Los Angeles is a city of mythic proportions. This is true in the literal and the figurative sense. Physically it is a great sprawl of housing, industry, islands of high rises comprising separate business centers,
shopping centers — a colossal concrete pulsing heart kept alive through a spider’s web of elevated arteries called freeways. As of the last census, it is home to well over 10 million. The freeways feed all manner of men and beast into and through the heart of L.A. 24/7. The blood stream is kept alive by one major component – oil. L.A. has always been a city that 
devoured oil unlike any other. It is an oil town, masquerading as a never aging ingénue able to morph a Fanny Bryce, into a Shirley Temple, into a Paris Hilton, all the while recreating itself into something yet undefined.L.A. is a town built on boosterism. A town sold to the rest of the world by oilmen, land barons and religious power brokers. The marketing of L.A. and the myth of L.A. began in the late 1800s, long after the Spanish empire built their rancheros on the bones of the decimated cultures of the Gabrielano and Chumash Indians. It began in earnest when railroads connected the continent and West Coast power invaded the East Coast establishment. For those of you so inclined to know more about the start of L.A. boosterism and the history of L.A. from a small pueblo of Indians, Blacks and Spanish misfits, I suggest you read the updated version of Mike Davis’s City of Quartz:
at amazon or
verso press
The reality of Los Angeles is best observed through the eyes of those who work in its entrails — the people who keep the wheels on the wagon — the descendants of white and black s
outhern working class and craftsman, the Mexican “cholo” families that helped make L.A. a flowering desert, the Japanese living alongside Blacks in the new L.A. ghettos who survived second world war American concentration camps to preserve and build the vibrant Little Tokyo of L.A. in spite of it all, the dust bowl era mid-western migrants that built Mulholland’s dream aqueduct and fueled development, and the myriad of immigrants and transplants that have continued to come to work in L.A.’s big three industries – Agriculture, Military Manufacturing and last but not least – Hollywood. These working classes are the ones who kno
w the real L.A., the L.A. beyond the hype. They know where to get the best food, the best drinks, the best value for your money, and the hidden treasures that L.A. neighborhoods have to offer. They keep alive the real history of Los Angeles through recounted oral history and through tireless efforts to preserve communities. L.A. is not the mutation of the developers and the nouveau riche celebrated in slick Madison Avenue driven magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair and Los Angeles Magazine. It is the meat of the matter – knowing why El Cholo on Western has the best Green Tamales in season and is home to the best Margarita in L.A., knowing why the words “Pete’s New Orleans Hot Sausage” makes your mouth water, knowing where to get the best fresh seafood in Downtown and why it’s worth the occasional drive to see the Hawaiians in Glendale, knowing when you can hear free Mariachi music or Jazz at venues like Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, the Water Court Downtown, Leimert Park’s World Stage, and LACMA, knowing that before there was the blue and red of the street gangs known as the Crips and the Bloods there was the black and brown of the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets, knowing the best time of day to be in San Pedro to watch the sunset over the Pacific at Friendship Park, knowing the best way from Lawndale to Glendale without using the freeway, knowing water (Echo Park, Silverlake,
L.A. River, Pt. Fermin….), knowing what beaches are the peoples beaches vs the wannabes, knowing the numbers of freeways vs the names (the 110 vs the Harbor Fwy), knowing the best day to get bargains at El Mercado or Grand Central Market, knowing where the original Pinks, Fat Burgers and Tommies are, knowing why Phillipe’s French dip sandwiches are just fucking good, knowing that coyotes walking the streets of downtown L.A. in the wee hours of the morning came down the Arroyo Seco from the Angeles Crest as they have for centuries, knowing that the L.A. Observatory is the best view of L.A. and the best cheap first date location, knowing that Hollywood is an industry as brutal as any other, knowing that Griffith Park is its own ecological system, knowing the deserts, mountains and beaches like you know your own skin, knowing that before the chi-chi Jerry’s Deli chain there
was and is Langers and Cantors, knowing that if you really wanted to fuck with old money you’d burn down the California Club and the Jonathan Club in the same day, knowing that there’s more for the Dodgers to dodge in L.A. than there ever was in Brooklyn and as such they will remain at Chavez Ravine, and knowing that your ancestors made and sustained L.A. and will continue to do so for ma
ny years to come. These rich and vibrant cultural influences have textured the reality of L.A. for centuries alongside the tableau created by the rich and powerful. They are married at the hip. Diminish one and you diminish L.A.Ah but the figurative myth of L.A. is yet another beast. This is the seductress that lures the outside world — the tourist, the get rich quick implant, the movie and music business next big thing — a myth that has its own life, its own canvas. It confronts the senses in Beverly Hills. It makes the everyman feel that he has been invited to the party when he strolls down Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade. It calls to the new arrival from high atop the ubiquitous Hollywood Sign — you too can have the good life, you can be discovered, you can be celebrated. It’s been fostered in literature, on the silver screen, and in the media, packaged and sold to the world. It is as true and tragic as it is false and meretricious. In short, L.A. as a character, is a living dichotomy, a creature impervious to Manichean logic and outside th
e constructs of post-modernist’s deconstruction because like yeast — it ain’t done yet. This is at the core of its devilishness. Since the myth of the opulent carefree, tolerant, multi-ethnic, super liberal, artistic L.A. is driven by the media and the movies, it’s appropriate here to examine some well know movie and literary quotes (as all true Angelenos are want to do in punctuating their discourses):Kevin Spacey as Verbal in the Usual Suspects:
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. “
From the diaries of Bishop Amat who won the remains of the “virgin saint” in a Papal lottery to be the cornerstone of the first grand Catholic cathedral in L.A.:
“On the slab which enclosed the crypt in which the body of Vibiana was found were these Latin words: Animas innocenti atque pudicae Vibiana in pace depositae pridie Kalendas Septembris; the translation of which is, ‘‘To the innocent and chaste soul of Vibiana, whose remains were deposited in peace on the day before the Calends of September.’’ This is the virgin blood needed for the city of Los Angeles.”
