Dear LA,
You are horrible.
You are known for your beaches, but they’re toxic. You’re known for the sun, but whenever anyone visits, you rain.
You are overpriced cocktails and bar-hopping nights completely devoid of serendipity. You are long lines outside of trendy bars where the music is too loud to talk, and the only place that someone can end up on a mansion balcony, reconsidering their career as they overlook an entire city.
You are an echo chamber reverberating with inane self-obsession, but my friends’ parents watch The Other Two instead of Fox News.
You are home to the worst airport in the entire world, and there is no truer joy than escaping its clutches and succumbing to the siren song of the In-N-Out around the corner.
Your roads are impossibly congested, your highways more like parking lots for hours at a time, which means that when I drive home at 1am, it feels like I am flying.
You are dead and brown and barren most of the time, which means that I never take it for granted when you’re green. I love to see you born again - even that old grump the 405 grinning and verdant, stretching its arms after a long nap, humming tunelessly.
You are so big, so sprawling, so unmappable, and I will never fully learn you. If someone says “you know that Thai place, the kinda famous one,” they could mean several places. Do you know how lovely that is?
Forget I asked that. I hate you.
You are the land of crushed dreams, of bartenders with BFAs, of unwatched self-tapes and unclicked vimeo links and unopened substacks. But you are also the land of palm tree alamedas, of complimentary Sugarfish, of shiny hair and perseverance, of Covered California.
You are the worst city for any tourist seeking culture, and you’re not allowed to tell anyone that I still smile and point every time I see the Hollywood Sign.
You are sectioned by tall hedges and iron gates, neighborhood solidarity killed before it’s even hatched out of the egg, but sometimes I find myself in a parking lot in Burbank and realize the mountains - purple, like in the song - are embracing me.
You are the only place where 55 degrees is so so so cold. You are the only place with both street tacos and WiSpa.
You are dull, jaded eyes, and bright, starry eyes. You are the place that plucked the stars from the night sky and placed them on Hollywood Boulevard.
You are my golden handcuffs, my too-tight swaddle, my house of cards that’s listed for 1.75m, despite having no bathrooms and being made of cards.
You are awful. You are isolating and expensive and superficial and manic and the only place that is home.
Living in you is difficult, but living without you is impossible. There are no sunsets like yours.
<3