Going Places
More specifically, to hell
There are advantages to living in a big city. Culture. Diversity. Knowledge that when you wake up in the middle of the night, sweat dotting your anxious brow, someone else in that city is also awake and panicking.
Of course, there are disadvantages, far too numerous to catalog here, so I’ll limit myself to the most egregious: the airport situation. The only time I ever agreed with Donald F. You-Know-The-Rest was during one of the 2016 debates when he said, “JFK is a mess.” Through gritted teeth I admitted that he wasn’t wrong—it’s an airport full of pigeons. But LAX makes JFK look like PDX, if you know what I’m saying, which you probably don’t.
LAX is a pit of hell that will mercilessly suck your soul out of every pore and it begins its campaign of terror before you even leave your home. You think to yourself, “Should I leave three hours before my flight? Three and half? Four?” Whatever you decide, it doesn’t matter; you will arrive late and sweating. Rush hour, high noon, the dead of night: all roads that lead to LAX are at some point choked with punishing traffic that will reduce you to tears.
And how do you get there exactly? It’s hard to say and impossible to conceptualize geographically. I mean, it’s near the beach on a map, but the actual approach to the airport itself defies mental categorization. It’s ostensibly arranged in a circle, but the labyrinth of roads to said circle has no rhyme or reason. It’s as if they were designed by a witch determined to forever curse those entering and leaving the city because a mean doctor refused to give her collagen injections (“Even fillers can’t fix ugly,” is what I imagine he said. And I use “he” not because all doctors are men, but because the one I just made up is a jerk and I don’t feel like piling on women right now. Except for the witch thing.).
A good way to bypass the roads issue would be an air train, like most major international airports have had since the early 1800s. Of course at LAX there is no air train, so the only way to get between terminals is to walk (LOL this is LA no one’s doing that) or drive. Supposedly there’s an air train currently being built, but this has been a years-long project that so far has only made everything worse.
“What’s the public transportation situation to the airport?” you may be asking yourself, with good reason, and the answer is the same as a question about any form of public transportation in Los Angeles: it’s terrible and virtually nonexistent. There is a heavily subsidized FlyAway shuttle which I actually like but requires getting to very specific places at very specific times, not always my strong suit when it comes to travel.
The good thing is when you get to the airport everyone is doing some of the worst and rudest driving you’ve ever seen and you’re constantly in danger of getting t-boned by an Enterprise Rent-a-Car shuttle. If you’re dropping someone off or picking them up (wow, you’re a good person) and you’re lucky enough to turn around and retread your long journey back home, well good luck finding your way out of that place, because the witch has ensured that you’ll always miss your turn onto Sepulveda.
I haven’t even scraped the surface of what’s inside the airport, but to give you an idea: it’s bad.
Anyway, if this was boring to you, congratulations, you don’t live in Los Angeles, because driving is the only thing you’re legally able to complain about in this city.