There is a certain
pervasive image of
Los Angeles (and by extension,
California) as some sort of
glittering plastic fairyland where
everyone is
beautiful and
sips martinis all day by the
pool with
nubile young
starlets and no one has any real
emotional depth or problems beyond
hair care and their beauty
regime. Yes, this
Los Angeles exists. I live in the a
city where my
classes at
Occidental College were regularly disturbed by television tapings (90210 used my school for
exterior shots) and
film crews.
Snakeboy can regularly see
Sarah Michelle Gellar make doe-eyes and
Freddy Prinze Jr. in the food court of his mall. We know people who manage to insert a
famous name into any line of
conversation, and people who actually are famous. We've danced with
beautiful buxom Swedish girls wearing
cowboy hats at chic clubs. But it's important to remember that that
Los Angeles isn't all of
Los Angeles, and
Los Angeles isn't all of
California.
This is the same city where I was jumped by skinheads when I was seventeen. This is the city that burned for a few horrible days in 1992. This is the city where the ongoing corrupt police scandals take a back seat to celebrity breakups. This is the city that condemned its original Chinatown to make way for its train station. This is the city of Raymond Chandler detective stories and Easy Rawlins mysteries. It's the city where Cesar Chavez became an activist; the city where landmark buildings disappear; the city founded by Catholic missionaries;the city where Scientology has it headquarters. It's a great, ugly, wonderful, sprawling nightmare of a city. And it has a soul, and its people have souls. But it's not California.
Los Angeles is not the lumberjacks of the far north, or the country music listening truckers who bring goods from the central valley. It's not the silicone valley nouveaux riches or the aging birkenstock-wearing hippies near Berkeley. L.A. isn't even really Disneyland. California is all of these things and more. So let the rest of the world snicker at us and call us shallow and soulless. The people who live here know better.