Tag Archives: california

To Live and Cry in L.A.

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Back in October of 1988, I was alone in my one-bedroom bungalow on Formosa Avenue when Kirk Gibson hit his memorable walkoff home run to win the first game of the World Series for the Dodgers. A loud gasp of excitement and shock burst from my throat, and I immediately jumped to my feet and opened the outside door so I could hear the honking horns, firecrackers and victorious shouts in my neighborhood.

Crickets. Nothing. And this was just half a block from teeming Sunset Boulevard. I realized then that Los Angeles is such a vast, compartmentalized city that it tends to swallow up noise, events, and social interaction like high tide rolling over a sand castle.

Which explains why life today in Occupied Los Angeles is so devastating and surreal. 

Every few hours, the few reliable social media platforms that are left bring news of fresh horrors perpetrated on our beloved, soulful, and terrorized Latino community. Far from the stated goal of rooting out “criminals”, the Federal government seems hell bent on rounding up and removing every brown-skinned resident they can get their hands on—whether documented or not. Seeing those residents currently make up 48.6% of the 9.6 million people in Los Angeles County, it could take a while. 

Much like the European Jews of the 1930s, devastated family members have no idea where their loved ones have been taken or if they’ll return. Many of the abductors are apparently deputized “cops” without uniforms, badges or warrants, and coming soon after a fake policeman politically assassinated a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, this is downright terrifying. 

Aside from the economic disruption created when dedicated workers are suddenly removed from farms, businesses and construction sites, it’s a traumatizing event for the entire region. I pass a car wash or a guy with a leaf blower and wonder if they’ll be there the following day. Normal life is exhausting enough here without the added fear and stress of a military-style occupation that by all evidence feels completely unnecessary. Because mainstream media has largely chosen to accept the administration’s warped view that L.A. is a city of riots, people back east have been messaging to ask what our “war zone” is like—when there is virtually nothing warlike happening. 

Weirdly, many of us continue to go to the market, walk our dogs, weave through traffic, book dinner reservations, attend parties and concerts, hike in the hills or ride our bikes while nearly half the city is afraid to leave their homes. We bring up the troubling subject with friends and neighbors when we can, unsure how it will be received. Losing ourselves in TV shows and sporting events can also provide temporary relief, though It’s hard to concentrate and nearly impossible to stay off our phones.

California is a wonderful state and Los Angeles a massively diverse community that works on so many levels. My guess is most of the people who hate it have never been here, choosing to believe the myths and stereotypes the climate and natural beauty tend to generate. During the wildfires back in January, the lack of empathy for the scores of non-wealthy people who lost their homes was startling, as was the unwarranted ridicule heaped on our overwhelmed first responders. 

Thankfully, we’ve been able to persevere through our many natural disasters; what we cannot accept are fabricated ones.

We Love L.A.

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Los Angeles is the most misunderstood major city in America—probably because it isn’t really a city. It’s a sprawling amalgamation of neighborhoods, each with its own character, its own history, its own feel. You can have lunch in Chinatown, drive a few blocks and find yourself in a teeming downtown jewelry district or skid row. People who have never been here love to hate on the place, branding it as merely a haven for rich movie stars. That was not true in the 1930s and it isn’t true now. Less than 5% of L.A. residents work in the entertainment industry, and most of the ones who do are dedicated craftspeople and laborers.

Yet it’s been impossible to shake the stereotype. Watch any national sporting event that takes place here and at a commercial break you’ll either see a shot of the Hollywood sign, the Beverly Hills sign, or roller skaters and body builders on Venice Beach. One of the more sickening aspects of the current wildfires are the social media posts that focus on the lost Palisades homes of celebrities. Why not show the lost homes of working class residents of Altadena, who lack the finances and likely the insurance to ever rebuild anywhere? 

I won’t even lower myself to mention the hateful comments by MAGA asshats who glory in others’ misery and have tried to blame the fires on everything from DEI hires to socialism. Climate change—specifically a fire hurricane with 98 mph wind gusts—caused the events and made them nearly impossible to combat.

Thankfully, I live down in Culver City, a good half hour drive from the Palisades, so smoky air has been our main concern. Seemingly though, everyone we know has a friend or family member who lost a home this week. An all-encompassing shared sadness has permeated the region, and put everyone on edge with evacuation bags ready by the door.

My sadness has more to do with the loss of so many L.A. landmarks and neighborhoods we took for granted. Pacific Palisades was perhaps the most precious area of the city, beautiful homes and a charming village sloping toward the ocean. It now looks like Dresden, and the damage didn’t stop there. On the Pacific Coast Highway, every Malibu home perched on the water is now rubble, as are eating institutions like the Reel Inn, Moonshadows, and Gladstone’s. For God’s sake, the Will Rogers house in Will Rogers Park, where we first taught our boy to walk, is history.

Natural calamities have always been part of the landscape here. Months after I arrived in late 1982, a number of those same Malibu homes fell into the sea during a winter storm. The 1994 Northridge earthquake took months to psychologically recover from. I distinctly remember one late summer when Santa Monica residents gathered on the cliffs to watch fires up the coast, like Washingtonians did with the Battle of Manassas. 

A few years ago I published a trilogy of creepy Los Angeles stories called Red Jacarandas, but the horror of these fires vastly outweighs those scares. L.A. tends to recover from every disaster it experiences, but for the thousands of unfortunate souls who lost their possessions this time, it may be a long time coming. All I know is that this disaster has made me love and care about Los Angeles even more.