The other day, I was having one of those conversations with my mother that made made me say, "listen, I don't want to be rude but I'm going to have to ask us to change topics." I 100% know what to do if, say, I'm having a great day and I want to ruin it appropriately...I just have to ask, "hey, what's going on in Ohio?"
Los Angeles is like a city in a bubble. Things are less real here, less tragic somehow (unless you count the seemingly countless depressed and bone thin wannabe starlets). As long as you stay on Beverly Blvd (West of La Brea, of course), you're good in your little Los Angeles microchosm. Things are pretty here. Happy. People are still buying luxury cars, Platinum Motorsports is still cranking out ridiculously customized over-priced exotics, and while in the parking lot we call "traffic" at any one time there's Ferrari's to the left of you, Lambo's to the right...(here I am, stuck in the middle...dammit, now that song is stuck in my head.)
Recently I took a friend on the quintessential Los Angeles drive carving our way along Mulholland. It's become a major tourist attraction, with those stupid chop-roof vans populating a once-quiet scenic vista, but I get it. Everyone wants a look at those homes, sitting in quiet judgement of the rest of us. It's impressive. I typically take Los Angeles visitors to those same spots, and they say mostly the same things. Usually, it's "How much do those houses cost?" A: Your soul, generally. From the San Fernando Valley vistas, I hear: "Wow, look at this view, what the hell are we looking at?" A: Who cares? It's the valley.*
For a dose of reality, sometimes, I make the mistake of genuinely caring about the folks that live in the midwest. That shit is as real as it gets...and my poor mother is living smack-dab inside a town that is dying around her. There aren't any jobs, people have no money, and crime is getting overwhelming. They'll steal your shit without even thinking twice about it---and then sell it for food, and toilet paper (those assholes!! my iPod!)
It seems surreal, then, driving up to Mulholland and climbing up the stairs that overlook the Hollywood Bowl and downtown LA. I heard tourists bitching from the summit of the hill that it was overcast and they couldn't get an amazing shot of the city, and I laughed so hard to myself that people moved away from my general area. I was not laughing at them, really, (okay, maybe a little...), because as I looked out at Los Angeles shrouded in a haze, a snake of brakelights slithering up the 101, I thought "that's so appropriate."
Los Angeles doesn't really exist as a city---its boundaries are as hazy and undefined as the people that call it home. We exist in a dream state, where passing Aston Martins parked on the street is as common as Chevrolets in other parts of the country. If the "reality" of other parts of the country is that people will break the law in order to feed their families, we certainly have an alternate reality here. Its easy to think that all of LA is existing in that dream state, but the haze around the city contains the same secrets of poverty and hopelessness as any other place. Its just that we're better versed, somehow, of letting those elements exist as ghosts, just below the general rhythm of the city.
So I like for people up there overlooking this dichotomous city to see the ghostliness, the un-reality of it all, and the fact that really, the haze-obscured LA they see up here is the very most realistic of any vista they'll have the opportunity to view.
Skeptically Yours.
**I live in the valley
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