Experience an alternative Los Angeles

Say the words Los Angeles and most people think of Hollywood glamour, David Hockney swimming pools and the sanitised glitz of Beverly Hills.

But just half an hour's drive north-east of the city, in the areas of Highland Park, Eagle Rock and Pasadena you'll find another LA where vintage clothes boutiques, cycle shops and tattoo parlours sit amid Moorish Gothic follies and Arts and Crafts bungalows. You'll even find that rare Los Angeles sighting - the non-collagen-implanted, surgically unaltered human being.

Eagle Rock has a history of attracting artists and writers and counts Aldous Huxley, John Steinbeck and Terry Gilliam as ex-residents. Not to mention a certain Barack Obama who studied at the local Occidental College. Along with Highland Park, this is now where artists, bohos and students, priced out of neighbouring areas such as Silverlake, have moved to, attracted by the parks, affordable housing and proximity to downtown LA.

Driving through Highland Park, in some ways this still feels very much like Los Angeles - it's 33 degrees with a cloudless blue sky. The road, wide and open, is lined with tall palms and low-rise buildings. But instead of LA's gridlock, here there's a classically American sense of space, with fewer cars and the San Gabriel mountains hazy in the distance.

Our first stop is Café de Leche where my friend Susan - a California native and resident of South Pasadena for some 10 years, tells me she adores the hibiscus iced tea. With its mural walls, discounts for cyclists and hip dudes on laptops, this could almost be Shoreditch. But as well as the iced tea - which turns out to be just the right side of sweet - there are also oddities like espresso with horchata (the milky Mexican/Spanish drink made with rice, vanilla and cinnamon).

Revived, we head off for a stroll along York Boulevard, Highland Park's main drag and also part of America's legendary Route 66.

The 1930s shopfronts, left over from when prosperous East Coasters first made the area a fashionable winter sunshine destination, are filled with a mix of workaday businesses like Hispanic bakeries and quirky, independent shops such as Eloelia's Boutique and Urchin - both selling vintage clothes - The Bicycle Doctor and The Glass Studio, which makes hand-blown jewellery.

There's also Galco's, a rather fabulous, albeit unprepossessing, warehouse which since 1955 has specialised in "soda" or what we'd call fizzy drinks. I was sceptical at first but, once inside, I was captivated by aisle after aisle filled with bottles of every description from Big Ben's Sarsparilla to Sweet Blossom Jasmine Soda.

The shop's jovial owner John, who has the air of a portlier Gene Kelly, even takes great pride in showing me that they stock Britain's own Fentiman's Lemonade.

Earlier in the day we'd breakfasted on maple syrup pancakes and redbush tea at The Coffee Table in neighbouring Eagle Rock. A few doors along on Colorado Boulevard, the air thick with frangipani flowers, we pass Swork, another hipper than hip coffee shop, a couple of art galleries and Old Focals which specialises in vintage glasses frames.