Eternal Return in L.A.

Like any big city, Los Angeles is full of surprises and odd corners. In a way, I think that's what drew me to big city life, the need for a sense of possibilities that don't exist in a smaller town. I remember a time when I would spend my Friday evenings endlessly driving around Lexington, mostly in the suburbs, with the radio on. I think what I was really looking for was something I hadn't seen before, a street I had never driven down, a house I had never seen, something, anything that seemed new and unexpected.

There can be something comforting in the familiar, but too much of it leads to boredom. Somebody said to me once that after moving to a much smaller town, she realized you didn't really need to have a million choices of where to shop for groceries or go to get coffee, but I don't agree. I think that some people do need variety to thrive and that most of those people are in cities. I remember coming out of a cafe in Paris once and thinking that part of that city's magic was the sense that you never knew what you might find around any corner; the air itself was alive with potentialities.

It's true that different cities have different personalities and offer varying degrees of this sense of openness. I have been in some cities that, while offering a variety of things to do and places to go, somehow seemed like larger versions of smaller towns. There was something quotidian about them, and this isn't a put-down, just an observation. Los Angeles isn't like that. While there is a certain quality that lets you know, yes, this is definitely L.A., no matter where you are, neighborhoods do offer distinctly different faces, and I've always had the sense that it would be important to figure out which part of town you want to be in.

There is a practical aspect to this, of course, because most people have to consider such things as commute distances and school districts and may not end up living precisely where they would go if they consulted their own wishes. I was once having lunch in a Silver Lake cafe on what may have been my first visit to that neighborhood when I noticed a young man at a nearby table observing me closely. It was not an unfriendly or threatening look but more of a keenly observing one, and combined with the fact that he had a notebook, gave me the idea that he might be a writer (I've been known to jot down notes about random people and events in just that same way).

I may be wrong, but my take on it was that I somehow looked out of place in that particular setting, and that that was what caught his eye: "Ah, I wonder what this very conventional, Middle America woman is doing in this hipster Silver Lake hangout so far off the tourist track? What possible combination of events could have brought her here? This could be a good story." (I made a mental note at that time that toning down the Lands End aspect of my wardrobe might be something to consider.) It was the first time I had a sense of myself as possibly looking exotic to someone else, and while amusing (if I was right about what was happening), it wasn't exactly pleasing. I'm not a hipster, but I'm not a soccer mom either. (And what is that, anyway?)

I wasn't drawn to Santa Monica in my first visits there, but I gradually ended up believing that that was probably where I would gravitate if I moved to L.A. It seemed clean and safe, if perhaps a little bland and a touch snobby. But then I had a bad experience on my last visit there (a hotel door that didn't lock properly, stuck in a remote corner of the property, so alarming that I immediately went down to the desk and told them I'd changed my mind about staying there). While it was all very unsettling (and mysterious), perhaps it was good that it happened. It made me realize that maybe Santa Monica wasn't the place for me, if something as simple as a securely locked door was so difficult to come by there.

When I first visited some of the neighborhoods east of the 405, I found them to be a bit edgy for my taste. I couldn't imagine feeling safe there. Now I find them more appealing and less threatening than they once seemed. Have the neighborhoods changed, or have I? Maybe it's some of both. Even Los Feliz, which three weeks ago seemed rather grubby, revealed itself to have possibilities when I explored it more thoroughly. Sometimes going a few blocks in a different direction makes a difference. I find that I'm drawn neither to the hipster hangouts nor the yuppie ones. I look for something that seems only to be trying to be itself, which really means a lack of trying, if you think about it.

Despite the pressure of adjusting to a new place and achieving secure footing professionally and financially, I still see the soul of Los Angeles peeking out at me at certain times and places, usually unlooked for: the slant of light through the windows in Union Station; a halting conversation in Spanish in which I nevertheless managed to convey my meaning (I think); a piece of art in a Metro station illustrating the constellations; a beautifully crafted latte in an unpretentious setting; a smile from a stranger; an early evening walk around the lotus pond in Echo Park, a public space that actually seems to live up to its function; a dignified older building suddenly glimpsed in a quiet corner at the end of a walkway; a taco at Grand Central Market (I plead guilty to getting the mild sauce); a doorman dressed as an American soldier, circa World War II, materializing suddenly at the door of the Vista Theatre; a sudden urge to tap dance (if I only knew how) while waiting for a train; branches alive with brightly colored blooms hanging over a wall; and a mural on the side of a building, studied while waiting for a traffic light, hitting me with the force of a dream, a visual poem that I could not unravel but that spoke to me deeply.

