Los Angeles is a hedonist’s paradise. At night, you can cruise the Sunset Strip. Although The Doors no longer play there, you may run into Paris Hilton or Britney Spears before seeing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at a red-carpet event. During the winter, you might venture downtown to watch Kobe Bryant and the Lakers play. Every day of the year you can sit outside at Starbucks and try to identify professional basketball players looking for a latte in West Los Angeles. In spring 2009 I spotted Baron Davis of the Los Angeles Clippers at a Westwood Starbucks (but he didn’t seem to recognize me).
During the day, LA also offers a variety of natural pleasures. The outdoors is an essential part of every Los Angeles resident’s day-to-day life. Almost every day you can jog along the Santa Monica and Venice paths near the Pacific Ocean. In the afternoon you can go for a mountain climb in Topanga Park in the Santa Monica Mountains. You can walk around in shorts in February, and in the summer there is rarely humidity or a heat wave.
If you are depressed, the blue skies and the ocean breeze will cheer you up. Graduate students at UCLA drive me nuts because they surf in February rather than studying or grading exams. The city feels like an unending adult summer camp. Flowers bloom in late February, and you can e-mail your friends in the Northeast and mock them by singing Pink Floyd“Wish You Were Here.” Although everyone is always talking on hands-free cell phones, nobody here actually works for “the man”; LA is not a company town.
The largest corporate employers in Los Angeles County are Kaiser Permanente, with 32,000 employees; Northrop Grumman Corp., with 21,000 employees; and Boeing Co., with 15,000 employees. Of course Los Angeles is famous for Hollywood. The motion picture and television show production sector is responsible for roughly 250,000 jobs.1 In a county with 8 million people, this shows that most people are small wheeler dealers.
Almost everyone in Los Angeles was not born here. Many of us are transplants from cold Northeastern cities. Although we differ in heritage and ethnicity, we share a love for the sun and the good life. This city self-selects people who want to live well. With the exception of me, we are well-tanned, physically fit, attractive people. There is an abundance of plastic surgeons; service providers offering you whiter teeth; swimming pools; and life coaches to pluck, wax, and generally improve every part of your body and mind.
The largest corporate employers in Los Angeles County are Kaiser Permanente, with 32,000 employees; Northrop Grumman Corp., with 21,000 employees; and Boeing Co., with 15,000 employees. Of course Los Angeles is famous for Hollywood. The motion picture and television show production sector is responsible for roughly 250,000 jobs.1 In a county with 8 million people, this shows that most people are small wheeler dealers.
Almost everyone in Los Angeles was not born here. Many of us are transplants from cold Northeastern cities. Although we differ in heritage and ethnicity, we share a love for the sun and the good life. This city self-selects people who want to live well. With the exception of me, we are well-tanned, physically fit, attractive people. There is an abundance of plastic surgeons; service providers offering you whiter teeth; swimming pools; and life coaches to pluck, wax, and generally improve every part of your body and mind.
Angeles Adapt to Coming Climate Change VIDEO
Outsiders mock Los Angeles as a city of plagues. They have heard about the car culture, the sprawl, traffic, the smog, O.J., the gangs, the earthquakes, the Malibu fires, the water shortages, and so on. But to residents of Los Angeles, traffic is the only constant menace. Los Angelenos’ average one-way commute time of twenty-nine minutes is a result of many people working at home (their zero-commute time balances out the long commutes). On the roads there are many fancy cars both because people can afford them and because people spend so much time stuck in traffic.
Angeles Adapt to Coming Climate Change VIDEO-2
To a New Yorker (I lived in Manhattan for thirteen years and in the New York metro area for twenty-five), Los Angeles really is a strange city. Whereas most cities have a downtown featuring a vibrant employment and cultural center, Los Angeles downtown is not such a magnet. Yes, the Lakers play there, the University of Southern California is there, and Frank Gehry has built a funky Walt Disney Concert Hall there, but these three provide insufficient gravitational force to encourage the rest of Los Angeles to go downtown. My UCLA students tell me that they never go downtown and have no desire to.
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