The City of Los Angeles.
I spent some time — too much time — walking around Beverly Hills on Tuesday afternoon looking for an office building. I went up and down Robertson Blvd. and saw throngs of waify people with long hair and sunken cheekbones, behind sunglasses of all shapes. Boutiques displaying earth-friendly products next to wall length television screens showing models walking down catwalks and fancy car after fancy car filled up the rest of the street. There were a lot of old people too, and they looked very mad.
Earlier that day, I had been in Chavez Ravine – a lovely hamlet that time and money forgot; a stark contrast to the glam of Robertson Blvd. There, the people are real, much darker, and although they lack the pretension, they’re just as moody, if not moodier than the gaunt zombies lurching around Bev Hills. The Ravine people are mad at something , too. Maybe they’re mad at the people on the boulevards because unlike the boulevard people who are at lunch on the patio wearing designer “green” clothes that were made in a sweat shop overseas, the ravine people are trapped in their offices doing their best to keep the dying economy alive.
To get from the Ravine to Beverly Hills, I had to take the highways and streets that Los Angeles has become famous for. On said thoroughfares I found the angriest, most frantic people of all. The scariest part about those angry people is that they are operating heavy, fast moving machines capable of killing anything in their way. Their machines are nice too, and if they didn’t feel like killing someone or slamming into something due to rage and destroying their sweet rides, some of those drivers may kill themselves. It looks challenging to primp in the mirror while driving and talking on the phone.
Not until well down Interstate 5, miles and miles away did I start to unwind the tension that Los Angeles had coiled in me. I carried too much of that place and was in an agitated state most of the evening. The so called City of Angels has that effect on me. Maybe I’m not fierce enough or maybe I can’t hang with the angry people. Maybe a place like Los Angeles wasn’t made for a person like me.