I want to tell you about this place. Where I spent my 20’s, laughably trying to grow up. It was a place unlike any other due to the culture, the art, the film, the food, and of course, the people who were all very, very pretty and nearly plastic in most cases. Everyone was trying to make it. Everyone. There wasn’t a single soul in the city that didn’t have an ulterior motive and if they said otherwise they were not to be trusted. But these were the times. To be trending was to be popular and to read books was to be ancient.
To recall the words of someone smarter, he put it another way:
“What you may not know, is that there’s a river that goes through the center of this place- let’s call it Los Angeles — in fact, there actually wouldn’t be a city of Los Angeles if not for this river. The thing is, this river isn’t really a river that can support a major metropolitan area. So essentially, Los Angeles is a city that exists in a place where there shouldn’t be a city at all. And yet people flock here. To a city that shouldn’t be a city at all. And why?
Because of their dreams.”
In fact you could say this cities sole purpose of existence is because people have dreams — because they came out here for something better. That’s the way it’s been sold. For years and years and years. People come from all over the world to try to make it in this city- for fame, for fortune, for a larger following. Whether it’s to become an actress or an actor or a producer or a big time director or a model with a large social media following, it all adds up to varying degrees of popularity — and of course, sadly, how pretty you are in most cases. I know quite a few of these people — some of them are wiser, trying their best to be original in a culture that has loved cliché for so long. But the majority are shallow, and overpopulate the city with pictures of themselves and show no real appreciation for art or aesthetic, which takes away real value for real struggling artists. It’s both disheartening and totally fascinating.
Perhaps the real struggle that we found was looking for love in a city that didn’t place a whole lot of value on it. Perhaps it was just that my friends and I were hopelessly hopeful in our thoughts and our pictures and our adventures together. Perhaps our sadness stemmed from the women around us, the silly mistakes and stupid millenial problems we encountered on a daily basis. The women of Los Angeles were wild cards with lit fuses, many of them were either too spoiled or not spoiled enough. We never stood a chance, we were too busy dreaming, trying desperately to be happy.
But LA thrived. I swear, the city soared. There was The Broad, the late night talks at The Apple Pan, the sunsets in Malibu, The Last Bookstore, the food trucks of any shape/size outside the trendy coffee shops, the mornings in Echo Park, the afternoons in Downtown Los Angeles and the nights in Hollywood. There were the letters to remind ourselves of why it all existed and why none of it was real (it was just too good to be true!). There were lavish parties and open-bar receptions, Arclight films we fell for and Los Feliz wine bars we recovered in.
I’d look at everyone around me, wherever I was. I sometimes forgot if we were all beautiful or damaged, and then I remembered it was probably both.
And when the melancholy came, and it always did in this loveless city of wonder, my friends and I would run to the beach and imagine a place that wasn’t so sad. Then we’d go home, have our coffee, and with a little bit of vindication left, write a love letter about a city that existed in a place where there shouldn’t be a city at all.
