In many ways, the English brain is not designed to cope with Los Angeles – what with the 12-lane freeways, the gang battles, the earthquakes, the commuters in Lamborghinis, the tight-trousered motorcycle cops and the alfalfa sprouts served on whole-grain rye with steamed tofu. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the English have been coming to LA for years, declaring it awful, then heading back to the airport. Examples include the novelist Evelyn Waugh, who visited the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, then wrote The Loved One, a vicious satire.
Yet every so often, the English come here and find no good reason to leave. The artist David Hockney is one such example. Another example is me. I grew up in a remote corner of Northumberland, joined The Times newspaper after college and was appointed its LA correspondent in 2002. “You’ll go mad after a while,” warned my editor – before telling me that I had to stay for at least two years. There’s something comic about the Englishman in LA: the M&S socks; the floppy hat; the PG Tips and the Thousand Islands suntan. It certainly took me a while to get used to the place. When you’re downtown, admiring Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, you realise that it really is best to get in your car if you want to travel to the other side of the road. Then there’s the local custom of pulling up outside a restaurant or bar and handing over the keys of your $40,000 rental vehicle to a complete stranger who doesn’t speak a word of English. He gives you a cloakroom ticket. This is known as ‘valet parking’.
For a while, I refused to take part in such bizarre car-culture conveniences. So I spent about 11 out of my first 12 months looking for parking spots or trying to understand the deliberately cryptic parking signs, which contain as many clauses as the average class-action lawsuit (even the position of your car’s front wheels must adhere strictly to the instructions, otherwise the parking enforcement officers – of whom there are about 20 for every block – will clamp and tow). I should point out that it is possible to walk, cycle, bus or taxi around, but not advisable unless you’re limiting yourself to LA’s pedestrian-friendly beach areas, such as Venice or Santa Monica.
Having said that, some people would do anything to avoid LA drivers. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that they’re busy doing other things. Such as sending emails. Or playing dashboard-mounted video games. Cars in LA also don’t come with indicators (or so it seems), so don’t be caught out when the Escalade in front of you veers to the right then does a U-turn. And remember: a sure-fire way to provoke road rage is to do something that forces the other driver to hang up their phone.
Which brings me to the other commonly cited problem with LA: where is it, exactly? I’ve always found this an odd criticism, as though for a city to be worthy of greatness it needs a central Circus or a Square with overpriced pizza, muggers, bad steak restaurants and pigeon droppings. Here’s the thing: the actual City of Los Angeles is only one of 89 cities in all of Los Angeles County. The other cities, which have their own local governments, police forces and so on, include Santa Monica, Malibu, tiny West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Many are little enclaves in the middle of the City of Los Angeles, with borders that are sometimes impossible to fathom. To make things even more confusing, some parts are better known by other names: Hollywood and Venice being obvious examples. In total, there are 196 “unofficial” districts throughout Los Angeles County, which is why generalisations are so perilous.
So why do I like LA? The shallow answer is the weather, which is hot in the best possible way – dry, with no bugs, and a guaranteed cool-down at dusk. Also, it’s built on one of the most beautiful coastlines and mountain ranges in the US, which gives it some of the best parkland anywhere in the world. A hike up Runyon Canyon makes you wonder why Angelenos bother going to gyms. It’s easy to forget that the movie industry came here because you can shoot a surfing and skiing scene on the same day. The Mojave desert is perfect for both science fiction and Westerns.
Then there’s the rock’n’roll swagger of Sunset Strip, the Elmore Leonard crime-noir vibe of Hollywood, the palm-shaded magnificence of Bel Air and the surfer-dude shabbiness of Venice Beach. LA achieves greatness as the sum of all these parts. This is a city where a fried chicken greasehole can be opposite a café so healthy that they take out your insides, steam clean them and put them back in before dessert. There are as many hybrid-powered eco-hippies as there are Hummer drivers; as many unwashed hipsters as social X-Rays. But the best thing about LA, of course, is that it’s isolated by desert, ocean and time zones. Which means those of us who live here can get on with the business of enjoying ourselves – while the rest of the world can only watch, from a distance.
Chris Ayres’ LA Notebook column appears on Tuesdays in The Times, chrisayres.net. British Airways flies to LA from London Heathrow.
