First Impressions

We're nearly three weeks into our move to Los Angeles, we've seen a bit, met a few people, done one or two sights and buggered about doing not very much inbetween. The major thing I've found about LA is that, more than any other city I've been to, it is so vastly different from one area to another, from one street to another. Ok, so Hampstead is very different to Brixton, but it changes subtley from north to south across the river, and even though London has basically existed since the dawn of time compared to LA, and has the architecture to prove it, it all still feels underneath like the same city. Maybe that's just because I know it so well, but I think the same of Brighton, Bristol, Leeds, New York, Chicago, Madrid, Barcelona, Prague...

And NONE of the touristy photos you see of LA are accurate. At all. Santa Monica looks like boutiques when in fact it's massive roads then suddenly one pedestrianised street with much the same shops as Oxford Circus, and the beach is ten times wider and longer than any photos would have you believe.

Then there's Venice - which one second is million dollar homes and the next clear gangland territory, a weird mix of uber trendy and crack-selling corners, like setting The Wire in Shoreditch.

Last week, the midgets and I went downtown to scope out some disused buildings with a view to eventually attempt TD style work in the city of celluloid (oooh they're not going to know what's hit them!); my two are pretty used to being dragged around derelict building sites.

When you type "downtown LA" in Google, you come up with images like this

I don't know what kind of photoshopping was done on this but it wasn't the same downtown I was in. Maybe it was if you looked 180degrees up.

Downtown LA is odd - now I get down and dirty with the best of them, having grown up in Lagos, frequenting pubs in Holloway, going to school in Kentish Town, walking through St Paul's late at night, living in Streatham - but I was shocked at the state of most of the downtown populace. Maybe it's just indicative of the poor system of care in the US, because there is a major difference between the homeless and drunks of London (be clear, they are often two very different groups of people) and the plethora of people who ought to be being looked after in some kind of welfare institue in LA.

Just as the buildings alternate huge empty caverns epitomising the destruction of the American Dream and the collapse of the Global Economy, with high rise, glass fronted, trendy loft converted mega-bucks-towers, the people walking the streets of downtown LA are in expensive suits or rags. I don't often admit to being shocked, and lord knows Ethan has grown up in an area where a woman walks around with hundreds of heavy chains and padlocks round her neck, another in her seventies dresses up like a five year old raiding a drag queen's dressing up box and make up kit, and a lot of people with severe disabilities, predominantly learning or mental, are going about their daily lives with carers. But even he started to look a bit worried by the sheer number of people who looked like they desperately needed more help than a few quarters for a hostel, or a warmer jumper for the night or just a can of lager to keep their alcohol levels consistent.

Ten minutes drive up the freeway (which is MENTAL - they really do look like this)

is Echo Park. It is St Andrews in Bristol crossed with San Francisco crossed with Camden Town on a good day. Young and trendy with rough edges, second hand bookshops with adjoining cafes in which sit teenagers drawing on giant canvasses wearing peace sign glasses, a creative writing centre for children run by sci-fi fanatical volunteers, a farmers market held in a crumbling car park where $20 will buy you two weeks worth of food rather than 2mins, and a total jumble of houses perched on rocks and nestled into the hills which cause roller-coaster like roads throughout the area.

Then back to the wide streets and plazas hosting expensive yoga studios behind their grotty frontage of West LA. I'll save our adventures of Sunday brunches in Beverly Hills for another blog...