This ain't no disco. It ain't no country club, either.
This is LA. (Sheryl Crow, 1994)
I've never seen Citizen Kane (1941) or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) or When Harry Met Sally (1989), but I know that Rosebud is a sled, I know to check my ammo before I draw, and I know that I'll have what she's having.
This week I'm in Los Angeles for the first time, with speaking engagements at 3 of the local colleges. I took an early flight to squeeze in some sight-seeing, and have found that LA is like a classic movie - charming when you know it will be, tawdry where you expect it to be, familiar, and utterly unsurprising.
After dropping off my bags, my first stop, because at heart I guess I'm a bit of a nerd, was the La Brea Tar Pits (Volcano, 1997), where it was genuinely fascinating to watch the asphalt bubble up, and inspect the scientists as they cleaned up one of thousands of ancient beasts caught in the rare geological conditions all those millennia ago. The tar pits are interesting not only for their paleontological contribution, but also for what they reveal about the oil deposits that, alongside the silver screen, made Los Angeles boom a century ago.
From there, I went to Hollywood, sauntering down the Walk of Fame from the Capitol Records building (Airheads, 1994) to Sunset Boulevard (Sunset Boulevard, 1950), catching glimpses of the Hollywood sign (Mulholland Drive, 2001) as someone rode by in a 1980s coupé with rap blasting (Gin & Juice, 1994).
It was closed for the Labor Day Holiday, but as I was close anyway, I took a cab up to the Griffith Observatory (Rebel Without a Cause, 1955) from where I was rewarded with an immense view of downtown LA (Independence Day, 1996).
After a hot but brief walk down the mountainside and through the winding wealth of the Hollywood hills (La La Land, 2016) I made it back, past the LA City Hall (The Usual Suspects, 1995) to my hotel, dodging the very-present street life (Pretty Woman, 1990).
After all this I had a decent meal in a very nice restaurant where you could sip your wine while gazing through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows at the street scene where homeless Angelenos were setting up their boxes for the night. It was as bleak of a view as I’ve ever seen.
I've got back-to-back meetings and events tomorrow and Wednesday, but perhaps on Wednesday evening I'll make it to Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier. I don't know if I actually want to go there - but Baz Luhrmann suggests it’s worth a shot (Romeo + Juliet, 1996).
In summary, LA is like a movie you've not watched, but already know by heart. It's enjoyable in its familiarity, but anticlimactic in its predictability.* If it were a movie, Siskel and Ebert would give it one thumb up.
*Except the dude with a backpack specifically designed to hold a live cat. That, I’d not seen before.
