My Life in LA, Part II, What Makes LA, LA

Some of the things that, to me, make LA, LA.

Roach Coaches

You can find a good New York Pizza in LA but it ain’t easy. On the other hand, some pretty decent Mexican food can find you if you wait around long enough. They’re called roach coaches, step vans converted to mobile kitchens of questionable sanitation and occasionally exceptional tacos. They show up at work sites, industrial parks and office parking lots blowing their distinctive horns to summon hungry, mostly Mexican folks out of the woodwork. 

 

Mexican Food

Like Superman on Krypton, in New York (state) I was always a culinary weakling. I was always getting yucky pickles and mustard kicked in my face at the delis and sub shops. Here in Mexican-food friendly LA my tongue has superhuman strength. When asked what I want on my burrito, I puff up my chest, sweep my cape off my shoulders, place my hands on my hips and bravely say “everything!”.

My victory is short-lived because whenever folks who speak English as a second language call out my name with my order, it’s always “Jo-el”, in my book, a girls name.

Celebrities

It’s not terribly often that I see celebrities out and about (not counting my work on studio lots— as I write this I’m sitting across the stage from three people you would surely recognize). I don’t go to the same clubs (or any clubs), I don’t frequent the boutiques on Robertson and Beverly Boulevards and I can’t see through tinted glass. It does happen though that I see someone in real life that I recognize from the screen. When it does it’s usually someone I can’t place right away. Weeks or months will go by until it hits me what movie or show I’ve seen them in. In my experience New York City is a much better place to seen big celebs walking down the street.

If one were inclined to actively hunt celebs in LA they aren’t too hard to find if you know where to look. I’m just not the right guy to ask.

Freeways

Freeways are a way of life everywhere in the US. In LA however they are a way of life the way that breathing or eating is. Directions are often given as a series of freeway exchanges. Every one of the twenty or so freeways in LA have a word name—The San Diego Freeway, The Pomona Freeway, The Hollywood Freeway—in casual conversation however, only the number followed by “the” are used: “Take the 118 to the 5 to the 170 to the 10 to the 710.

Driving and Traffic

LA is a big city and drivers in-general are bound to be more aggressive (read rude) than say, Minot North Dakota. Add to this the narcissism of the Beemer driving Hollywood types that actually believe they own the road and ‘what the hell are you doing on it?’ However, compared to Eastern big cities, car culture prevails in LA and the average person understands that they will need a break themselves at some point and are surprisingly likely to give you one when you need it. It also seems that, at least most people are aware that excessive laying on the horn accomplishes little and has, on rare occasions, gotten people shot in LA.

Traffic can be a major pain. People work around it in a variety of ways. One is to time your trips if possible to avoid the major rush hours. The result of this is that the freeways can be moderately busy at any hour of the day and construction is typical at night so delays are possible at 3AM too. When it comes to surface streets everyone in LA has their secret short cut. I have mine, but I’ll never talk!

People who commute from thirty or more miles from where they work have to spend hours looking at taillights every day. Radio, books-on-tape and blue tooth earpieces are their survival tools. In reality I’m sure there are a lot of folks texting and watching DVDs illegally.

The only things that bugs me about LA drivers in general is that they seem to have an aversion to using turn signals and if it’s raining, some of them loose there minds and start driving like little old ladies in a blizzard.

Car Chases

LA has no NFL team. That’s okay, our spectator sport of choice is the police car chase. It’s wrong to make someone’s flee from justice some form of Romanesque entertainment and wrong to encourage these fifteen minute celebrities into this ultimate attention-seeking behavior but reserve judgment until you’ve lived here and been sucked into the vortex of a police car chase yourself. 

It’s positively electrifying! This is not because of action—it is minute-to-minute one of the most mind numbingly boring things you’ll ever see, coupled with the inane improv the news folks offer as color/commentary—it is the potential of seeing some spectacular crash or wacked-out behavior in real-time that keeps your eyes glued to the screen and surfing the other channels for the best angle. Even cooler is seeing a chase enter your neighborhood and splitting your time between the screen and watching the fleet of helicopters out your window.

I never thought I would be the type to engage in such behavior but I’ve spent many happy hours riveted to these lo-brow spectacles.

It’s actually been a while since I watched a car chase. Did they go out of vogue when I wasn’t paying attention or have I just been away from the TV that much?

Helicopters and The Homeless

Why did I lump these in together? Alliteration aside, there are lots of both and they mostly go in circles.

Oh I'm terrible!

Four times in my time in LA have I had a police helicopter briefly shine its powerful “Night Sun” light in my bedroom window. LAPD, I once read, operates 9 aircraft from the top level of their downtown parking garage. Living near Sunset boulevard and not too far from the Sunset Strip it’s not unusual to hear a “ghetto bird” as they’re sometimes called, circling above some sort of police action on the ground, usually a high flight risk traffic stop.

I can tell police helicopters from news helicopters by ear. It's easy: news helicopters often hover in one spot, ghetto birds circle continuously for tactical reasons. One can also tell how sensational the news being covered is by the number of news aircraft parked in the sky.

The last figure I heard about the homeless around five years ago was that there were ninety thousand of them in LA. In my own personal experience it seems as though I see less sleeping bags and shopping carts on the sidewalks of Hollywood these days. I did have to run around someone sleeping on the sidewalk a couple of weeks ago. I see just as many if not more people with signs at intersections asking for money or work these days. There is controversy over how to deal with these folks and how many of them have nice cars parked around the corner.

