over or Hang Ten surfing maneuver. Most surfers now flock south of Dockweiler Beach, to "El Porto", the most northern part of beach in the city of Manhattan Beach. The lifeguard and park services are uniform across the entire twenty mile stretch of beach, a fact which goes unremarked in Los Angeles.
A large portion of Playa del Rey is now vacant, and homes were destroyed, after the expansion of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) brought increased flight traffic. The noise from the flights made it less desirable to live on the dunes above the ocean under the LAX flight path. LAX bought the southern section of Playa del Rey under the power of eminent domain, where today one can see only barbed-wire fences protecting vacant land and old streets where houses once sat.
The northern part was originally wetlands, but the natural flooding been halted by the concrete channel which contains Ballona Creek. A bridge between Playa Del Rey and the jetty between Ballona Creek and the Marina is accessible to foot traffic and bicycle traffic, but not to automobiles. Bikers, skaters and joggers probably have the best chance of traversing the sidewalks of the beaches north to Santa Monica, and to the South Bay, here at this bridge. Both UCLA and LMU have crew teams that practice on the Ballona Creek channel.
Learn more about this city.
City of Playa Del Rey, CA official site
City of Playa Del Rey, CA Chamber of Commerce
City of Playa Del Rey, CA newspaper
County of Playa Del Rey, CA official site
State of California official site