I've
been wanting to make a trip to Los Angeles my whole life - well, at
least since I was a child. At 2 years old, I probably wasn't thinking,
"I should travel to other cities to experience diverse domestic cultures
within the USA."
I
flew in on Virgin America. Which, if you haven't flown Virgin, you have
to try it just for the sake of how modern and edgy they are. I did a
whole lot of "ooooh" and "ahhhh," but in hindsight, it was all kinda
gimmicky. The instructions came in a video via musical ensemble from
classical and electronic to pop and hip hop. I recorded some of it, but I
don't wanna get hit with some copyright BS to appease my 2 readers
(Sorry, Dad...).
As
soon as the plane touched down, I felt home (yes, in that very cheesy
way). Los Angeles has everything I would ever need to do. Every
opportunity is there creatively, comedically, academically, etc. Looking
at jobs in the area, there's everything. To put that in perspective, if
you want a job in Grand Rapids, MI, there are about 4 main employers
that will pop up, and then a bunch of BS "marketing" companies. I love
Grand Rapids, but for what I'm trying to do, work is sparse. It also
lacks diversity. Los Angeles has so much diversity. I had never seen a
homeless Asian man until LA. I was beginning to think they were immune
to bankruptcy (not really, but wouldn't that be nice?). The areas of the
city were diverse in culture too. Santa Monica and Venice Beach are
neighbors, but they have different vibes. Hollywood, East LA, Downtown -
they all have different vibes. So a change of scenery and vibes is easy to find. I came up with a list of four things I now know about LA for certain that I didn't necessarily comprehend well before the trip. I present to you, the list:
1.) Los Angeles is massive.
People
told me that, but I never really understood it. I consider Chicago a
big city. Chicago is about 234 square miles. Los Angeles is more than
double the size of Chicago, at 503 square miles. If you're on one side
of LA and someone says, "Hey, I'm in LA too! We should meet up." There's
a chance that they could be an hour away, and traffic doesn't help.
Which leads me to #2.
2.) Traffic is as bad as people say it is.
One
friend explained it as, "If you need to go anywhere between 4pm and
8pm, forget about it." And the mornings were a similar 4 hour block.
And lunch time is shit. Basically, it's all shit. Not to mention
California is home to one of the oldest highways in the nation's
history. Why does this matter? Many highway exits are made for cars that
top out at 40Mph. There is not always a long strip of road where you
can safely slowdown from 75 (more realistically 90) Mph. You can blink
and mix your exit, essentially. So when people have to take those exits up ahead of you,
it becomes a huge inconvenience to everyone behind them. LA's public
transit system exists, but is nothing stellar. It's a bus line. (And the
drivers don't like to be bothered with stupid questions either, like
"Is that blood?")
3.) Pollution is worse than people say it is.
I
never knew what smog was until I got to LA. I heard the word, but couldn't distinguish between heavy fog and smog. I've been to major cities
and saw a bit of dirty haze, but what I witnessed in LA was could only
be defined by that ugly four letter word: SMOG. The streets are as dirty
as most other big cities, with the addition of shopping carts no where
near the store they came from. Because the city is so stretched out,
there is a lot of trash just along the streets that goes on for miles.
In West LA, parking was a bit of a pain because you had to move for
street sweepers. I don't know that street sweepers exist in other parts
of LA. If so, the population is out of control and the sweepers can't
keep up with the Jack In A Box wrappers.
4.) No one warns you about the homelessness.
No
one prepares you, nor could they! Homelessness in most other parts of
the country is defined by people that are without homes. Homelessness in
LA is the reason people walk along the edge of the sidewalk in fear of
being stabbed. Mental illness and addiction was prevalent. With the
glaring looks of one chattering teeth hobo here and the scream at the
sky but laugh maniacally at the ground hobo there, LA proved itself to be a mecca
for anyone with a tent and horrible decisions for tattoo
placement (Sorry forehead tattoo hobo. Nothing personal.).
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| Hey! Look! It's Chris Pratt! Everybody lose your minds! |
There was also
something kinda liberating about having no previous ties to the city.
There's that feeling in the neighborhood you grow up in like, "There's
that fire hydrant we used to play around as a kid" or "There's where
that wooden bridge used to be, before we accidentally burned it down."
(that's a true story, but now is not the time for tangents.) The point
is, I didn't have those anchors and I felt completely free of all
obligations. I could just do stuff. I was there for over a month and did everything from acting
and comedy to attending underground social functions and exploring all over the city. I also stumbled upon a few movie shoots during my jogs, and the premiere for Jurassic World - I thought it sucked (The movie, I mean. Premiere was cool.).
I've been to 46 of the 50 states (as in been there for a couple days at least), and Los Angeles is the greatest city I've ever been to overall (Do I really need to say in my opinion for people to know that?). I'll share more about specific adventures in later posts for the sake of brevity. I can't believe you read this whole thing...thanks?
All jokes aside,
Dejay Patson
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| #BreakfastSelfie |
