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That is an awkward sentence. I looked at the whole paragraph:
Third, find reasons to be loyal to an imperfect place. We feel that the city is coming apart because we won’t accept anything that stands against the conviction that no shared loyalties are possible at all.
I guess the first sentence is try to like Los Angeles and care about the community even with it's imperfections. I guess 'no shared loyalties are possible' means we don't think it's possible to like Los Angeles and acknowledge the problems.
That's just from reading the sentence many times, so it's a guess!
I thought it was more that LA - love it or leave it. You can't love LA and San Francisco or LA and New York at the same time.
Interesting read. I'm from New York and I had the opportunity to spend a few months here this summer to test the waters and see if I could move here. I find many of the tropes that people get so up in arms about to be true. Some, not all, and of course it's a matter of perspective. Often I find LA empty and depressing and a place where people's dreams have turned to desperation and it's everywhere in the air. Perhaps embarrassed by their own city or their choice to live here people always seemed to be trying to convince me (and as byproduct themselves) why they're here. On the other hand I don't find the people to be any more shallow and superficial than people in New York - a place that plenty of people assign false myths to (and it would seem based on this article LA is as navel gazing as New York.)
One trope I can't shake about LA is that it does feel like the end of the road. I guess that is changing with Latin American and Asian immigration. It always felt to me that if the United States was an enormous carpet and a giant gripped it on the east coast, shook the entire country all the lose stuff would land in LA. And all that lose stuff is basically the cheap, plastic crap that was made after World War II. LA feels to me like a city that people started to build and gave up. It's rootless. It's a modernist's idea of utopia gone bad. It's a city designed largely by the automobile industry and the result is pretty horrific. People like to tell you how walkable their neighborhood is and yet you never see anyone on the street and major thoroughfares cut through neighborhoods making the people who live there secondary. Life in the car is isolating and opportunity for random human connection is practically nil.
Don't get me wrong LA is a place I'm fascinated by. As someone who grew up on the east coast, my frame of reference was always the east coast and europe, but I learned to appreciate LA on its own fascinating terms. However my conclusion is that this place isn't for me.
That's fine. I feel that way about NYC and I was born and raised in the area. I would never thought I would say that, but a recent trip back told me I wouldn't want to live there again.
A great city, but midtown Manhattan while always chaotic, is insane now, and no one is looking where they're going. It was too much for me. I couldn't wait to get out there.
See I have always found LA(and still do) to have an amazing energy where anything is possible.
To give you an example when I was 15 and growing up in NY I was reading about and fascinated with old time movie stars, by age 30(and being in LA a few years) I ended up being friends with the ex wife of a legendary movie star that I was reading about. A friend introduced me and we struck up a friendship that lasted till she passed.
And it doesn't really sound like you explored LA, if you think all the houses were built after WW2. In my area there are renovated houses dating back to the turn of the century.
And actually if you lived out here and went back east to the Atlantic Ocean, you would feel that was the end of the road as well. It's the same thing in reverse.
I thought it was more that LA - love it or leave it. You can't love LA and San Francisco or LA and New York at the same time.
After substituting vocabulary, that is what I came up with, but it was a struggle; because by sharing, does that mean, when can't love both or we can't tell someone that we like another place just as much, because we might upset people?
Interesting read. I'm from New York and I had the opportunity to spend a few months here this summer to test the waters and see if I could move here. I find many of the tropes that people get so up in arms about to be true. Some, not all, and of course it's a matter of perspective. Often I find LA empty and depressing and a place where people's dreams have turned to desperation and it's everywhere in the air. Perhaps embarrassed by their own city or their choice to live here people always seemed to be trying to convince me (and as byproduct themselves) why they're here. On the other hand I don't find the people to be any more shallow and superficial than people in New York - a place that plenty of people assign false myths to (and it would seem based on this article LA is as navel gazing as New York.)
