For those who are not aware of the geographical setup of the greater Los Angeles area, the city sprawls across a basin, surrounded by hills and mountains on the east and north and bordered on the west by the ocean. The hills eventually come to the ocean in the south; however, by that time the city has broken itself up into smaller suburbs that are by this time so far from Los Angeles that they're more likely a seperate area.
Los Angeles, in and of itself, is a vast city that exists on the northern side of the basin but is dwarfed by the large number of suburbs that sprawl seamlessly across the basin. To give an account of size, I was staying in Santa Ana, which is about thirty miles south of Los Angeles. This was not, by far, the southern most suburb, but rather was probably half-way through the southern suburbs of the LA area.
One fine day I found myself going to a baseball game in LA, and we drove up from Santa Ana to LA. Those thirty miles were a trip through some of the strangest country I've seen in awhile, and the observations following are from it.
People in LA, especially the white bourgeois, will look you in the face and tell you that LA is the greatest and most beautiful place to live. They are partially right. One hundred years ago, the Southern California area was probably a beautiful area, a desert contrasted by areas of great lush vegitation with panoramic views of the ocean from every massive hilltop. Now, it resembles nothing close to that. It is an urban wasteland; a sprawl of moderninity and a temple to consumerism that is frightening to behold.
To put it metaphorically: Los Angeles is a diseased-ridden whore, rotting teath, sagging leperous skin, exuding a stench of garbage and putrescence, but wearing a dress of silk and the golden trappings of a high-class woman. It is a gold-plated piece of shit.
As I drove up from Santa Ana, the first thing you notice is the air. Tolkien, in writing of Mordor, had LA in mind. The very air is a poison to breathe. You cannot see more than a half-mile in the air before it starts to "brown-out". The hills, on a bad day, aren't even visible, much less the down-town of the city. On a good day its like permanently looking through a cloud of dust. Except that it isn't dust - its pollution. Smog. Call it what you want, but it burns your lungs after awhile, especially if you exercise at all. And why is this?
Because there are over three million people living in the area. And that doesn't include illegal immigrants, which, from what you can see, raises the population to at least five million. Its overcrowded, to say the least, and the overcrowding leads to all the problems that existed in Middle Ages - pollution, disease, and a general feeling of claustraphobia.
But it doesn't end there. The beautiful vistas, the savage desert, the rivers; they are all gone. The vistas have been paved over and covered with squat, single-storied, back-to-back run-down homes; the desert has been removed or paved over with narrow streets and parking lots; the rivers have great cement culverts that could hold the Mississippi but never have a trickle of water in them from the lack of water due to overpopulation. You see these culverts throughout the area - once upon a time they were a necessisty to prevent flooding. Now there is no water to flood. Hell, they even put a golf course in one.
As you move into LA, you begin to notice the effects of the urban sprawl more acutely. No building exists without graffiti. If the building is empty - as is often the case - the windows are broken the graffiti more prevalent. To prevent graffiti from covering the street signs, the city has cleverly employed barbed wire, which makes you feel like you're in Beirut even more. It doesn't help that there is an aura of fear about the entire place either. Ask a white person what they fear the most and the answer is "Hispanics". Or "Gang-bangers", or something, because you can't look at someone wrong in the area without being afraid for your life. It is Beirut, or at least a Beirut in its early stages. We may not have the random bombings yet, but we do have multiple cultures that fear each other living side-by-side and the ever-present fear of violence. What a fantastic city.
But despite the militarization of the city, that doesn't prevent advertisements of every sort. Billboards on top of every building, and when they've run out of room in the skyline, they resort to the sides of buildings (which is less preferable due to the grafitti which inevitably covers the consumerism). Everything from alcohol to cigarrettes to clothing to cars is slapped in front of your face, oftentimes in the poorest of neighboorhoods. Imagine growing up in a shitty neighboorhood and seeing a picture of a Lexus and a bottle of Jim Bean every day. I'd probably buy the Jim Bean everyday and flip the picture of the Lexus off every other day.
It doesn't end there. In a vain effort to beautify the city, the officials have obviously gone out of the way to plant rather hearty strains of flowering plants wherever they could. All along the freeways, up and down buildings, bloom pink and blue flowers of amazing beauty. Imagining the area when it was a desert of colour gives you the impression that this was once a city of angels. Now however even the flowers have wrappers and trash stuck in them. Plastic bottles are lodged in every bush, broken glass embedded in every plant, and papers everywhere in between. How can flowers be thought beautiful when the glaring reality of the shoddiness of the city is everpresent?
The sad thing is, this isn't even considering the type of people that live in LA, who exist solely within their own subculture and their own little world of reality. I think I'll write an addendum to this and focus that on my own family, who tend to embody all the best and worst characteristics of the average upper middle-class snob of LA. Its a different world - and unlike what they believe - a far poorer one than the ones I'm more familiar with.
Miss Any?
Alright, we're gonna give this a shot
January 02, 2005
Let's see how badly I failed these last year
December 31, 2004
Okay, so its trendy
December 28, 2004
Its just like that asshole, Joe fucking Lieberman. Annoying and rather pointless.
December 27, 2004
Is this a typical Christmas?
December 26, 2004