Up the Coast
A drunk text to L.A.
It is difficult to properly describe to people not from L.A. the experience of growing up here. I attribute this to the fact that L.A. is really less of a city and more of a scattered set of loosely connected neighborhoods ranging from affluent to very affluent. When people tell me, after a week-long visit to L.A., that they “don’t like it,” I will typically respond, “Well, did you grow up wealthy and not pay for gas? Because if not, then you’re probably not going to like it.”
It’s also difficult because any reason for hating L.A. could be a perfectly understandable reason for loving it. For instance, I am charmed by the long drives and predictably sunny weather. Some people like seasons.
Like all good things, L.A. exists in direct contradiction with itself.
Also a big part of the L.A. experience is getting so fed up with all the smog and shedding jacaranda trees that you decide to take a road trip up the coast. I’ve done this many times to varying degrees of success. Sometimes I’ve been in the passenger seat, sometimes I’ve driven, and other times I’ve been relegated to the middle seat of my mom’s air-conditionless Volvo watching my brother play Angry Birds on his iPod touch until I either pissed my pants or threw up from carsickness.
The golden rule of planning a road trip is to expect to only get about seventy-five percent as far as you plan to. If you shoot for Seattle you’ll land in Portland. If you shoot for Portland you’ll end up in San Francisco. If you shoot for San Francisco you’ll end up in Cambria (this is why it’s best to aim high).
Cambria, CA is a charming little town halfway between L.A. and San Francisco, owned and operated by one family, the Linns. The Linns are dead set on capturing your money any way they can. And they will. The locals of Cambria all seem to share a face, as if they were inbred. They look at you with cold, cross-eyed glares, resenting you, the coastal elite, for thinking that you, the coastal elite, are superior to them – which you obviously are and do not attempt to hide.
Also inbred is the irresistibly tart Olallieberry. The Olallieberry, like Cambria, is also halfway between two whole places. Up the coast of the blackberry, and just below the blueberry, you’ll find the Olallieberry, existing in contradiction with itself, staring at you with those big inbred Olallieberry eyes, asking you to love and accept it. It is always worth braving the harsh looks, desolate hotels, overpriced antique stores, and monopolized restaurants for a slice of Linn’s famous Olallieberry pie.
…
I was road tripping with my girlfriend at the time, and since we never really had much to talk about, I listened to my nerdy comic-book podcast, “The Weekly Planet,” while she either slept or scrolled through her phone. Road tripping with someone you can’t freely talk to is a test of your mental elasticity. Very quickly it’ll reveal the flaws in your self-esteem with just how rapidly your self-talk will retreat into dark places.
I remember one particularly trying evening at her mom’s apartment in Studio City. Her uncle had come over to cook ribs and brought with him fifteen other Brazilian family members. Two things about Brazilians: they love to talk about Brazil, and they love to eat salted meats. I couldn’t do either properly as my knowledge of Brazil began with the movie “Rio,” and ended with “Rio 2.” Also, red meat gave me heartburn. Brazilian people talk about Brazil like Jewish people talk about Israel: with rose-colored glasses, and no intention of ever really going.
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Eve Babitz wrote a lot about the claustrophobia of San Francisco, how its “cheerful shipshape vitality” drove her to miss L.A. like an amputated appendage. I, myself, am a little softer towards San Francisco because of a few lasting fond memories from my family road trips as a child. These memories are only still-life pictures though; the ferry to Alcatraz, thrift shopping on Haight-Ashbury, the magic store and its fart bombs.
Perhaps San Francisco is uncomfortable to Angelinos because, unlike L.A., it is a real city, with boundaries you can comprehend, and a more-or-less shared consistent culture. If you are moving to California from the east coast, and you have strong knees, San Francisco is probably your best bet.
The volatile environment of Los Angeles is a big part of why so many film studios nested there in the early thirties. You could plausibly shoot for a Texas-set western, a sandy beach in Greece, and the rocky terrain of Mars and only drive around thirty minutes. To some, this variety is heaven, but to others it is dizzying and disorienting.
California is so indecisive, in fact, that you could comfortably divide up the state into three smaller states: Southern California (a red state), Middle California (a blue state), and Northern California (a state that votes for Jill Stein).
The truth is, for all the “commiefornian” allegations that are cast upon us from the rest of the country, is that California is just as politically, ethnically, and socially diverse as the rest of the country. For every rich liberal in L.A., there are two sunburnt republicans living in a trailer by the Salton Sea. This is why a trip up the coast is mandatory viewing for every Angelino; it forces you to have perspective.
…
I was buying a fridge magnet at a gift shop in Solvang, a Dutch village with limited charm. My ever-leaking nose was dripping down onto my hoodie, and I felt like a toddler again, wiping my snot on the back of my hand. (This is the same decorative nose-shaped appendage that would render poppers useless and cause a huge clump of cocaine to become stuck behind my turbinates.)
I ran into a friend from middle school, Zyan, who was with some other middle-school friends I don’t care to name. Zyan gave me a friendly hello and the nameless others gave me slightly less friendly ones. How predictable that I would run into my past on a coastal trip designed for escape.
I was fat and annoying in middle school, and subsequently had very few friends. My escape to a performing arts high school had given me independence, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being a doll in the Island of Misfit Toys. I still haven’t.
Zyan stood before me with a whole gaggle of kids I had grown up with and had since lost contact. I don’t know why I still felt excluded. They had ridden with this K-12 private school to the bitter end, and now were road tripping together, just as homogenized as they had ever been, tied at the hip, and just as incestuous as the Olallieberry.
“We should get going,” said one of the others. “We’re staying at [redacted’s] house in San Francisco.”
