LA - Still A Mystery To Me

Yesterday I took a long bike ride after work - from Downtown Santa Monica down to the Strand all along Santa Monica and Venice Beach, around the Marina and to the continuation of the Strand towards Dockweiler Beach and LAX. I turned around before hitting Manhattan/Hermosa, etc, as it was getting dark.

But in this simple ride, looking at the all the people and topography I developed some thoughts on Los Angeles.

What makes Los Angeles a challenging place to live is the constant confrontation with what you aren't. Along the beach you are confronted with beauty, youth, money, incredible fitness - and it is thrust in your face. This confrontation is not limited to the physical - in the realm of the movie business - everyone wants to be something else - the assistant wants to be an agent, the agent wants to be a producer, the producer wants to be a writer, the writer wants to be a director, the director wants to be an actor, the actor wants to be a star, and the star wants to be L. Ron Hubbard.

This "grass is always greener" phenomenon is not unique to Los Angeles - but it is more pronounced. In high school, it is certainly natural to be a tad jealous of the prom queen or the football star. But in Los Angeles, the streets are lined with literally hundreds of women who are all ten times hotter than your high school prom queen. And the stars aren't provincial small town football studs whose glory will be over after their senior year - they are real, bonafide movie stars, music stars, sports stars. But what Los Angeles also offers, that other places cannot, is a delicate whisper into to your ear..."you might get some of this..."

Every week there is some new hot person - you see it in the newspapers - a new star every week. Or an old star making a comeback. On the smaller level, this friend of a friend who was a waitress sold their script, this friend of a friend is directing their first feature film, got signed by CAA, and so on and so forth.

This - to borrow from Nas - is the "LA state of mind." A psychological duality - on the one hand the constant, incessant reminder of what you are NOT with the seductive whisper, "but you might be someday..."

I cite the movie business because that's my world. But I think it comes from somewhere deeper in the geography of Los Angeles...I think it applies to the millions of immigrants who make their way to Los Angeles, from Mexico, Central America, Korea, Japan...Los Angeles promises something more and at the same time, through her huge billboards and highways, via Beverly Hills, fancy restaurants, designer clothes makes you feel, well, not quite part of it.

It probably applies to the gangs as well, the Mexican Mafia, and the Bloods and the Crips, young men all attracted to the possibility of rising up in that world knowing that percentage wise, you're more likely to be dead or in jail than at the top.

A lot of people hate Los Angeles. I suspect this is part of the reason. They don't like to be reminded of what they are not or what they don't have. I'm sure this is a healthy choice for many people. I don't see much use for it - psychologically speaking?

The psychological tug-o-war between what you are not vs. what you may be stimulates, I think, a lot of the behavior which is negatively associated with Los Angeles. The false bravado, the despair, the not calling back, the waiting in line for clubs and bars.

I'm reminded of all this on my bike ride because it was like a ride through completely different worlds all right next to one another sharing a similar theme.

Santa Monica is crowded with cars - fancy cars - pretty rich woman, tourists streaming from the nice hotels, bridge and tunnel crowds visiting the promonade, Mexicans traveling on the bus to work. You get down to the beach front and it is young people running around, young families, single people playing vollyball, bad soccer players playing pick up, couples biking, dorks rollerblading...you get past Santa Monica and the Pier and you hit Venice, with the goofiest homeless people strewn about, the dirty hippies, the basketball players, the immigrant kids playing handball, a few very wealthy beachfront property owners taking an evening stroll, lousy artists painting or playing music...you get into the Marina area and it's a different group - the boaters or the young couples walking, people who need a little more space until you get down to Dockweiler where they allow fires on the beach and you have little gangs or tribes of teenagers out sneaking booze in the summer, or lower middle class blacks, whites, and latinos in big groups drinking beer and tossing the football, you ride past a trailer park and there are people/families out grilling and hanging out, two dads who like to drink beer sneaking away from their families to chat, young girls giggling together, a group of thugs taking up the whole walkway daring someone to utter a complaint. In the background are smoke stacks, oil rigs, and airplanes at LAX. It's the beach, but it's industrial - and the furthest thing from the private beaches of Malibu one can imagine...yet you could bike there in a couple of hours or so.

On my way home I stopped at Chipotle, which is delicious.