Los Angeles Revisted

Re-visited in my head, not in reality.

As noted in an earlier post, I had not expected to like LA, but I left it with a really good feeling. From the start of my trip, I'd wanted to add a city in California to audition, but I never actually settled on one. But having spent 4 days and nights in LA, I got a feel for the place and decided afterward to make it an audition city, although I did not explore it in the same way I explored other places.

The Chinese Theater.

I expected the people to be very snooty and plastic. And maybe there are people like that there, but most of the people I encountered were casually friendly and more down-to-earth. Two of my friends work in industries that bring them in constant contact with “the beautiful people” and they reported a mixed bag when it comes to this group: Some people are very nice and approachable, while others are used to throwing their money around and getting their way. But this isn't a group of people I expect to come in contact with much; I figure if I lived in LA, my group would be fellow professionals, maybe artists and white and pink collar workers. Plus whoever I got to know in my neighborhood, like shopkeepers, waitresses, bartenders, etc. In other words – normal people. In short, among the things that surprised me about LA was that I was not put off by the people as I expected to be.

I was also impressed by how much my friends seemed to know their neighbors. In DC, I lived in the same large apartment building for 10 years, and when I left it, I knew 3 (THREE!) people by name. When I lived in Raleigh, for example, I knew every other tenant in my 12-unit building by name, and everyone looked out for one another. So I'm on the lookout for a place where people know each others' names and look out for each other in the gentle way neighbors should. And from my limited experience there, LA seemed to be like that.

Speaking of friends, I have a handful of friends in LA. Let's say 5, and presumably I would make more friends through those friends. None of my family live there, though, and LA is very far away from them, so I'd have to plan visits to see my loved ones carefully. So, moving to LA wouldn't be the best choice in terms of maintaining most of the friendships I currently have.

Hey, there's one of my friends now!

Switching gears: I found LA to be quite beautiful. As much as I am annoyed by the sun, it sure felt nice being somewhere where the weather is always mild. Well, OK, it reached over 100 degrees one day in the middle of October, but generally, the weather is pretty constant and nice. But more than the weather, in the parts of LA I saw, people seem to take a lot of care of their homes and buildings. The architecture isn't the most stunning overall, but there is pleasing variety to the houses and apartment buildings. And things are landscaped well, kept up, and I didn't notice a lot of visual clutter. (Unlike, say, Charleston, West Virginia, which would be so pretty if they knocked down all the parking garages and billboards, and cleaned some of that junk up!) So I give LA high marks in beauty, both natural and man-made.

At The Getty.

Near the ocean.

Finally, you can't beat the variety of terrain. The city itself is flat, but it's right on the ocean in one direction and surrounded my mountains and valleys in other directions. There's a little something for every taste. Except, of course, that it is all city. There's no ability to drive, say, 30 minutes and be out in the middle of nowhere, because it's just too big.

Three things I think I'd like about LA:

• I will be warm. I don't like being cold, especially inside. While I like winter and the snow, if I am cold, I am unhappy. And sadly, being inside in winter doesn't guarantee I am warm, because that cold seeps in! And it is rarely cold in LA. (The unrelenting sun might start to bother me, though.)
• The housing selection looks like it would suit me really well. Lots of charming bungalow houses and garden-style apartments, all with lots of yard spaces and trees. And many neighborhoods are walkable. While I will probably need a car there, I don't think I'd need it for every trip, assuming I picked the right place to live. And in fact, at least one of my friends in LA does not even own a car!
• The wide variety of food to eat and things to do. LA seems to have every kind of cuisine and so many things to do.

Three things I think I'd dislike about LA:

• It is enormous. It took me about 80 minutes on a Saturday afternoon just to get out of the city. It is large in land area and population, and much of it is really crowded, especially the roads. While I expect there are a number of neighborhoods I could live and work in, and have the experience of living in a small city within a bigger metropolitan area, any time I wanted to venture out of that little bubble, it will be a hassle. Traffic, parking, waiting in lines, all of that.
• I fear – but do not know – that there is a lot superficiality and not a lot of depth. Do people read books, or just People Magazine? Do people keep fit (good) or do they obsess about their looks, spending hours each day in the gym and getting too much plastic surgery (bad)? Do people form intimate and lasting friendships, or is the friendliness mostly on the surface, like being polite to one another and knowing names, without knowing much else? I don't know if my fears are grounded in reality, but it's something I wonder.  (After writing this, but before posting it, one of my friends in LA offered the unsolicited comment that a lot of people there are "plastic" in both looks and personality.  So, it's not just me who suspects it's kind of shallow.)
• It's really far away from people I care about. That means every visit back east will take a lot of travel time and a lot of money. Spending, say, a weekend in Cleveland would be almost out of the question because it would be such a pain and expense to get there.