I have been an Angeleno for about 3 years now, but since I grew up an hour outside of the city, I have been coming to L.A. for years. When I was a kid, L.A. was the largest, most amazing city in the world. Of course, this was before I would visit other countries and cities within the U.S., but back then I always knew I would end up living here. Even to this day, I still see L.A. as an exciting, romantic city full of possibilities and opportunities for anyone, no matter what their interests, passions or backgrounds may be.
However, I know now that there is also extreme poverty and hardship in may areas of the city, hidden from sight unless you go looking for it. For example, the Skid Row area of L.A. is one of the most horrendous areas I have discovered. People living in tents on the street, heroin addicts shooting up in plain sight, alcoholism and many other hardships plague the people that have found themselves here. While my original romanticized version of L.A. has changed, I still find the city beautiful, not so much physically, but more so in that there are so many different people living here together, sometimes fighting or having conflicts on a certain issue, but in the end I feel that we are all Angelenos and all came here in search of essentially the same thing: Opportunity.