What does L.A. mean to Doreen?

Watcha mean why LA? What would you rather I move down South where I can get some exercise running from Billy Bob and his KKK friends? Where I can get some home-styled fried chicken and hot sauce, freshly cooked collard greens, and watermelon straight from the patch? Or would you would rather I move to the Midwest where I can grow some corn and work out in the fields like my grandmamma used to? Or go East Coast where it's cold and it snows all the time, when you know Black people weren't made for cold weather? My skin is made for the sun, and my nose shaped for warm air. Oh, I get it…you would rather I go back to the motherland where I can run free with wild animals and not worry about material possessions. Well you know what; I can get all those things in LA. I met plenty of racist people in LA I don't have to do down South for it. When I feel like some fried chicken and collard greens there are plenty of soul food restaurants around the way. When the season is right, all I have to do is drive around for five minutes and I am bound to find a couple of Latino families selling fresh watermelons off the back of a pick-up truck. And if I really want to work in the fields I'd drive just north of LA where I can grow some strawberries or something. As for the wild animals, come on now, I grew up in South Central LA not too far from the "Jungles" (this is a notoriously dangerous neighborhood for those who don't know). Who needs wild animals when you can run around with a bunch of wild humans?

Why LA? Because it has allowed me to dream big dreams and live out my fantasies but it has also kept me very close to reality.

 

What does L.A. mean to Jordan?

Perhaps there is gold in these here parts! Recently, an imaginary prospector has visited me. Much in the same way that Santa Claus leaves his trace on Christmas Eve, I didn't actually see him, but there are definite positive consequences of his visit. So, now I finally have acquired bona fide L.A. gold, though I didn't possess it at first. Four years ago I moved to L.A. without any specific ideas about my future prospects in this area. Then I got here: Sunny days! Warm weather! High fashion! Yuck! I like cold, thunderstorms, and hate superficiality. Within a few weeks of my stay I had my solution. Leave L.A. Go somewhere where people aren't obsessively concerned with physical appearance and good hair. Well, three years pass with my dislike of L.A. in complete stasis. And now I'm a graduating senior with the world at my disposal. I am free to explore other areas or even just settle back in my Minnesota safety net...but I don't want to. Recently, my education as a cinema student has provided me the opportunity to be an instrumental part of a television production class on campus. The absolute joy I feel in this endeavor has proven to me that my L.A. existence has not been for naught because only in this city can I pursue film and television so readily. It's about time I feel excited about career prospects, and if I need to be in SoCal to pursue the fulfillment I desire, so be it. Besides, the lack of weather here makes me appreciate the rain more than I ever did in Minnesota. And I must say, my new, funky hair cut looks tons better than the mop I used to sport...and hell if you'll ever see me wear flannel again. So, while there are definite downsides to this place, maybe I'm just required to dig down low in the mine of things and actually see L.A. for what it is. Funny, I've been so critical of other people's superficiality for so long that I was blind to it within myself. So, for now I have been claimed and maybe when I realize that I'm not being offered jobs anywhere my opinions of L.A. will change, but in the meanwhile I will wait for my prospector to provide me with a compass and map to some buried treasure. And I will look damn good searching for it.

 

What does L.A. mean to Vera?

LA is an oxymoron as much as the phrase "sprawling metropolis". A city does not sprawl, it rises. But like four buddies sprawled across the living room of a suburban home during the last quarter of the Super Bowl, surrounded by empty packages of products advertised to them, Los Angeles is an American icon that the populace has come to cherish and hate like those wonderful weekends dedicated to football. The ignored litter is like the many impoverished communities huddling against freeway walls that shake with the sound of traffic - people coming and going, movers and shakers, deals to be made, coffee to be had, and no time for every natural beauty available outside of the car. The beach, mountains, rivers and ancient forests surround the final frontier, the West, the place where dreams come true with spouting oil, rich and expensive land, perfect weather, and blonde hair waving out of convertibles. Indeed, LA spoils us. The maids and wives of husbands will be left to pick up the mess when the revelers pass out in their victories or losses. We will complain when our roads will not last through ten days of rain. We will whimper at the thought of public transportation. We will cringe at the thought of an apartment smaller than 600 sq. ft. And then when the rain passes, the next week begins, we awake to a brand new LA where we can drive through the entire globe in one day while sprawling in our own cars with our cell phones, drive-thru food, and four dollar coffee, soy milk please, purchased as an elixir to cure the Monday hangover.

