This week I had occasion to drive from Burbank, where I was picketing, to mid-city, where I was meeting my friend Matt for lunch. Luckily, it happened to fall during the only pleasant pocket of Los Angeles daytime driving hours: 11 AM to 1 PM. Any other time of day is a rush hour. Where people are rushing to (or rushing from) is a different question, given the languid local culture. This drive gave me an opportunity to reflect on my (yes, my) city in a poetic, reflective way, and now I’m unfortunately going to share that with you.
Since everyone here uses highways like surfaces streets, it makes it difficult to get the full scope of the fair land. My journey, like most, started on one. The 101 in particular. I glided through the valley dividing Toluca Lake from Studio City, the threatening minion of Universal Studios staring down on me as I did.
Once I hit Hollywood, I had to take local roads, not because I was wandering into lands untouched by the highway (impossible), but because the highways didn’t intersect efficiently on my route.
The valley, and its suburban ranch houses, faded into a collection of aspirational skyscrapers. Skyyearners, perhaps. As my Corolla meandered down one of the worst streets in the world—Vine—people meandered into traffic, in various states of mental disarray. A car used the wrong side of a two-way street as a passing lane. Open-air TMZ bus tours continued undeterred, eager passengers craning to see the ancestral home of Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
Soon enough the symptoms of America’s decline were behind me, and I drove through Hancock Park. This is where rich people live, but because it’s Los Angeles and you can be whoever you want to be here, there’s no uniformity to the architecture. It’s like Epcot, but for every wealthy neighborhood you’ve ever seen. Spanish haciendas spill into Tudor estates which tidily abut stately Craftsmans which loom over white clapboard Colonials. It’s stunning to think of the richness and variety available in houses you I cannot afford. Lawns are manicured, lights are never on, and someone’s always walking a labradoodle.
Soon I was crossing Wilshire, where the museums are, and found a more modest version of what preceded—smaller houses with humbler lawns. One car garages instead of two. I’m fairly certain I can’t afford these, either.
And then you’re on a bridge crossing over the 10, and this brings you to yet another version of a life here. Apartment buildings. Metal grates covering shop doors. Fewer stop signs. A fruit stand appears on every corner, clearly celebrating the end of a zoning restriction in the previous neighborhoods.
I arrived at the restaurant, a gentrification island full of grain bowls and miso cookies that were good enough to quell everyone’s somewhat complicated feelings about the state of American cities.
We finished up just in time for the first afternoon rush hour, and so I made my way home at a slower pace, meandering through many of the neighborhoods I had just seen, once again imagining the various lives I could lead within them.
Half a podcast episode later and I was home, in my neighborhood, in my actual life, relieved to be out of the car and on the couch.
Ahhh... LA. Drive a few blocks (god forbid walk) and it’s a completely different city.
Love letter to LA.... 💕🥰💖