John Huston as Noah Cross in Chinatown:
“Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, public buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”
From the pen of the journalist and pundit Dorothy Parker:
“Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.”
A comment by the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright inscribed on the wall of one of his most famous L.A. structures, Hollyhock House:
“Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.”
Comment of Russell Crowe, New Zealand born Australian actor:
“I'd move to Los Angeles if New Zealand and Australia were swallowed up by a tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in England and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack.”
To be sure, unlike any city in the United States, Los Angeles has had its supporters and detractors — opposing philosophical camps so to speak. It is, without doubt, one of the most segregated cities in the country. It is a segregation imposed by economic disparity, ethnic and religious biases, geographic boundaries, people on the make, dreams achieved and deferred. But like the coyote trickster of American Indian mythology or the Orisha Legba of the Yoruban myths, L.A. remains a trickster and a changeling — a city that has continually redefined itself. As a native of Los Angeles, child of Creole New Orleans transplants, I have never really left the city. I have travelled far and wide, lived in various locations on the planet (currently hiding out in Savannah, Georgia), but my core resides in L.A. It’s that kind of place. You can leave it for years, return for a short time and a deep muscle memory kicks into place. You drive as if it were just yesterday when you left. You ignore the ugly new and rejoice in the staid, even though the staid is something installed since the early 1900’s. An establishment surviving over 50 years in L.A. is an icon. Rejoice, some of your childhood is still familiar — the big donut is still there on Manchester, El Cholo is open, the Bradbury Building is still standing….. And you marvel at the new tableaus that have arisen since your last sojourn — The Disney Concert Hall, the new L.A. cathedral (described by my son as "The Jesus H. Christ Detention Center), the super expensive public arts school under construction (described by my daughter, an excellent teacher struggling at a public school that is underfunded, as WTF!#%#!!!), and the newest ugly theme malls. From the corner of your eye, as you drive miles on surface streets from one end of the city to the next, you catch the urban graffiti hieroglyphics that mark the changes in communities, noting to yourself, this used to be Black now it’s Hispanic, this used to Hispanic now it’s Korean, this used to be rich whites now it’s middle class Blacks. It’s as if you’re a flea on the skin of Bradbury’s Illustrated Man watching the tattoos morph and sidestepping landmines. You have to know where you are in L.A., what to say or not say, what color to watch for, what glance to return or not return. This is as true in Watts, East L.A. and the Crenshaw District as it is in Hollywood, Westwood, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and the Valley.
It is with these thoughts tucked away in my subconscious that SavannahMarshMama and the MITM landed in a jet plane recently at LAX to visit our offspring — L.A. people forever. We arrived from the low country of Savannah, leaving the Spanish moss, alligators and the “littleness” of our current town in several transit airports through the south. W
e arrived at LAX, got a set of wheels and checked into the Biltmore Hotel Downtown L.A. – an old grand dame of a hotel smack dab in the middle of one of L.A.’s urban power zones. We arrived on a Sunday to be greeted by a much changed hotel services wise. Footnote – It was an elegant hotel in our youth — I took SavannahMarshMama to her annual formal dance there (The Belles and Beaus) when we were in high school. It was inaugurated in 1922 and made famous by the first Oscars and the Hollywood power brokers of the day. It was also home to gangsters and politicians (Is there a difference?).Our first night was met with a great cacophony
of sound — a large Hindu wedding was in tow with all the music, costumes, music and food. We knew we were in L.A. and that the next week would bring back some wanted and unwanted emotions.More to come……