One trope I can't shake about LA is that it does feel like the end of the road. I guess that is changing with Latin American and Asian immigration. It always felt to me that if the United States was an enormous carpet and a giant gripped it on the east coast, shook the entire country all the lose stuff would land in LA. And all that lose stuff is basically the cheap, plastic crap that was made after World War II. LA feels to me like a city that people started to build and gave up. It's rootless. It's a modernist's idea of utopia gone bad. It's a city designed largely by the automobile industry and the result is pretty horrific. People like to tell you how walkable their neighborhood is and yet you never see anyone on the street and major thoroughfares cut through neighborhoods making the people who live there secondary. Life in the car is isolating and opportunity for random human connection is practically nil.
Don't get me wrong LA is a place I'm fascinated by. As someone who grew up on the east coast, my frame of reference was always the east coast and europe, but I learned to appreciate LA on its own fascinating terms. However my conclusion is that this place isn't for me.
You make some good, well-taken points, but I’m afraid you also trade in a couple tired notions. If Los Angeles feels like the end of the road to you, it’s simply because it is. At least from your perspective, Mother Road, and all that. But as SeainDublin already stated, there also exists a reverse commute. I still have family who haven’t left the shadows of Lady Liberty’s skirt in over 150 years. From my view, that speaks to a lack of curiosity, even a lack of ambition. Your shaking of the carpet metaphor prompted the more adventurous to move West.
A pre-war built environment does exist here, and you can live in areas where it predominates if you want. To the extent post-war architecture prevails, that can be said about a massive amount of the places where Americans currently live.
I just spent the week in Bergen County, NJ. It is a lovely community with beautiful homes and well maintained tree-lined streets. The locals were engaging and helpful. In my five days there, I counted a total of three people on the streets who were not immediately entering or exiting a car, despite the fact the weather was perfect. I fully realize BC is not at all representative of the NY/NJ Metro, but your dismissal of Los Angeles also paints an inadequate picture of how people actually live. I played a game yesterday, counting the humans walking, biking or skating on my two-block walk to breakfast. The number was 96, and I do not live in a busy commercial district. I know similar experiences can be found in thousands of nodes around the LA metro. Minimizing the reality of an outdoor lifestyle in Southern California is a futile exercise.
Of course, the boulevards turned commuter alleys are hostile to waking. But you can’t ignore the hundreds, if not thousands, of adjoining enclaves were people spend a considerable amount of their lives outside. But if you were to sequester yourself in certain neighborhood, say, on the Westside, it might as well be Bergen County.
That's fine. I feel that way about NYC and I was born and raised in the area. I would never thought I would say that, but a recent trip back told me I wouldn't want to live there again.
A great city, but midtown Manhattan while always chaotic, is insane now, and no one is looking where they're going. It was too much for me. I couldn't wait to get out there.
See I have always found LA(and still do) to have an amazing energy where anything is possible.
To give you an example when I was 15 and growing up in NY I was reading about and fascinated with old time movie stars, by age 30(and being in LA a few years) I ended up being friends with the ex wife of a legendary movie star that I was reading about. A friend introduced me and we struck up a friendship that lasted till she passed.
And it doesn't really sound like you explored LA, if you think all the houses were built after WW2. In my area there are renovated houses dating back to the turn of the century.
And actually if you lived out here and went back east to the Atlantic Ocean, you would feel that was the end of the road as well. It's the same thing in reverse.
Yes. Don't get me wrong. I'm still looking to get out of New York. I just don't think it's LA. And there is one thing about LA and California in general I love which you describe and that's the openness, the feeling of possibility, the lack of cynicism and the overall entrepreneurial spirit. I love how people believe in you and what you're doing whether it's genuine or not.
You make some good, well-taken points, but I’m afraid you also trade in a couple tired notions. If Los Angeles feels like the end of the road to you, it’s simply because it is. At least from your perspective, Mother Road, and all that. But as SeainDublin already stated, there also exists a reverse commute. I still have family who haven’t left the shadows of Lady Liberty’s skirt in over 150 years. From my view, that speaks to a lack of curiosity, even a lack of ambition. Your shaking of the carpet metaphor prompted the more adventurous to move West.
A pre-war built environment does exist here, and you can live in areas where it predominates if you want. To the extent post-war architecture prevails, that can be said about a massive amount of the places where Americans currently live.
