May 2002 - Three Introductions: Part I

The first time I was in LA I came by car, in the dark. My ten months in Portland, Oregon had been a lonely adventure. So I packed my belongings (in orange milk crates) into a recently purchased 1984 Honda Accord hatchback (dark red with a red interior) and rolled into a solo roadtrip back to Sweet Home Chicago.

After brief stays in Palo Alto and San Francisco, I stayed with a very recently graduated Reed student, Valentina, someone I'd met in Portland. She was living with her mom in Huntington Beach until she figured out what to do next. I was not at all charmed by the rows of identical housing complexes, or the large smoggy highways along the water, or the neon-saturated shopping district nearby. But I was impressed by the cheap taco stands with fresh avocado and tomato in their veggie tacos, and by Thousand Steps Beach, a magically tucked-away spot where Valentina and I burnt ourselves purple.

After lazing around for a few days at the beach, in the apartment complex's pool, at taco stands, I was feeling pretty positive on LA. Going out for Indian with the ex-boyfriend of a college friend, in Silverlake, cemented my impression of LA as a city where vegetarian hippie-types could live comfortably. Sure, there were huge billboards advertising plastic surgeons, and sure, that Hollywood sign loomed whitely in the hills, but it was a big city. It felt like there was room for people who had no interest whatsoever in trafficking image.

I liked it.

After that first visit, I actually liked it better than San Francisco: It seemed less pretentious. In LA they made no bones about the fact that image is a huge industry there--but in San Francisco, everyone pretends they're naturally beautiful. Like their washboard stomachs come from superior genetics, and their pastel houses paint themselves. LA felt less snooty by dint of being more blatant--and by dint of being a bigger city, a world-class city, a city with many industries and many faces.

In my journal, I wrote "It has more grit; feels more approachable/less intimidating than SF to me. I could imagine living here more than SF, I think."

I left LA by car, in the dark. With a belly full of Indian food, I drove through the night into the desert, in my little red car, in search of the Grand Canyon.