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| The decor is very 60's LA, to me anyway |
In honor of my beloved neighbors who are about to move to Los Angeles I've decided to spend this summer changing my attitude. At least towards LA. This is going to be my California Summer, at least in terms of media consumption. I want to find a way to short circuit my knee-jerk east coast aversion to LA. I have been to the City of Angles once and had a wonderful time, but I still find it completely bizarre that people live there permanently. Even more strange, people are from there, born there. Shocking. Now I have typical objections to the place: the hideous car culture, all the evils of suburbia but with crime and heavy traffic; the image-twisting, confidence-sucking, competative to the point of mania-inducing machine that is Hollywood; flip flops; the birthplace of the plastic surgery epidemic; the obscene pressure to be thin; use of the phrases "Hella" and "it's all good"; fanatic California vegans; strip malls instead of main streets. But then I have a New Englander's objection too, the puritian values encoded in my DNA that make me think living somewhere that is continuously warm and beautiful is weak; it is not real life. Living through winter each year shows one's resiliance and resourcefulness. Like I said, this is deep instinctual stuff. Not pretty, not rational, certainly not kind. So I want to do some deprogramming. I'm ready for a mental journey west. I want to find a bi-coastal state of mind. Like Joan Dideon or the Beastie Boys. I think part of my prejudice stems from Hollywood's perpetuation of LA as the vapid and artificial Bimbo of world class cities. Of course there are far more positive images of LA in the collective consciousness. I want to figure out what they are and replace the ones that don't resonate with me with ones that do. I need to overwrite the images of stilletos on the hollywood stars, of a gloomy, disgruntled looking dude in a Barney suit, carrying his head as he walks through a CVS parking lot, or anything I've ever seen on The Hills.
When in LA two years and 9 months ago, I ate some of the best meals of my life, saw amazing art (Martin Kippenberger is my hero!), I saw some spectacular light (at Venice Beach, on the highway coming back from Venice beach). I hung out in a beautiful garden and ate grapes, I walked a dog in the hollywood hills, I even saw someone sorta famous. And all in the company of two of my favorite people on the planet. It was a good trip. But it seemed like a lonely place. Despite that feeling, I do now hold LA dear to my heart. During that trip, in the ladies room at Zankou Chicken, I found out I was pregnant. My daughter is about to turn two and someday I very much want to take her to LA. So in the mean time, I want to find a way to fall in love with it a little. What am I missing? I'm going to hunt out that magic in the following places. Many of these I've seen or read or heard before, but I think viewing them in succession might make the difference, help me draw parallels.
500 days of summer
The Weetzie Bat books
Dogtown and the Z-Boys
Lords of Dogtown
Rebel without a Cause
Best Coast
The Endless Summer (for surfer culture if not LA)
The Kids are Alright
A few episoides of the L word
The Big Sleep
Swingers
The Slums of Beverly Hills
The White Album (the book, not the album)
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| This is the LA in my head |
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| Tony Alva |
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