I just spent the week in Bergen County, NJ. It is a lovely community with beautiful homes and well maintained tree-lined streets. The locals were engaging and helpful. In my five days there, I counted a total of three people on the streets who were not immediately entering or exiting a car, despite the fact the weather was perfect. I fully realize BC is not at all representative of the NY/NJ Metro, but your dismissal of Los Angeles also paints an inadequate picture of how people actually live. I played a game yesterday, counting the humans walking, biking or skating on my two-block walk to breakfast. The number was 96, and I do not live in a busy commercial district. I know similar experiences can be found in thousands of nodes around the LA metro. Minimizing the reality of an outdoor lifestyle in Southern California is a futile exercise.
Of course, the boulevards turned commuter alleys are hostile to waking. But you can’t ignore the hundreds, if not thousands, of adjoining enclaves were people spend a considerable amount of their lives outside. But if you were to sequester yourself in certain neighborhood, say, on the Westside, it might as well be Bergen County.
I dunno. LA's a story of the second half of the 20th century when most of the growth happened and that dominates the landscape and that it's like the rest of the country in that respect is precisely my point.
Of course I've also seen people walking around. I've been to Venice and Santa Monica on the weekend when it was filled to the gills with pedestrians. Downtown ditto. Koreatown ditto. But I don't think that negates the fact that the car is the lifestyle. I've also spent time in West Hollywood where for such a happening place there's not a soul in sight.
Most of the time I've been staying in Echo Park which has its share of older Craftsman and Spanish revival homes on their little postage stamp sized lots, but to me the fabric of the neighborhood feels disrupted by Sunset and Alvarado. I think people make the most of it against all odds.
I dunno. LA's a story of the second half of the 20th century when most of the growth happened and that dominates the landscape and that it's like the rest of the country in that respect is precisely my point.
Of course I've also seen people walking around. I've been to Venice and Santa Monica on the weekend when it was filled to the gills with pedestrians. Downtown ditto. Koreatown ditto. But I don't think that negates the fact that the car is the lifestyle. I've also spent time in West Hollywood where for such a happening place there's not a soul in sight.
Most of the time I've been staying in Echo Park which has its share of older Craftsman and Spanish revival homes on their little postage stamp sized lots, but to me the fabric of the neighborhood feels disrupted by Sunset and Alvarado. I think people make the most of it against all odds.
I'm sorry but you have been here for 3 months... You don't know the city well enough that is just a fact. Stop being so dramatic, and do some things you can't do in NYC on a regular basis.
Last edited by jamills21; 07-27-2015 at 06:41 AM..
Interesting read. I'm from New York and I had the opportunity to spend a few months here this summer to test the waters and see if I could move here. I find many of the tropes that people get so up in arms about to be true. Some, not all, and of course it's a matter of perspective. Often I find LA empty and depressing and a place where people's dreams have turned to desperation and it's everywhere in the air. Perhaps embarrassed by their own city or their choice to live here people always seemed to be trying to convince me (and as byproduct themselves) why they're here. On the other hand I don't find the people to be any more shallow and superficial than people in New York - a place that plenty of people assign false myths to (and it would seem based on this article LA is as navel gazing as New York.)
One trope I can't shake about LA is that it does feel like the end of the road. I guess that is changing with Latin American and Asian immigration. It always felt to me that if the United States was an enormous carpet and a giant gripped it on the east coast, shook the entire country all the lose stuff would land in LA. And all that lose stuff is basically the cheap, plastic crap that was made after World War II. LA feels to me like a city that people started to build and gave up. It's rootless. It's a modernist's idea of utopia gone bad. It's a city designed largely by the automobile industry and the result is pretty horrific. People like to tell you how walkable their neighborhood is and yet you never see anyone on the street and major thoroughfares cut through neighborhoods making the people who live there secondary. Life in the car is isolating and opportunity for random human connection is practically nil.
Don't get me wrong LA is a place I'm fascinated by. As someone who grew up on the east coast, my frame of reference was always the east coast and europe, but I learned to appreciate LA on its own fascinating terms. However my conclusion is that this place isn't for me.
No the real end of the road is here in the Bay Area. Both literally and figuratively. It's the furthest West serious urbanization (PAC NW places are more inland), and the road networks literally dead end here. In spite of lots of current global attention and hype about tech, I also view this is the final terminus for restless souls.
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It's the same thing in reverse.
