A friend of mine is taking a class on Los Angeles culture. He asked me to participate in a survey for one of his research papers, and upon reading the questions, I thought my answers would make a great blog entry. Here they are:
1. Use one word to describe Los Angeles and explain why you chose that particular word.
Freedom. Both literally and figuratively, Los Angeles is a sprawling, wide-open place. Your experience here is mostly up to you, you get what you put in. This is both good and bad. There is no handholding or safety net in Los Angeles, and that quality is definitely not for everyone. However, for people who are self-starters, the freedom in LA is great because you are responsible for the risks you take but at the same time, you earn the rewards, and these are considerable when you get to be the one determining them.
2. What do you see as some of the most positive aspects of Los Angeles?
The weather is great year-round. Being on the coast, the ocean is literally a short drive away. It is a great sports town, as far as the teams are concerned. There is a ton of variety as far as having things to do. For any type of person, there are innumerable places to go and activities to participate in on any given day.
3. What do you see as some of the most negative aspects of Los Angeles?
The traffic is the single worst part of Los Angeles. It does factor into almost every decision with regard to going and doing things in LA because of the time impact. Public transportation is mediocre at best, and very poorly designed. The sports fans, in general, are not as great as the teams. They are too fair-weather, only showing support when the teams are winning championships. Less superficially, both the actual danger and the perception of danger in urban areas are significant negatives.
4. Do you feel a sense of community in Los Angeles? If so, what unites the people? If not, what are the sources of division?
There is a definite sense of community in Los Angeles. Part of it comes from the variety of the people. In many places, variety drives people apart, but in Los Angeles the people seem to have molded their own, new culture out of a combination of all the background traditions of each person living here. The people of Los Angeles are most united by the fact that they know you have to live here and appreciate this place in order to understand it.
5. If someone you knew was moving to Los Angeles, what advice would you give him/her?
The first thing I would tell her is to buy a reliable, high gas mileage automobile. Never underestimate the importance of that. Also, on a more philosophical level, I would tell her to try and keep her mind as free and open as I believe Los Angeles is. Don't try to pin the place down or quickly define it without spending a good amount of time here. The whole Hollywood thing is overblown, and a lot of people new to the area make the mistake of thinking Hollywood is all there is.
6. How do you see Los Angeles in 50 years? What are your hopes for L.A.? What are your fears?
50 years is a really long time... by that time, Los Angeles could be the capital of Mexico, Canada, or China for that matter. I'm not sure where I see myself in 50 years. In the future, I see downtown becoming more of a social destination especially as it is beginning to be cleaned up. I see many of the urban areas, that have been given up on, returning to neighborhoods and communities again. My fear for LA is that the common culture that all of the people here have created gets eroded by political correctness. I'm afraid of the possibility of the city losing its openness if the people turn away from what unites them. My hope for LA is that all of the great things about this city only get stronger, and the people are able to fix the weaknesses. I hope that Los Angeles installs a new, efficient public transportation system that is well-designed, perhaps a monorail, so that the one big negative is eliminated once and for all.
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