From Lone Pine, Xavier and I braved the Southern California Transport system, managing successfully enough to navigate to the generous refuge of Eli’s house. Eli, a good friend of ours from home, put us up and showed us around LA. Xavier had been a few times before, seeing his family, but it was my first time in the City of Angels. I remember when I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time a year or two ago, or when Eminem came on stage at Boston Calling. The breath left me, I almost couldn’t believe that something so fabled, so mythic was real before my eyes. I had the same experience seeing the Hollywood sign. What a grin!

We did a few other touristy things as well, walking among the stars on the walk of fame, the La Brea tar pits, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, biking the Strand from Redondo beach all the way up to Santa Monica. It was a blast, there are so many areas, streets, and sites that I’ve heard referenced  and over again, never really quite knowing where they were. Seeing them on a map next to my own pin was quite thrilling, and I began to really understand firsthand the depth of LA’s place as a cultural touchstone of the world. 

The opulence of relevance was, however, the main redeeming quality I found in the city. Famously unwalkable, the city demanded a car, Uber, or gloriously long bus ride. The sheer breadth of the city limits entail this, and I have much respect for anyone patient enough to spend so much time in their car, but I must say that I don’t have that strength, or he desire to cultivate it. Combined with the air quality, somewhat endless strip mall effect, and the fact that I had just spent two weeks in gorgeous nature, I must say I was not particularly charmed. It was amazing to spend time with Eli, as well as a couple of other friends in the area, and to see first hand one of the major cities of the world, but I can’t say that I’ve missed it. The food was to die for, though. To end this brief account of my woefully uninformed, narrow, and limited impression, I must comment on a clear pattern we saw— a surplus of Psychics. You can learn a lot about a city’s population by the amount of psychics per capita, an industry whose clientele is almost exclusively made up of desperate people hoping to hear what they need too. Who doesn’t, though?