The mild weather and politics as well as the allure of Hollywood have been attributed to attracting homeless people (and perhaps also the helicopters) to the area.

Weather

My old joke (and getting older all the time) about LA vs. Upstate NY weather is that the day I arrived in LA I looked up and said. “Wow, look at that, the clouds are all blue!”

It’s true that the skies in LA are almost always void of clouds. The exceptions to this near ‘rule’ are often before 10AM as morning overcast skies and occasional fog are ‘burned off’ by the sun. Summers are a good deal hazier than winters. Ironically, June, the month that in New York has the most California-like weather, has a reputation in LA for being the opposite. “June gloom” it’s known as. This is something I didn’t notice myself until I heard it talked about. The definition of “gloom” here compared to the standards of anyone from Upstate New York or the Pacific Northwest is a little laughable.

Statistically, LA gets around 40 days a year that yield some rain. I always enjoy these days because of the variety and the resulting old-home coziness that is rare in LA. I may go close to a year without seeing any lightning or hearing any thunder.

Once, Audra and I pulled back the curtains sat awake in bed in the wee hours of the morning to enjoy a rare thunderstorm that had awoken us.

Temperature fluctuation is less of a month to month phenomenon as it is a day to night phenomenon. This is effectively a desert and nearly every night year round dips into the 60s or lower. The overall temperature does vary over the year and weather reports sometimes actually include snow, which is reported by altitude more than by region.

Seasons

I was under the mistaken impression before I moved to Southern California that it has no seasons. There are indeed four seasons: Drought, Wild Fire, Mudslide and Earthquake.

Waiting for laugh track to die down…

Maybe I haven’t lived in LA long enough to feel as though there are real seasons as my native Californian wife insists there are. It’s a little cooler in the winter, a little warmer in the summer (unless you live in the San Fernando Valley where it’s always about ten degrees hotter), there’s a week or two of rain in February and there are six trees in Beverly Hills whose leaves turn brown and fall off for about a week in January.

To me a season must apparent in a photograph. Take an outdoor picture in LA, show it to someone and ask them when it was taken.

“Daytime” they’ll tell you.

Earthquakes

My first significant quake in California was over eleven years ago. Late at night the sliding closet doors began to rattle. I thought it was the cats playing but as I armed myself with a shoe the sound increased and I could feel the bed moving up and down and side to side.

Though it was undeniable what was happening I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. I felt a kind of all-consuming fear I had never experienced before. There was a force that was moving me, the room, the building and the entire city of Los Angeles. It’s one thing to understand scientifically, it’s quite another to confront it and feel it, not knowing how strong it will get and how long it will last.

Every quake I’ve experienced after that I’ve felt that primal fear less and less. The last quake I felt I was pretty non-chalant about.


There are some quakes that no one is nonchalant about. I did not live here during the big Northridge Quake in ‘94 but I know many people who were.

One friend of mine was trying to get out of bed during the quake only to have the wall next to the bed lunge at him and knock him back down each time he made it to his feet. They say entire city was a chorus of car alarms and fires broke out all over the Valley.

The one thing everyone says about that quake is how they thought it would never end. The violent shaking lasted for 45 seconds. I can assure you this is an eternity in earthquake time.

I would love to hear more Northridge stories from my LA friends or anything about LA you feel I’ve neglected/misrepresented, in comments here or on Facebook.

Droughts, Wildfires & Mudslides

I joked about the seasons but these three disasters really are seasonal. One leads to another in a cycle; the summer droughts dry the fuel (plants and bushes) for the fall wildfires and the bare patches of land left by the fires can cause winter mudslides when the rains come. The same rains that cause the slides also cause accelerated growth in the plant life which creates more dry fuel for the following season’s fires.

This cycle was going on thousands of years before anyone lived here. Early explorers referred to the LA basin as the valley of smoke.

The fires get lots of live news coverage as well which are technically more exciting to watch but somehow don’t have the addictive quality of car chases.

You can be fined for failing to clear brush from around your home in LA County.

Classic Cars

It’s no accident that so many of what I list here has to do with driving and cars. LA is cars and freeways, boulevards and parking lots. There are more registered cars in Los Angeles than men women and children.

In Upstate New York, where I’m from, there are classic cars. If you’re lucky you can see them out for a drive on Sunday afternoons in the summer or on their way to a car show on a trailer. Only a serious collector or enthusiast with a large garage or barn would attempt such a hobby. In LA however many classic cars are on the street and driven by regular folks as their everyday cars. There’s no salt on the roads to eat them away and there’s a world of inexpensive spare parts available. I work with a guy who drives to work in a 1970 Volkswagen Beetle. He bought it new!

There used to be a ‘60s Rolls Royce parked on the street in my neighborhood. Apparently the locks were broken because the owner kept a padlock and chain between the front and rear door handles (the handles met in the middle). You don’t have to wait around too long before you will see some amazing high-end exotic cars and one-of-a kind custom freak jobs too.

Only four, or so, miles from where I live is the Peterson Museum. A large privately owned museum dedicated exclusively to… you guessed it: cars.

Los Angeles is something different to every person that experiences it. This is just my little corner. We are among the first to poke fun at ourselves but we know that because there’s something for everyone to hate about LA, there’s also something for everyone to love.

Next week Life in LA, Part III, My Neighborhood