What the Red Hot Chili Peppers mean with 'californication' has little to do with fornication, and everything to do with California. It is the act of California taking over your mind. California - and more specifically, Los Angeles - sort of snuck up on me and suddenly I found myself to be addicted.
It's garish. It's polluted. It's nothing but gangland, urban decay, and violent crime. It's vain. It's ugly as sin itself, nothing but a massive parking lot for the beach (all 467 square miles of it, for those of you taking notes). That's what people who've visited Los Angeles, and sometimes even the guidebooks, tend to say. Some people are disappointed, most just baffled - and a few people, like me, see something more.
Nobody goes to Los Angeles for the first time without having fears and expectations about the nature of the city. I found that most of my pre-conceived notions were right, but I also found out that it was not the whole story, not by any stretch of mind. The guidebook Los Angeles is fictitious, a figment of its own imagination; the real city is so much more than what you'd expect, and really not just a two-dim city of celluloid.
Choose a topic from the left, or take the guided tour through the essay.
first impressions
the valley
being a beach babe
is los angeles california?
the automotive state
star studded
where is the charm?
cultural highlights