Los Angeles is a cliche incarnate.
Upon my first arrival at LAX, after a 15-hour flight via Amsterdam, I was greeted by the nonexistent skyline of a city wrapped in shrouds, the late afternoon sun dimly visible through the smog and clouds of a January sky. The air felt warm to me, having flown from a land of snow, and the wind was balmy. This was the LA of cliches, and yet it was not.
My bus took me and my legs that were trembling from tiredness and lack of sleep through Downtown to Pasadena, and all I could think of was the rythmic dunk-dunk, dunk-dunk as the tyres of the bus jumped over the seams of the concrete highway. Only in California had I heard that noise before.
The depressing Downtown skyline, seen through the smudgy bus window
The cliche goes, Los Angeles is 37 suburbs looking for a city. Well, the city is Downtown, an area populated by skyscrapers and nothing else. On that Friday afternoon, at about 5 pm, I counted eight people on foot in Downtown, and six of them looked like lost tourists.
What was I thinking? I was wondering why the fuck I had flown almost six thousand miles to see a city enamored with pink stucco, in a country where pick-up trucks with bumper stickers that read Honk If You Love Jesus are the reality, not something you see on the TV.
I was wondering where the fucking sunshine was. I was promised sunshine.
I was wondering why the fuck I had bothered to buy a map of Los Angeles. Unless you buy the LA motorist's bible, the 200-page Thomas Guide, a map of LA is the most useless thing you can have. It can never cover the entire expanse of the city, and only the biggest streets and highways can be named. Otherwise, it's just a big blob of grids going here and there.
Where the fuck was the sun???
