{"id":14924,"date":"2013-08-15T00:59:29","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T07:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=14924"},"modified":"2013-08-15T00:59:29","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T07:59:29","slug":"los-angeles-the-good-the-bad-and-the-truly-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/los-angeles-the-good-the-bad-and-the-truly-ugly\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles — The Good, the Bad and the Truly Ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Los Angeles. The good, the bad, the truly ugly. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Do I love LA? No. Do I even like it?<\/p>\n

Not really. LA is an awful place. It is 469 square miles of bumper to bumper traffic; sinus clogging air pollution; starless nights and unrelenting summer sun; alleys that go nowhere and<\/p>\n

\"Pretty<\/a>
The Good:<\/strong> Christina, who is not blond, blew out the birthday candle that came with the — very, very good — doughnuts we had for dessert at the Waterloo & City gastropub in Culver City. It’s just one of many great places to eat in LA County.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ten-lane freeways that if it’s rush hour also go nowhere. Miles and miles of homely two-story apartment buildings without enough parking, and slap-dash mini malls also without enough parking. Palm trees nobody’s pruned in years. And did I mention traffic?<\/p>\n

Los Angeles is a place where the women are blond, the men are brunette, the swimming pools<\/p>\n

\"ten<\/a>
The Bad:<\/strong> Ten lanes of bumper to bumper freeway traffic. Photo by BF Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

are kidney-shaped and the lighting is neon. It’s a place where, if you miss enough freeway exits, you can end up in Death Valley, where at least you’ll find a parking space. Or Long Beach, where you won’t.<\/p>\n

\"palm<\/a>
The Ugly<\/strong>: A palm tree nobody’s bothered to prune.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If I’m so down on Los Angeles, why do I bother to write about it, let alone go there?<\/p>\n

Because it is that singular sweet spot on earth where my pushing-30 daughter has parked herself — and her future.<\/p>\n

And mine too, if I don’t watch out.<\/p>\n

When I’m 99 and my knees are creaky and I can’t find my car keys because my kids have confiscated them, and the two of them (Christina in LA, Peter in the Midwest) have decided to pry Jon and me loose from our\u00a0 house in the trees with its sliver of a view of\u00a0 the beautiful San Francisco Bay, and Christina wins (loses?) the coin toss, and with that the two kids proceed to pack up our stuff and move us to LA — that’s when I’d better be ready to look past the ugly and see the good in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The Beautiful:<\/strong> Summer, winter. Something’s always blooming in LA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last weekend, I gave it try. Jon and I were there to take our daughter out for the big three-oh birthday dinner. I snapped a lot of pictures. I tried hard to love LA.<\/p>\n

This is what I saw. Some good. Some bad. Lotsa ugly. And here and there some actual beauty.<\/p>\n

Postscript 2024:<\/strong> The problem with me and LA is not that LA has nothing to offer, it’s that when I’m in that city, I’m a tourist and I’m spending my days on its tangled freeways and haphazard main streets. Urban sprawl had run amuck in LA well before city planners could impose order and style on its highways and byways.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more about my grown-up kids at “When Your Twenty-Something Doesn’t Call — Or, How to Overmother a Grown-Up Kid”<\/a>\u00a0 and\u00a0 “I’m the Mother of the Groom, Now What Do I Do?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Love this post? Hate LA? Share the post with friends by clicking on the Facebook icon.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
More Good:<\/strong> A butterfly comes in for a landing on a lantana blossom at the Butterfly Pavilion<\/a> of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, one of LA’s numerous first-rate attractions. Photos\u00a0 by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"a<\/a>
More Bad:<\/strong> It’s night. No stars, but lots of florescent and neon light.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"a<\/a>
More ugly:<\/strong> An LA alley — a paved-over space that could be growing something, like some trees maybe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Ritz-Carlton's<\/a>
More Beautiful:<\/strong> The Ritz-Carlton<\/a> is on the left. It’s big. It’s pretentious. But it’s beautiful. Too bad about the messy telephone poles all over LA.
<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/a>
Kidney-shaped pool at an apartment complex — one of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"ten<\/a><\/p>\n

Los Angeles is an awful place. It is 469 square miles of bumper to bumper traffic, sinus clogging air pollution, starless nights and unrelenting summer sun . . . Read more. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[576,1047,1030,1048,146,34,1049,1050,55,82,56],"class_list":["post-14924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-aging-parents","tag-air-pollution","tag-birthdays","tag-butterfly-pavilion","tag-christina","tag-dont-miss","tag-la-county-natural-history-museum","tag-los-angeles","tag-family-stories","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-peter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}