4 posts tagged “la”
Upon arrival, a quick jaunt up to the Promenade for a cappuccino reminded me of several things:
- LA is car-oriented. This commonplace cannot be overstated. LA is car oriented in the same way China has a growing population.
- LA looks like a movie. Everything about it is stylized and saturated. The birds are chirpier, the sidewalks make your feet hurt faster, and the people are more self-conscious.
- LA has the best bums in the US--particularly in Santa Monica, where I'm staying. In Santa Monica, the bums are bums for bum sake. They really don't need a handout--who needs money in a place that's temperate and has better dumpsters than most cities have restaurants? So, many bums here have dispensed with the formality of asking for money in favor of cultivating their bummyness. There's the bum pantomiming the sex act, thrusting her pelvis in the air with mock misogynistic vigor; the skateboarding bum astutely weaving among pedestrians on LA's vestigial sidewalks and commenting to gawkers "no pictures please"; and the traditionalist bum whose entreaty "a nickel, a dime, any little sum will do" rolls out in the mellifluous tones of a Lutheran Pastor.
I'm convinced that arriving in LA is one of the most disheartening things one can do. For me at least, the unremittingly grey-blue skies, dingy freeways, and scrubby vegetation is always a disappointment--no matter how low my expectations.
This is not a wholsesale attack on LA--just on arriving here. No doubt, LA has its charms. Perhaps I'll find some while here....
Tomorrow I fly to Los Angeles for a quick, two-day biz trip. Meeting/hanging with Byron both days, going to the Six Apart seminar on Thursday, and generally staying connected. Should be fun--I've found that in doses of 2-4 days, LA is perfectly acceptable.
