Ugh, Southern California traffic...

[timepiececlock]

I took my brother to Union Station in LA this morning. It took me over two hours to get there, and I made it back in about 55 minutes (not even speeding). Every time I drive into L.A. I remember why I hate doing so.

I'm kidding myself if I think I could ever be happy living there in the hypothetical.... I think it would take one damn fantastic job to ever make me live in Los Angeles. I'm in Orange Country right now and I don't even care for it, but at least it's not as busy, choked, stifling, polluted, and colorless as L.A. The air is gray, and the sky is gray-brown, and everything is loud, and the stop lights never give you a left-turn signal so you just have to yeild and hope for the best.

I know that all cities are crowded and polluted and noisy-- I grew up in San Jose, so I'm intimately acquainted with cities. There is simply something about L.A. that puts me off. Of all the enormous, intense cities I've been to-- San Jose, San Francisco, Vancouver, Denver, New Orleans, D.C., San Diego, Salt Lake City, even Des Moines... Los Angeles puts me off the most. I just have to drive into the area and I'm overcome with a general sense of irritation, nerves, and apt-to-bite-someone's-head-off urges.

This could be because of the traffic. Maybe I'd like the city better if I never drove anywhere? But it feels deeper than that. My happiest moments in L.A. have been in art museums, where I couldn't see the city anyway. ((And one rather hilarious and fun evening a few years ago with jaina walking around what I think in retrospect might have been West Hollywood... but I thank the company, not the location.))

Comments

[jaina.livejournal.com]

Wow, was that really a few years ago? Time flies, man.

P.S. I'm working on my first Avatar fic. Aieee.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Dude, I think I was 21. I remember because I forgot my I.D. and we almost didn't go into that one place. That place where a really scary, short middle-aged woman grabbed my butt, and they had round plastic bubble chairs and then uncomfortable wicker chairs.

I just turned 24 a month ago. Time flies.


YAYAYAYAYAAY!

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

I think if I had to drive down to L.A. more than once a year I'd go crazy. After living in Tokyo all cities seem a bit smaller to me, but even in Tokyo there wasn't that clogged sense that there is in L.A. I tend to be fairly happy about going there - usually because I'll be headed to Disneyland or a convention to meet friends - but the traffic on the way usually leads to some very frustrated moments.

[scathachdhu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can't stand LA; that place drives me insane. And I don't even have a concrete reason for feeling that way. XD

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I've only been once, but the sheer, sprawling size of LA really put me off. I asked my sis where the downtown was, and she replied that it had several--everything's connected by freeways, so it sprawls.

Even though I grew up making my way around by car, I've always hated having large portions of my life mediated through car rides, and wanted nothing more than to live somewhere that could be navigated by alternate means. I realize that's a personal preference, and there are probably people who see that disconnectedness, the city broken up into a lot of smaller places connected by car, as freedom, or maybe possibility, but to me, it felt like...I dunno, an alien lifeform, a city that lives without a heart.