8-30-04

Our planned trip set us in the belly of Los Angeles late on a Sunday evening. We imagined we would sneak in under the shadow of night and navigate the complex of serpentine highways and byways and this ways and that ways while Los Angeles slept a Sunday night before a hectic week.

We celebrated our cleverness at a Denny’s style restaurant in Barstow while we highlighted our attack plan on our respected maps. Radio communication was to be kept at a minimum to keep a charged battery incase one of us were to get lost or captured. When the time came, we put on our game face and set out.

The stretch of highway between Barstow and the greater Los Angeles was long and uncomfortable. A moonless night gave no indication of what was or wasn’t just off the side of the road. When I strained my eyes to see anything, I saw nothing.

The pace began to quicken as the distance between the city and us narrowed. Yellow signs cautioned of steep roads and then suddenly we were driving at, what felt like, a forty-five degree decline towards a sparkling pool of lights. When I looked straight forward, I saw brake lights of six-axle semi trucks accompanied by a stout smell of burning brake pads. When I looked up I saw vast stretching complex of city activity accompanied by the same burning smell. The particular stretch of highway is too treacherous for administrative authority to intervene. For that one downhill plunge, you are completely on your own and anything goes. No speed limit signs, no speed traps, no stops. David and I whizzed through the area, letting inertia have it’s way with us. We weaved passed the justifiably precarious diesel trucks and threw an unnecessary amount of caution to the wind, traveling at speeds of 80 and 90 miles an hour. I don’t even think my truck speedometer goes that high.

When we came out of the decline we found ourselves waste deep in a bustling metropolis. The surprise was not unlike that of finding yourself in the desert, except an apathetic and evolutionized landscape was replaced with concrete and metal and geometry. We traveled at modest speeds and were passed as though we were sitting still by shiny Mercedes and Honda Civic’s with custom mufflers that intentionally agitate you with incredibly loud exhausts. Somebody forgot to tell LA that you are supposed to rest on Sunday.

Where we come from, when you see city lights, you are almost home and you can start getting excited. In Los Angeles, the lights are anticlimactic. There is not one city stacked and built upwards, but a melting metropolis that spreads for fifty to a hundred miles from the center. The drive from the outskirt of the city to our own part seemed to take another four days. I was very tense as I expected to be astounded, disgusted, or destroyed at any moment.

My first perception of Los Angeles was that of a modern complex built upon a dry, yet flourishing jungle. Palm trees line off ramps and vines crawl along side overpasses and dividing walls as natures blind hand fumbles over the face of an oblivious society. This first acknowledgement of nature in LA would be one of the few.

Despite my paranoia, we arrived at our destination safely and moved what we owned into our new apartment. West Hollywood is where we would call home. A lovely neighborhood far enough outside of mainstream Hollywood to be peaceful and inhabited by people liberal enough to respect their surroundings and decorate accordingly. The streets are canopied with foliage. When you walk down the sidewalk, manuevering around tree limbs is necessary. Every yard has it’s own tasteful choice of flowered plants that perfume the neighborhood with a sweet smell of magnolia’s to apple blossoms. It would be safe to say that Los Angeles, primarily West Hollywood, is pleasant at night.

A safe arrival was followed up with a mellow evening of merlots and pinot grigios. I fell a sleep with a head swimming in wine and feeling rather unharmonious with the city as I perceived it. To say that we remembered our dreams that night would be lying, but I would think that we imagined one last time the pure ideals that comprised our goals for coming to LA. We would need that clean and clear picture of what our dreams were if they were to hold up against what the reality of LA would hold for us.

Part III Next Week

Josh Gilpatrick