While it's obviously a very modern and trend-setting city, Los Angeles seems, at the same time, to be somehow very old to me. Its history is alive in its place names and in many of its public places, and its function as the backdrop to countless Hollywood movies and television shows means that once you arrive here, you find that it already seems strangely familiar, since the reality corresponds to a city already existing in your imagination. The predominance of Googie and other architecture from the mid-20th century also resonates with me personally, since it hearkens back to my early childhood when that style was much in evidence. There are moments when I feel that I've fallen into a time machine, and past, present, and future are all on display at once.

While being very "of the moment," Los Angeles also reveals a layer of mythic time that runs through everything else and seems tied to something much older than even recorded history. You don't need to look any further than the fossils at the La Brea tar pits if you want physical evidence of this, but it's also apparent in the creative life of the city, in the murals and the public art, in the films that are one of the city's signature products--both creating and reflecting the myths and dreams of our culture--and in the infrastructure itself. I'm surprised to find myself concluding that Los Angeles is similar to Boston in this characteristic of past and present being very visibly on display side by side. I've always considered Boston to be an extremely graceful example of this historical layering, whereas in L.A. it seems more chaotic. Nevertheless, though it may surprise you to hear me say this, L.A. seems in many ways to be the more ancient city of the two.

Genius Loci

As a follow-up to last week's post about Rebecca Solnit's book on the anthropology of walking, I should mention that I went out of my usual bounds today to take a short walk downtown. I used to work downtown, and its streets, buildings, cafes, and sidewalks were a part of everyday life, but I rarely have reason to go there anymore. I was only there today because I needed to go to the library on an errand and decided it would be easiest to go to the main branch. I was struck by how little downtown felt like a "hometown" any more, in any sense of the word. I almost had the feeling that I had been living elsewhere and dropped in for a visit after an absence of several years--that's how alien it felt. And yet I've been here all along.

There have been many, many changes downtown over the years; I'm old enough to remember "Urban Renewal," and even before that, what the city looked like when it still had department stores on Main Street. I have nothing against shopping malls per se, but I do think the decline of downtown areas as principal shopping districts has had a bad effect on many communities that they have spent years trying to compensate for. In many cases, "downtown" is still the principal business district and offers such diversions as restaurants, museums, and nightclubs--such is the case here. But the changes I felt were more subtle than the coming and going of a business, the resurfacing of a street, or the introduction of a new parking lot. The soul of the place seemed to have leaked out somehow.

It looks much the same now as it did when I was down there every weekday, but it felt foreign to me. Of course, you have a major problem any time the center of your downtown district has, literally, a hole in it. Directly across from the library is a huge pit in the ground that takes up an entire block, the result of a stalled construction project that began a number of years ago, when I still worked downtown, in fact. Why would any city, especially one with such pride in its historic districts and one-time reputation as the "Athens of the West," allow such a gaping hole to exist for years at a time in one of the most visible spots in the entire city? Good question.

Some people regarded the long-existing buildings on the block before demolition as eyesores; others saw them as treasures. I remember trying to frame what was happening during the initial controversy over the project, a proposed multi-story hotel, in mythological terms. Certainly it seemed that two diametrically opposed forces were at work, one that valued the old and one that championed the new, a sort of clash of the Titans. Regardless of the merits of the project itself and who was right and who was wrong about its benefits and costs, it's tough to argue that having what looks like a rock quarry in the middle of Main Street is an improvement over what was there before. It gives downtown an air of neglect.

I can remember when it was fun to walk around and notice little things, a pocket garden here, a public art project there, something in a store window that caught the eye. A public art project called "Horse Mania" once transformed the streets into an outdoor sculpture garden with creativity and imagination on display at every turn--who would have thought there were so many ways to interpret the basic form of a fiberglass horse? Another project involved the installation of doors recovered from a demolished housing project that had been transformed into works of art--pure genius.

When I looked around today, I noticed a couple of sad-looking murals, neither one of which did much to appeal to either the eye or the heart. I actually stopped and asked a parking lot attendant who had painted the mural of the somewhat demented-looking elvish creatures presiding over one corner. He couldn't tell me. Any city that allows something like that to pass for art needs a bit of shaking up, if you ask me, and you didn't, but I'll tell you anyway. No amount of Thursday Night Lives or Gallery Hops is going to cover up something like that. Why is it even there?

It seems to me that the genius loci of our town is either missing in action, falling down on the job, or has something else in mind. If that's what passes for progress, I guess I'll stick to the suburbs. They're only marginally better, but at least there's no risk of stepping off the sidewalk and falling into a chasm that could lead, who knows, right into the center of the earth. I mean, it's a really big hole.