Los Angeles is an f'ing dump

Daniel Miller: "Is this heaven?"

Bob Diamond: "No."

Miller: "Is it hell?"

Diamond: "Actually, there is no hell . . . although I hear Los Angeles is pretty close. HAW!"

[/defendingyourlife]

 

You stay classy, Los Angeles.

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I have nothing personally against LA, although for some reason, I feel physically ill whenever I fly into LAX. Not sure if it's the air, the prospect of more lines or what.

Once I actually get where I'm going, though, it's just fine.

 

I puke whenever I have to use LAX, too, Troop. But probably for different reasons.

 

Close your stance.

 

I thought you were taller?

 

I have traveled the country and I find that it's always great to get back home. It depends on where you are here.
When I covered the National League, we'd ask colleagues from around the country what their favorite road cities were. L.A. never was mentioned because their hotels were in downtown L.A. and that's not where you want to be. One baseball writer said he always thought L.A. was a hole, until one time on an off-day he rented a Corvette and drove through Santa Monica to Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu and up to Santa Barbara. He suddenly had a different opinion of L.A.
The criticisms I've read above are mostly valid ... the price you pay for living in a melting pot. The area described where the apartment is being built, there is massive freeway construction going on, from LAX all the way up through Culver City, nearly to Brentwood. Anywhere there is constuction, there will be tagging. But that freeway tagging is no different that the subway tagging in New York. Our metrorail is still pretty clean, from what I can see.
But here's is my bottom line: I lived through the 1994 earthquake, my townhouse not more than a mile from where the 10 collapsed. People asked me how I can live where there is the threat of earthquakes? I said that in a couple of month, we'll be down at the beach playing volleyball until 10 p.m. and the earthquake will be only a distant memory.

 

Never stayed in downtown LA when covering baseball. Usually Glendale or C- City, and it was just fine there.
Later, when doing more national stuff, I'd usually stay in Manhattan Beach and drive up to Dodger Stadium, over to Anaheim and eventually down to SD on the same trip (usually driving the PCH to get there). If there were a couple hours free in there, off to the beach.

I'd live there in a flash. My husband thinks it's a dump. Hates it. So there goes that.

 

Los Angeles is a great city if you live outside of it.

Santa Monica is not bad
Beverly Hills its great

Then we got the areas that are not that wonderful like Downtown, East, South LA known for its gang problem.
But if you know where to go and know LA enough its a nice place to live.

 

started going to diego in the real early '90s. i can say with confidence, it's taking the same turn LA did many years ago.

 

WE LOVE IT!!!!

 

and no buck, coming from someone who once lived there and visits once a year, yet doesn't have his perspective tweaked because he doesn't presently call LA his home ... no, it's not diverse. not at all, in fact.

yes, you have compton and BH, but really, tell me when you're going to strike bubbling crude in this lifetime? for middle-class folks, it's pretty much the same.

 

Not that anyone particularly gives a shit, but I was a little off with the Steinbeck reference. Doc didn't find a hermit/mystic figure on the beach at La Jolla in Cannery Row...it was the obscure but brilliant sequel to Cannery Row: Sweet Thursday. In Cannery Row, he goes to La Jolla to collect squid and finds a dead body. The La Jolla sequence in Sweet Thursday is more fun to read.

As for SD, my mom lived there during the late 80s. I was in college and spent summers there...was at the Murph a lot during the Padres gotterdammerung...the brown pinstripe years. Too many Republicans, but I liked it otherwise. Pacific Beach, Hillcrest, a few little neighborhoods here and there with a kind of retro feel. There was a little Japanese place downtown, on 6th I think, where I could get a big-ass plate of teriyaki chicken and rice for $3.50...a steal even in 1980s dollars. I doubt that place is still there. Sorry, no particularly insightful gems here, just a general recollection of liking the place. The bus sytem sucked though.

BTW, Anza-Borrego isn't real close to Palm Springs...although it's in the same general region. It's closer to I-8 than I-10. The drive from the mellow little mountain town of Julian down to Borrego Springs is a nice one. That desert's a muh-fuh in the summer, but the other seasons are great...particularly the spring when the flowers are blooming.