We got an early start. It was a 225 mile drive from our humble front
door to the two very large brass doors on a building on 7th Street in Downtown Los
Angeles, and I didn’t want to risk being a minute late. Three and a half hours later I was changing
into my suit in the Macy’s parking garage.
I kept an eye out for paparazzi, because it seems like a decent, law-abiding person can’t
take their clothes off in public these days without getting their picture
taken. This is a particular problem for
celebrities in Los Angeles.
After lunch in a food court (yum
right?), found myself on the eight floor of a 1925 office building (pictured), begging for
a job in what may be the last city in the country in which I’d choose to
work.
Los Angeles
was founded by the Spanish in 1781 and either named El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles (The Town of the Queen of the Angels), or El
Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los
Angeles de Porciuncula (Our Lady of the Angles). It’s not named after angels, but after Jesus’
mother, Mary. Really it could legitimately
be called Marysville. The town was originally
established as a pueblo, a sort of civic go between that separated the military
presidios from the missions, in an effort to limit secular power over the
citizens. Pretty good beginning, but Los
Angeles went from rich farming, to cattle and tallow, to violent racism against
Indians, to violent racism against Chinese, to newspaper backed anti-union
violence, to that all powerful greaser of the industrial economy; oil. Oil and the railroad arrived in Los Angeles so close
together that it created a perfect storm of migration, consumption, and soon
questionable appropriation.
The population exploded and when
the aquifer under the San Fernando Valley dropped enough, the city leaders
needed to find new water supplies or the growth of Los Angeles would slow and possibly
stop. Imagine Los Angeles as a ghost town, there are your
angels. So they tricked the ranchers in
the Owens Valley,
250 miles north, into surrendering their water rights and tricked the citizens
of Los Angeles
with a fake drought, by well-placed false newspaper stories, and by emptying
reservoirs into storm drains, into voting for bonds to build an aqueduct
between the two. An act of Congress
allowed cities to own land outside their boundaries, which allowed Los Angeles to own the land, and the water on and under
it, in the Owens Valley.
In a statement of extreme arrogance, the architect of this massive appropriation
(theft?) of water, William Mulholland said when the water started flowing,
“There it is. Take it.” He’s said worse.
I’ve met people from around the
country and whenever I reveled that I hailed from California, I leaned to brace
for the inevitable comments about how my Golden State is full of nothing but
lazy surfers, gang-bangers, narcissistic actors and wannabe actors,
one-person-to-a-car smog creators, plastic-surgery lovers, and generally shallow
and dull celebrity-obsessed malcontents.
My answer usually was something along the lines of, “That’s just L.A., and the rest of the
state isn’t like that.”
So when I found this job that paid
well, was interesting, and fit very well with my skill set, I applied, even
though I was about as eager to move to Los
Angeles as the daughter in those Liam Neeson Taken movies is to get a phone call from
her dad. But I revisited my comment
about how Los Angeles
isn’t like the rest of the state.
Perhaps I was being like those other 49'ers (People from the 49 states other than California). Perhaps within the greater Los Angeles area, one neighborhood isn’t like
the next, one group isn’t just like another, each person is a complete,
complicated, individual and grouping them together makes about a much sense and
saying a wine-sniffing Marin County yoga instructor is the same as a surf-riding
Ventura County um…yoga instructor.
Perhaps that’s a bad example.
On the way home we decided to visit
a neighborhood where I might live, should I get the position. Since I know very few people who live, or
have lived in Los Angeles,
we decided to just pick a place and take a look. Since we didn't have a dart and map at our disposal, we choose by situation comedy. We thought the view out the window on the show Big Bang Theory looked nice, so we chose the City of Pasadena.
It did indeed look nice as we cruised by the City Hall and a downtown farmer’s
market, and as we accidentally found the Gamble House at the exact moment we
started looking for it. Apartments were
priced higher than Fresno, obviously, but not
that much higher and there is some sort of train that runs to downtown Los Angeles, just 11
miles away. One of the few people I know who has experience living in Los Angeles suggested I look for a home in the Chinatown area, where I could literally walk to Dodger
Stadium. I don’t know about that, after all, one
does not simply walk into Mordor.
Here’s the deal. I’ve been out of work for 14 months. Seeing as how beggars cannot be choosers and
seeing as how the job I interviewed for is a pretty good one, if I’m offered
it, I’ll go. I’d be giving up a city
where I know all the streets, where I have a support system of family and friends,
and where my commutes have been about as hectic as a stroll through park, to move
to a city where the streets are all unfamiliar and expanded exponentially,
where I know nearly no one, and where my commute might look like a parking lot
at Walmart on Black Friday. I’ll give Los Angeles a
chance. I’ll find the better places to
eat than the Macy’s food court, I'll find the quickest route to the beach from wherever I
end up living, and maybe I'll volunteer at a museum like I did in Auburn.
Who knows, I may someday “walk into Mordor."
Well put Mark - just promise you won't ever walk to dodger stadium.
ReplyDeleteBut people, hobbits anyway and barefoot, walk into Mordor on a regular basis.
ReplyDelete