I never quite knew how to talk to these people. They all spoke the same, liked the same movies, and hated the same people. To be on the shit list of one angry middle schooler is one thing; to be the sole uniting target of the hive is another. I smiled blankly at Zyan. (He showed me the most kindness in middle school, so that is why he is named.) This was always how things went. There was never enough time to be confrontational.
…
L.A. always finds you. Whether it is in Solvang, New York, or Paris, somebody will come up to you who knows a friend of a friend who went to Harvard-Westlake or Pali High. As frustrating as it feels to never be able to fully reinvent yourself, the web of Angelenos that stretches across the globe is weirdly comforting. You can’t ever feel too far from home because somebody will always be there to remind you of In-N-Out, Poquito Mas, and the unemployed vague creative-types who sit outside the Intelligencia in Silverlake.
…
I’ve been to San Francisco twice for romantic purposes, which feels stupid as the most famous song about it involves “leaving your heart” there, but it has a certain je ne sais quoi that keeps people coming back, at least for periodic road trips.
Tourists usually head straight to the Fisherman’s Wharf, which is fun for an afternoon or so, and the sourdough factory makes for a charming lunch (if you don’t mind twenty-seven-dollar clam chowder), but after a few miles of walking you are forced to confront the inevitable uphill walk back to the hotel.
Alcatraz is also amazing, but make sure to book your tickets months in advance as it is popular. People who are trapped in their own lives, either due to domestic expectations or capitalism, like to remind themselves that there is a further state of incarceration.
For me, though, the best part of San Francisco is the sea spray. Every time a wave from the frigid San Francisco Bay hits the rocks, a gentle misting of salty water kisses your face like little baptisms from Poseidon. It is also good for curly hair.
On every trip I take to San Francisco, I make sure to stop in Chinatown for a salty, melancholic, and MSG filled dinner at one of San Francisco’s finest establishments. San Francisco’s proximity to Angel Island made it a popular destination for Asian immigrants post-gold rush, creating the largest Chinatown in the country. Then, from the rib of Chinatown grew a Japantown, and together with the Japanese Exclusion Act, a ghetto was created.
Our coastal cities have a funny way of repackaging the ghettos as novelty midcity ethnic theme parks so that they are more digestible and therefore sellable to tourists. This is similar to how Wall Street bankers in 2008 repackaged subprime mortgages into CDOs. It’s all about perspective. In the case of San Francisco, one man’s treasure became one man’s trash seemingly overnight, as the minute I drove out of town, so too did the tech companies which were artificially inflating the cost of living.
On the way back to L.A., make sure to stop for a night in one of California’s best-kept secrets, Fresno. (It’s well kept because it is the most miserable place on earth). Known for its high-crime, crumbling infrastructure, and sweltering summer heat, Fresno proudly rests two hundred miles from L.A. It is practically the inland sister-city of Cambria, but instead of Olaliberries, the pies are filled with guns and cigarettes.
A lot of the hotels in Fresno are actually just repurposed hospitals, so if you hear pained groaning sounds and liminal life support beeps, don’t worry, it’s just the ghosts!
But for all of Fresno’s faults, it still makes sense. It’s not trying to be anything it’s not, and perhaps that is why I feel such hatred towards it. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Cambria are all trying to sell something to you. Whether that be independence, artistic freedom, or pie, you at least know that you are going to be impressed. The inauthenticity of the city will match that of the road tripper.
Fresno is final. It won’t get better, and it’s not trying. This is in diametric opposition to the road tripper, who is trying to get better by leaving home.
Of course, no matter what you take home from your expedition, you won’t feel whole. You will still feel fat and annoying despite being technically underweight. You will still care about the opinions of those whose opinions you do not respect. And perhaps most disappointingly, no matter how much you drive, you are forced to recognize that movement is not the same thing as freedom.
By the time I got home from my second road trip, I was practically ready to kiss the ground. I dove headfirst into the pool, cooling myself off in the freezing deep end in just my boxers. The summer heat of a lonely Fresno, and the silent car rides punctuated with the smell of Subway, had teamed up to create my first taste of teen angst. It was a taste I’d come to know well in the coming years, but never quite understand how to deal with.
I wish I could say I rushed to my friend’s house, got In-N-Out, and drove to a scenic lookout where we talked about the pains of growing up, but in reality I just went home and released the weeks' worth of shits and farts I had been holding in.
L.A. doesn’t show its love with big romantic gestures; it’s a slower, more patient love that you feel through the quiet lunches in Los Feliz, or through a staggeringly beautiful sunset that you view from a Ralph’s parking lot in Mid City.
On New Year’s Eve, I raced down the 101 blasting “Auld Lang Syne” with all my friends in the car, rushing back to the better party before midnight. My best friend, Wyatt, still had on his wristband from Cedars-Sinai, and hadn’t showered in three days. His heart had nearly exploded the week before due to an acute case of pericarditis brought on by a particularly nasty battle with the flu. There’s nothing like a confrontation with mortality to make you get real adult real fast. That was the end of childhood, and all of us felt it.
I guess I would say that growing up in L.A. is like a hundred-mile-an-hour drive down the Ventura Highway at eleven fifty on December thirty-first. You’re trying to get it all done before midnight because you think you’ll change, but after midnight, it’ll just be another day, and another perfect sun will rise over the imperfect city of Los Angeles, and you’ll still be imperfect, but you’re doing your best and, in L.A., that takes you farther than most places, and no, it’s really not much of a city, but it’s home to about four million people, and, like with the Tooth Fairy, if they all believe real hard, then it might just start to feel like it. Suspended halfway between being and oblivion, Los Angeles loves you because it lets you grow and gives you grace to find out along the way.
