thanks for that advice.
can you kind souls advise me which would be the best area to stay in considering we wont be hiring a car and wish to visit all the usual attractions etc but would prefer to stay by a beach.
dont want to be marooned in a dodgy area that turns nasty after dark.
Not an easy city to get around without a car (and often not very quick with one!). Santa monica and vicinity are your best bets if you want the beach as buses run E/W into town/hollywood fairly directly. Nowhere much further south than that, you'll spend hours on buses each day (and that you definately wont want to do after dark). Pasadena is quite nice (at night too) and easy to get anywhere using the metro gold tram line into the City and then elsewhere as you wish. Long Beach has some reasonably priced hotels, and has another tram to downtown (around 1hr) and you need to go round the coast a bit for really decent beaches.
Personally my fondest view of Los Angeles is the one I get when I'm leaving.
Quite!