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Marina Del Rey:
Venice:
Catalina Island:
Hollywood / Santa Monica / Century City:
Sara: Roland thinks L.A. is a place for the brain-dead. He says, if you turned off the sprinklers, it would turn into a desert. But I think - I don't know, it's not what I expected. It's a place where they've taken a desert and turned it into their dreams. I've seen a lot of L.A. and I think it's also a place of secrets: secret houses, secret lives, secret pleasures. And no one is looking to the outside for verification that what they're doing is all right. So what do you say, Roland?
Roland: I still say it's a place for the brain-dead.
Although I had been to L.A. proper twice before (1999 and 2009; this does not count my 1994 trip to my cousin Ben's wedding in La Puente as we never spent any time in the city itself), which had given me the impression of Los Angeles as a gargantuan shithole, this visit definitely put it into a new context for me, and from many angles: 1) It's now a potential home for Shobhit, much more likely now than before; 2) I now have fourteen visits to New York to give it comparison to the one other major American city that matches -- and even exceeds -- its iconic status worldwide; 3) I spent time in some surprisingly nice areas of the city: Marina Del Rey (actually unincorporated, but still surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles; the other side being the Pacific Ocean), Venice (actually part of L.A. proper), Santa Monica (actually its own city -- of nearly 90,000 -- bordering L.A.), Century City (actually part of L.A. proper), West Hollywood (actually its own city -- of over 34,000 -- surrounded on all sides by the city of L.A., just as is Beverly Hills), and Hollywood (which is a district of Los Angeles proper).
Hollywood itself didn't strike me as grimy as it did when I visited both in 2009 and 1999, though that could have to do with the fact that our time there was limited exclusively to the Kodak Theatre complex. We went there on Monday, and were only there long enough to tour the Kodak Theatre (which was fantastic and I totally recommend it, especially if you're a AAA member as their discount is 33%!) and then have lunch at the neighboring Hard Rock Café (which was shockingly delicious).
On the whole, the visit was very pleasant, and actually kind of worked to temper my loathing for L.A. The place is so gigantic, after all, that there are nice areas if you just know how to find them. Marina Del Rey turned out to be pretty nice, and I really loved Venice -- both its Historic Canal District and its Boardwalk. In my photo sets separated by area location (for the purposes of keeping the L.A.-specific photos in my historical Los Angeles trips gallery, I also have those photos duplicated into a single Los Angeles, July 2011 set, which excludes the Catalina Island photos), Venice ended up with by far the most pictures taken. I guess that's a pretty good indicator of what my favorite area was.
I still hate the idea of moving there, for two reasons that still remain significant to me: the car culture; and the monotonous weather. Of course, there's also the fact that I remain head-over-heels in love with Seattle and L.A. is so not Seattle. It's so not New York, either, though -- in many ways, it occurred to me, it's like the anti-New York. I get the feeling a lot of New Yorkers go there just to get away from the hustle and bustle of The City. L.A., even at nearly 4 million people, does not feel like capital-lettered The City, simply by virtue of its vast sprawl. (I mention frequently how Los Angeles has half the population of New York in 1.5 times the space. It has 27% the population density. It does have slightly higher density than Seattle though.) Even San Francisco feels much more like The City than L.A. does; indeed, both San Francisco and New York have regional colloquialisms referring to them as "The City" by people in surrounding areas, and L.A. does not.
So: everything in L.A. is far away from everything else and takes forever to get to. When I was walking around the canals in Venice, I found myself thinking it was so pretty there that I could probably learn to live in one of those, probably insanely expensive homes. Should Shobhit move to L.A., though -- and it's looking increasingly likely he will, and I mean, by the end of August -- he'll never live in Venice, as it's too far from where all his auditions would be. He's thinking West Hollywood, which is the most central to all places with auditions going on: people who know who he's spoken to say it takes roughly 45 minutes from there to everywhere he'd need to be. Were he to live in, say, Burbank, then he'd be really close to the auditions there -- but over an hour away from all the other places. Given that West Hollywood is the gay area (41% gay or bisexual men, apparently -- that's a higher proportion than San Francisco), Shobhit's thrilled with it being the most ideal place for him to be.
It seems a ton of people don't even realize Los Angeles actually has a subway/metro rail system (I informed Jennifer this morning), nearly all of which branches out from downtown. There are five subway lines, which, although clearly better than, say, Seattle, is pretty pathetic for a city the size of L.A., both in terms of population and geography. Also, much like what happens in Seattle with most of its bus lines, in many cases you can't get from one area to another without having to go downtown first, even though going downtown means going rather far out of your way.
Thus: mass transit in Los Angeles is tedious at best and awful at worst. If I ever had to move there, I'd still be pretty hell bent on proving it's possible to live without a car (especially when your partner has one!), but it would still take a long time to get anywhere -- which is the case even in cars. New York is known for being teeming with people; L.A. is teeming with cars -- on the side streets, on the countless interstates (at all times of the day!), everywhere. Although I will admit that I drove the rental car for the first time yesterday and I did find it less stressful than when I had to drive in Manhattan. And I even drove on the "Carmageddon" 405.
These aren't going to be concerns of Shobhit's. As of yesterday he was talking about flying back to Seattle with me after my visit to New York late next month -- which is already booked -- and then driving the car down to L.A. This will leave me with having to either use the bus for my biweekly grocery shopping (I'd rather not, when I average 3-4 bags each time anymore, and, yes, I'd have to transfer downtown!) or renting a Zipcar every time (more expensive but fairly easily done).
And in spite of my opening up slightly more to L.A. after this visit, there's still the fact that I only recently become open to the idea of moving to New York. I'd never say it's impossible, but my openness to the idea of leaving Seattle diminished significantly once Shobhit living in L.A. became likely. That said, the city being in my same time zone will make visits much easier, as will the fact that the flights are half as long (although door to door is still a minimum 6-hour affair, what with transit to/from the airport and security lines, etc). Shobhit and I were dreaming of a scenario in which he was making enough money acting in L.A. to pay for me to visit every single weekend, which honestly I do think I could live with. I couldn't do that in New York, but L.A. I could -- especially if it meant I didn't have to leave Seattle, which I really, really don't want to do.
But I truly believe Shobhit has real potential in L.A. Between movies, theatre and TV, television is the only medium notably making use of diverse actors. And it was certainly promising that this ActorMarathon thing landed him two meetings and an audition yesterday -- I drove the rental car back myself and he bused back to the airport after his second meeting. I think his greatest potential is as a character actor, not likely making millions per project but getting steady enough work to make a decent living. The likelihood of his getting to that point, at the very least becoming established as an actor, is much greater in L.A. And once that happens, he's likely to be visiting New York -- always his first love among cities in the U.S. -- regularly anyway. He may even manage to break into acting in L.A. and then later move back to New York.
This is all conjecture, I know. And Shobhit and I both know that his competition will be much fiercer in L.A. But that doesn't change the comparative potential he has there, and I really believe in him. And if it would be to his advantage to move there -- and I suspect it would -- then he should do it.
Click on the images to be taken to the area-location-specific photo sets on Flickr.
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