Winnetka

Not even the beautiful palms of Sherman Way can save Winnetka from utter obscurity. This is the flat, hot belly button of the Valley. And like your belly button, unless you have a piercing, it is usually pretty forgettable. Winnetka definitely does not have a piercing! What it does have is lots and lots of strip malls with stores that you can find in just about any other neighborhood in the Valley, or really in So Cal. The houses are fairly flat, mostly in the plain one-story variety that is so common as you trickle down from the hills. There are also a lot of apartments—some of them in that older layout style where they place the buildings parallel to each other across a courtyard (occasionally with a pool in the center if you are lucky). Usually they have a gate at the entrance where you have to be buzzed in, in the interest of safety. Lot’s of immigrant families and single moms make up most of the families in these apartments.

Truthfully, I never actually go to a destination in Winnetka. When I do enter its indistinct borders, it is usually because I am crossing to the other end of the Valley. Since I rarely do this through the center of the Valley, my visits here are few and far between. Also, Winnetka doesn’t really have a defining character, as far as I can tell. I mean, you kind of have a sense of Woodland Hills—it is still slightly more upscale and you have really nice newer apartments there. Winnetka, however, is not as worn down as Canoga Park, nor does it seem like an old folks home, like Chatsworth. It’s just kind of there.

In fact, I really wasn’t sure where it started or ended as I started to write this. I had to look it up to double check where its boundaries were. Put simply, you might be able to find an affordable apartment here, but I doubt you would come here for any other reason.