...a fractured city. It is both everything and nothing; simultaneously what every other city aspires to be and toils to avoid becoming. Los Angeles has all of the cultural diversity of New York or Paris, yet is scattered and often times unaccessible without some sort of planning and forethought. Nothing happens spontaneously outside of the small urban pockets that harbor the varied and diverse residents of the City of Angels.
The saddest and most disheartening realization I have come to in my six years living out here is that traffic is now officially worse on the weekends than on the weekdays: a phenomenon that defies logic. This vast, sprawling metropolis of 20 million people lay in pieces...the shattered remnants of a modern urban planning experiment gone awry. What was once a bastion of industrialization and a symbol of human interaction via the freedom afforded by the automobile is now bursting at the seams on both highways and surface streets. Whereas the destinations of the working population are varied, those of the recreational variety are more centralized, making certain stretches of freeway virtually impassable (and intolerable) at certain times on a Saturday or Sunday.
For many bright-eyed transplants, Los Angeles represents their own personal Manifest Destiny. It is the inevitable personification of their hopes and dreams, complete with sunshine in January and the bottled up optimism of someone who has just beaten cancer. But once the initial, glitzy allure fades, one is left searching for the slightly less obvious cultural elements any conscientious city-dweller yearns for. Though they are easy to track down, they are consistently and frustratingly out of reach.
I have never been to the San Pedro fish market, the Long Beach aquarium, or the original Getty House. I have only been to the Norton Simon, the new Getty, the Hammer, LACMA, and the downtown MOCA once each. Manhattan, Redondo, and Hermosa are all within reach distance-wise, but oh-so-far-away when piloting a car.
Perhaps my anti-traffic angst has transformed into a lazy, self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. I'm sure many in LA fall victim to the same trap. This is ultimately why I look forward to a career in journalism with the utmost and sincerest eagerness. I am excited at the prospect of exploring this city during the week and as my primary, wage-earning responsibility. I hope - among many other things - that it will unlock all I think I have been missing in LA, plus so much more.