Of course, one cannot discuss Los Angeles without mentioning Hollywood.
Before coming intimately acquainted with LA and its dwellers, I had never met anybody who worked in The Business - the film industry I mean, not the mafia. In Los Angeles, however, the chances are you know at least someone who knows someone famous. The six degrees of separation have diminished to two, and if not that, you sometimes manage to lunch in the table next to Tori Spelling's.
Surprisingly enough, Hollywood was the area of LA I became least enamored with. One would think that the glitz and the glamour of red carpets, movie stars, and rolling limos would be there to dazzle you, but alas, Hollywood was none of that. The infamous Walk of Fame, a few miles of pavement decorated with star-shaped plaques dedicated to starlets and celebrities, runs mostly through nondescript inner city areas full of urban decay. Closer to the heartland, Hollywood Boulevard is lined with trashy lingerie shops, souvenire stalls and a few surprises, of which the most positive was the Disney Store. Not even the new Hollywood & Highland shopping complex can manage total eradication of Hollywood's trashy underbelly.
Mann's Chinese Theatre, the heartland, ubiquitous Hollywood sight
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But Hollywood is not merely an undefined area slightly west of Downtown - it is more a legend, a concept of gigantic proportions, a vague dream that still lures innumerable people to seek out their fifteen minutes of fame.
Celluloid. That's all it is. As a personal disclaimer, I have absolutely no desire to be on the boob tube or on the big screen. It'd mean I'd have to pay attention to the way I look...actually, the only thing I'd want to have in common with the film industry is to live in Century City, one of the few places outside Downtown LA where one can live in a high-rise building, instead of the smallish detached houses that are the staple of LA's landscape. Of course, then I'd be imbued in the glitz of the business at least by proximity, but that's quite enough for me.
Many of the film studios like Universal still have the actual studios close to the city, while some have moved farther away because of high land price. They have left a mark on the city, however, making Los Angeles synonymous with the American Dream.
Universal Citywalk at Universal Studios, a safe haven blazing with
neon lights
The first time I flew to Los Angeles, I sat next to a man from Anaheim. Upon hearing that I had not been to his fair city before, when the plane landed to the smog-riddled LAX, his parting words to me were, "Welcome to the Dream Factory."
