Oh, Los Angeles…
One of my close friends visited me from the East Coast recently — we first met in a place completely unlike Los Angeles and bonded over how clumsy we both were, our love for Vance Joy, the outdoors, and other things that weren’t cities, beaches, or even diverse kinds of people. For the week she was here, I wanted to show her the places that mirrored our experiences one summer in the mountains, but I realized it was impossible when any two places are so fundamentally different.
Sitting in the car thinking about where to take her next, I realized that I could only offer her the best experience by showing her the unique beauty of LA.
Last month, I ended up in this multi-roomed exhibit at the Natural History Museum that posed the question, “What does Los Angeles mean to you?” And I’ve been asked and have left many good questions unanswered in the past, but here, the exhibit had an option to record my answer. So, I squatted down onto the small wooden stool, paused, and thought.
I spent my first 17 years living in a wonderfully safe and uninspiring suburb in a blissful state of naivety until I moved to Los Angeles three and a half years ago, too starry-eyed to even feign maturity. Something about that sentence sounds like the start of some unmemorable, 30% on Rotten Tomatoes kind of blockbuster bust about some hopeful millennial moving to LA to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming famous.
But that couldn’t have been further from my truth — moving was a decision made from incomplete advice I’d gotten here and there, a one-page pro and cons chart, a fear of cold weather, and most notably, haste. The notion I had of Los Angeles at the time was that it was the home of Hollywood and film, fashionable people, fancy cars, crop tops, neon signs, beach bums… basically, superficial things that did not at all align with who I was (I teetered towards semi-awkward, dorky, characterized by ill-fitting jeans, freshly 17 but stuck in a weird limbo where I passed for child discounts — yeah, you get the point).
Sheltered and unsociable as I was, part of me always coveted being an independent, kick-a$*, big city gal, and I wondered what kind of person I would become if I immersed myself in a place where people moved to “make it big.” And so my decision was made.
A few weeks ago, sitting on the one hill on campus, sharing conversation and pupusas at lunch, my friend and I started reminiscing about the past and how much we’d changed in the last three and half years. The decisions we made when we were 17 changed so much of our lives, and I honestly wouldn’t and couldn’t have anticipated who I’d be today.
This city has so graciously colored my life with unique stories and experiences, and it’s perplexing to think about how I would have been a largely different person had I instead hastily decided to move to the Midwest for college. I constantly wonder about the alternate realities my life could have taken while rooted in the same values — if I hadn’t created some friendships laughing so hard with strangers until tears streamed down our faces, joined a math study group on the first day of class that unexpectedly introduced me to a cool entrepreneurship organization that became my family, had the same spontaneous road trips to camp on the beach, or even had the same ridiculously dramatic mid-life crises, would I have learned independence and been as creatively inspired as I have been from living here?
My current identity revolves so much around the independent and adventurous person I’ve grown into, but I can see so many different versions of me if I was planted in a different environment. And I realize these versions are neither right nor wrong, just different.
Still, it’s fascinating how clearly I can see the path I came from when I connect the dots of the past, but how exciting it is too, to muse about where I’ll be in the future.
Although I’ve grown from calling this widespread, bustling city my home for the past few years, I never truly thought about how it became. The exhibit at the Natural History Museum I visited last month, “Becoming Los Angeles,” traced through a little over 200 years of Los Angeles history. It introduced the city’s roots as a Spanish colony and detailed its rapid growth through industrialization until it became the hallmark location for film, entertainment, and tourism.
Even this city, characterized through a culture of diverse people and thought, prevailed through a string of events throughout its colorful (and occasionally shameful) history of heartwarming unification and oppression. Los Angeles may sprawl far, but it offers the comfort of home for those who come to catch a dream, experience something new, or just want to find a community of others who speak the same language and culture.
And my dream was on its way to being fulfilled — that is, until I slammed the brakes on my honeymoon phase with Los Angeles as workload and schedule piled high. I was quickly disappointed by the inflated sense of diversity college presented. Reality sobered up the enthusiasm I held before moving as precious hours were wasted in Lyft and car rides drawn out by traffic and rugged roads.
Disillusioned and irritated, I was itching to move on to the next destination. But, peering out of my window on a plane back to Los Angeles after New Year’s, I realized that I couldn’t recognize much of the city’s districts from above. I’ve been so comfortable moving with the ordinary that I never left the comfort of my own neighborhood which makes up just mere square miles of this enormous city. I stopped giving the city a fair shot.
Maybe it’s because of the finite amount of time I have left here, but I feel the extra push to see as much as I can. This city deserves a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, and I’ve made extra effort to leave the bubble of campus through photoshoots and weekend drives. I explored downtown LA late Sunday night in search of neon signs and arcades, enjoyed Chinese food after talking to a long-time volunteer at a temple in Chinatown, explored new districts with just me and my camera. This extra effort has helped me rediscover the endless little pockets of life and stories and has renewed the admiration I first felt here.
So, going back to that question. What does Los Angeles mean to you? Here’s what I said:
Los Angeles was a place I first found independence; moving away from home at 17 was easy. I was ready to leave my small and lovely, but in many ways restricting hometown. It’s a place I discovered adventure second — in the beaches, the food, the architecture — but most importantly, the people that I’ve met and the support system that I’ve created will always remind me of home and bring me back. So, thank you Los Angeles, for being a place I’ve change and grown so much with.
