Los Angeles: wanders at dawn
I woke up at 6am in a motel between Thai Town and Little Armenia in Los Angeles, once again a victim of my self-inflicted jet lag, with the constant roar of cars outside and the palm trees waving in the morning breeze very much contributing to my early rise. I tend to make the most of my time when I'm stateside because it's such a different world from my usual surroundings, and I love feeling disoriented by new experiences. So, I left my room and headed to the nearest Starbucks.
Yes, Starbucks. Well, this was before the boycott of course. I worked as a barista at Starbucks for around three years, and somehow, I still seek it out wherever I go. It’s kind of my safe space, as strange as it might sound. In the UK, they are always “out” of filter coffee and force you to buy an Americano because they can’t be bothered to make it. But not in America. Here, you get not one but three types of filter coffee. So, I grabbed a cup of dark roast at the store on Sunset and Western and began my dawn wander, silently berating myself because, just like the self-inflicted jet lag, I don’t even like dark roast. I just like having the choice.
Walking in the States is a strange activity. Or rather, it’s perceived as such. In Los Angeles, the city of cars par excellence, this perception is even more pronounced. Walking across six lanes every time you need to cross the road is not something you do in England, where our streets are much narrower. But the large, concrete pavements alongside American city roads are too inviting for me not to walk on them. I don’t really care if I get strange looks from drivers and fellow pedestrians; I believe cities are for walking, or at least they should be.
My favourite companion when solo travelling is of course my music. For LA, I had so much choice, but as I tend to romanticise everywhere I go, Lana was the choice. So I let her voice guide me on my aimless walk around grids of chain stores, Asian restaurants, and then again more chain stores and palm trees, art galleries, sleepy blocks of flats, boarded-up shops. I know that Didion and others said this much earlier than Lana, but “LA’s in flames, it’s getting hot” is nothing but a deliciously cruel omen.
I arrived in front of a little one-story bungalow and noticed a peculiar sign on the wall facing the street. It read, “This property is closed to the public,” followed by, “I authorize the city of Los Angeles to arrest anyone on my property who is not a lawful resident, guest, or visitor.” It struck me as odd until I remembered the warped relationship Americans have with private property. It’s no wonder they place a higher emphasis on their right to own rather than their communal duty to give back to society. I wondered if that sign was aimed at people like me, suspiciously wandering around houses just like this one, imagining what life would be like in the City of Angels -- one step (and dark roast) at a time -- before even 6:30am on a random Tuesday morning.
I pondered this as I walked back toward the motel and found two homeless men asleep on the doorstep of a still shut “El Pollo Loco”. If only Americans could open their minds and hearts a little more…
I sat at the edge of my motel’s pool. Yes, in LA, even small motels like mine often have a pool, even though, in all the hotels and motels I’ve stayed in California, I have yet to see anyone actually swimming in one. It’s a drop of blue in the concrete jungle that is LA, surrounded by endless traffic at any time of day or night, a constant haze of pollution laying a subtle but tangible blanket of grey over the sky, with imported palm trees swaying in the breeze. Most of Los Angeles is nothing but an illusion -- miles and miles of walkways that nobody walks on, thousands of pools that nobody swims in, and a potentially equal number of “do not get close to my property” signs. It makes you wonder if the City of Angels is actually inhabited by human beings.
