I flew to L.A with a hopeful assumption that it couldn’t possibly be as horrible as everyone had told me it’d be. New Yorkers tend to hate Los Angeles with passion. I thought it could be some kind of intellectual Woody Allen vs. Hollywood conflict of interests but oh boy, L.A really stinks. Literally too, it smells of piss (you thought New York was bad) and deep fried food. Since it’s not really a city rather than a highway, I drove around in search of I don’t know, possibly something else that I’d like except for the beach. I've never seen so many gated neighborhoods - tall walls separating the privileged from the ordinary. Hollywood is so small you could drive through it without even noticing. Everything is gray and concrete and as you probably have heard, you have to drive Everywhere. And it’s all status and fame and you better make it or you’ll have to take a bus like the immigrants do. And it’s dirty. In many ways. Everyone talks about acting and how they ran into Jen Aniston at the supermarket. The amount of horrible architecture is astonishing – it is stuck somewhere between Art Deco and Modern and looks sad and confused like little pseudo Spanish houses which cover the outskirts of the Downtown, which itself became “home” to so many homeless people. If you ever get to see Downtown L.A. from the far, it is covered with a thick layer of smog. There is something about this city that makes you want to overdose. Getting on the bus to San Francisco felt like an escape. We were heading north to discover California’s golden light.
K.
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