 

What does L.A. mean to Lindsay?

I came out to California two and half years ago with starry-eyed ideals and a big, Texan smile on my face, ready to meet millions of new liberal friends and settle down comfortably with my new Blue family. I was Red Stated out. Barbara Bush spoke at my graduation and our newspaper editor quoted Barry Goldwater in our yearbook, if you want some idea of Where I Come From.

Funny thing is, I think I sort of, well, in some ways, prefer living in a Red State.

Because if I have to hear one more piece of coastal Blue State snobbery, I think I will scream. I try to explain to folks here that in Texas cities we don't shoot each other anymore than people do in LA, that we are actually sort of nice to each other every once in a while, and we also like going to sunny places with good beaches and good food.

But the pubs have us exactly where they want us, which is marginalized and snooty. As long as we're in LA, blasé and unsurprised and unawed and unphased, as cool and ironic as New Yorker cartoons, we pose to gain no converts. And I'm not even a convert! I subscribe to the New Yorker! But I'm sick of people - educated people - automatically equating Texas with farm. And I feel despair for my party when I see left-leaning talk show radio billboards on LA freeways proclaiming, "We prefer the left," with a Blue California broken from the rest of the country.

I was in Brazil over winter break with an Angeleno who happens to be gay and liberal. As he explained to our Brazilian host that the United States has two coasts, and everything in the middle is "worthless", I pointed out to him that attitudes like this explained why, as he had told me earlier in the day, "there's a lack of discourse in this country." He rolled his eyes and said he didn't care.

Why LA? I moved here for the perspective, and I got it. It just wasn't the one I was expecting to get.  

What does L.A. mean to David?

Though I’m pretty sure you don’t have to come out to Los Angeles to be a writer, you’ve got to admit that it’s worked out nicely for a hell of a lot of people. Novelists from James Ellroy to Raymond Chandler have made their livings exposing L.A.’s dark, tragic corners while simultaneously celebrating its thirst for heroism and drama. Poets like Carol Muske-Dukes and Charles Bukowski have mined the city for its magic and absurdity, while screenwriters like Steve Martin and Lawrence Kasdan – and probably even the starry-eyed kids who wait on them at restaurants – have crafted numerous scripts about the countless ways this place ends up impacting its residents just as much as it is shaped by them.

But no matter how much you read or see or hear about Los Angeles, the fact remains that there’s just no substitute for living in it for awhile. After a point, you truly start to forget that the rest of the country doesn’t have near-constant sunshine, $12 movie tickets, entire restaurants without smoking sections, and public transportation systems that are only slightly more efficient than walking.

I think it’s just that sort of temptation to forget, though – that sociological bubble that Los Angeles can often create around those who inhabit it – that sometimes makes me suspicious of a city like this one. By writing in Los Angeles, by drinking in its cultural diversity, its gaps between the socially disadvantaged and the economically privileged, by losing myself in its people and its pace and its rhythms, the question sooner or later must get raised: am I somehow losing sense of *me*?

More than perhaps any other city in the country, Los Angeles offers each member of its sprawling metropolis the opportunity for rejuvenation and self-invention. But the trick, I suppose, is to maintain a hold of the materials and experiences and values that we carried with us when we got here in the first place. Sometimes, I’ll admit, it is not an easy one to master.

“Why go anywhere else?”, die-hard Angelinos have asked me. “This place has everything!” And though I’ve seen enough of the rest of the country to know that that’s just not quite true, I occasionally find myself agreeing anyway. Because sometimes it’s more fun to hang on to my little secret.