Los Angeles

I recently got back from a short trip (a few days) in Los Angeles, California.  I had a good time and saw lots of things, and even took pictures and posted them on Facebook.  Here’s the blog.

 Intro: Hollywood.  Every country seems to have its own film industry: France, Brazil, Romania, India, etc.  But the films are made for, and intended for, the local population and no pretense or expectation seems to be that an audience outside the country will be watching.  Here in the US, you have to look for small, boutique-style trendy, artsy movie theaters to find films made outside Hollywood.  Hollywood is unique in volume, quality, but also making films which they have every expectation of being seen outside the US, worldwide.

 Naturally, most of the films seem to take place in L.A.  Sure, New York and other US cities (sometimes stood in for by Canadian cities) are also popular, as are foreign destinations, particularly for James Bond films, but L.A. seems to be the #1 city.  And that also applies to TV shows as well.  Again, “Seinfeld” is set in NYC (though a two-part special took place in L.A.) and other cities come up now and then (CSI Miami, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, etc.) but L.A. seems to outnumber all the others combined.  And this has been going on for longer than I’ve been alive.

 Up till now, I’d never been there.  The closest was two trips each to Las Vegas and Phoenix (and for the latter, one “trip” was simply a detour from the airport for lunch at Cooperstown).  But of course I’d seen all the movies and TV shows.  So when a chance came to visit, I grabbed it immediately.   So here are my own subjective impressions.

 Freeways.   Every major city has its defining characteristic.  For NYC it’s the Empire State Building and skyscrapers.  Paris has its Eiffel Tower and art & architecture.  London has its fog, its Big Ben, double-decker buses, etc.  For L.A. I’d point to the freeways.  While Hollywood Blvd., Sunset Blvd., Beverly Hills are all nice and impressive, they don’t anchor the city the way the freeways do.  The 405 runs along the south and then goes up northwest, kind of bracketing the city by the ocean.  The 110 goes north-south.  The 105 goes east-west.  The 5 goes southeast-northwest as a mirror complement to the 405.  Up further there’s the 10 (parallel to the 105) and the 101 going northwest into Beverly Hills.  The 710 and 605 run north-south parallel to the east of the 110.  The freeways are wide and the interchanges push you way up into the sky.  I was particularly thrilled going from the 105 west onto 110 north, which gives a panoramic view.  L.A. has a metro system, but you really have to drive to “experience” L.A. – to take the subway would be like driving in Manhattan instead of taking its subway, or the London Underground.  I did get stuck in traffic a few times, but not ALL the time.

 The Trees.  A close second are the trees.  I don’t know what they’re called, these palm-like things with skinny trunks and a big head, but they are certainly ubiquitous and remarkable.  It’s like you can’t figure out if L.A. is supposed to be tropical or a desert.  Green seems to be a color almost completely absent; yellow seems to be L.A.’s color. 

 Hollywood/Beverly Hills.  I went up on Wilshire, Sunset Blvd., and Hollywood Blvd.  This is clearly the “tourist” zone with the Chinese Theater, Kodak Theater, all the stuff the tourists love.   I suppose everyone has to go there, and I enjoyed it.  I liked McArthur Park, which is bisected by Wilshire over on the eastern uptown area.

 Beaches.  We went to Santa Monica (nice, upscale), Venice Beach, and Redondo Beach.  Venice is like a Grateful Dead concert parking lot turned into a permanent beachfront, with head shops and medical marijuana clinics.  Redondo Beach was nice, but we stayed on the pier and had fresh seafood.  That, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach are south of Marina Del Rey, which divides the beachfront. 

 Griffith Observatory.  For some reason this gets almost no publicity.  Its existence is acknowledged but I’ve never heard anyone insist that “if you go to L.A. you have to go here.”  But like Corcovado & Cristo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro, or the Empire State Building in NYC, it’s the highest point in the city and offers the most spectacular views.  Not only that, the observatory itself is impressive.  Although the Tesla coil was off, the exhibits, the telescope (pointed at Venus when we went there, due to look at Saturn when we were due at the airport), the pendulum, everything there really knocked me out.  And of course the view.

 South Central/Compton.  Once you leave the north part of town and start heading south, the city deteriorates dramatically.  The funky trees are still everywhere to be found, but all the buildings are run-down and grungy, and low-class taco huts begin to predominate.  I kept thinking of Cheech & Chong.