Despite the heat of the day, walking is the only true way to know a city.
June 21st is not a monolith. For some people it is a birthday. For Billy and Liz DeFrain, it is a wedding day that will become an anniversary day. To most in the Northern Hemisphere today marks the second day of summer, and now, nearly week after the Lakers’ loss to Boston in the NBA Finals, Los Angeles is in a heat wave. Here the air is dry and high temperatures are not the most oppressive part of life. The sun’s awesome power is more apparent in this desert, where its radiation hits the planet with less resistance, desiccating everything.
I left Lincoln for Los Angeles, and after 20 or more hours of travel found myself in what locals call “La La Land.”
From air, the Monterey peninsula was shrouded beneath a thick carpet of clouds that only the highest peaks poked through. Like landing onto a lake of cotton, our plane descended toward the hilltops and into a fluffy maelstrom of white. Below, a gray Monterey day had already passed noon and everything remained just as it was before. There was my car and campus and the same, ongoing construction splashing caution-sign orange and asphalt-black over the intersection of Madison and Pacific. The sea-breeze was almost chilly, and for a moment I regretted my flip flops and even put on a coat. From there I got in my car and drove.
The Central Valley, through which Interstate 5 runs, is not as temperate. After an early morning flight, I spent the hottest hours of the day making my way south through endless citrus groves, thousands of identical trees sucking up every spare drop of moisture. It was only upon approaching the San Luis Reservoir that I realized my miscalculation: the seaside slopes of California are much more accommodating than the land beyond the Coastal Ranges. People will tell you that the Midwestern portions of Interstate 80 are some of the most boring stretches of highway in the US; I-5 in the Central Valley, however, is certainly more lifeless and stretches for nearly as long. Without air conditioning, the Prelude felt something like a moving sauna.
It’s a felony to burn money, but before leaving Lincoln I set fire to some paper currency. I had seen it done a week earlier and repeated it on my own volition—there’s an incomparable feeling that comes with watching God burn.
Gasoline is expensive. To truly live in Los Angeles, there are few replacements for the automobile. Metaphor cannot truly capture the phenomenal excess and profligate waste embodied in the LA freeway system. Beautiful as far as complex engineering goes, the transport infrastructure of Southwest America will certainly be remembered as a foolish exercise in human hubris. These are to be our ancient ruins. This vast concrete network has left a nearly indelible mark on the regional geography, a transformation so overwhelming it will surely outlast the settlement it supports.
It is only inefficient to walk if your purpose for travel lies solely in reaching a destination. If the destination is simply a location, like any other location, then walking becomes the principal way to know a place.
On the freeway there is one type of life. In Irvine I discovered the privilege that is Lincoln’s campus. On the road to Irvine I discovered a shameful way of life. After two hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic my lungs began to hurt. Back in my hotel room, I was coughing up phlegm as if my allergies had come back. The entire region is covered in a blanket of filth, and in spots the development feels worse than cookie-cutter.
Today I swam in the Pacific Ocean again. Between Ocean Park Hotel and the sea is a dozen-mile round trip that—with the heat—is hardly easy on the psyche. In Plastic La La Land, Santa Monica does not go light on the artificial: the homes are all polish and makeup, and when shady streets give way to sunburnt roads, the nature of the community tiptoes from oceanside resort to lazy desert township. Everything about this place is surreal—driving through barely scratches the dirty film on the surface of the city. Walking through cuts a little deeper, but not far enough to make sense of anything.
"Bake sale for Obama!"
But I don't have any cash on me, just this jug of water. Better keep walking.
brett at 03:00 AM on June 22, 2008 | Permalink
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