this is getting shared around
- Frank Lloyd Wright
From the article:
What matters is what you do there.
Not mentioned is that whatever it is you do, it's far more of a pain in the ass to do it than just about anywhere else. You want to buy groceries? Okay, well there are seven grocery stores within a half-hour drive of you but none within ten minutes. Wanna get your hair cut? Well the local place only cuts their friends' hair; you're going to get butchered and overcharged which is why you now drive back to the neighborhood you haven't lived since 2011 because it took you three years to find that place, dammit. Wanna get your teeth cleaned? The dentist didn't feel like coming in today, as you and the fifteen people waiting out front have discovered. Want to get a deposit back on your aluminum cans? Well they closed all the facilities on the Westside so they could keep your money so you're loading your trunk up with soiled aluminum and driving to Commerce.
A friend explained to me when we visited in London (back in '89) that London is such a sprawling metropolis that you can really only accomplish one or two tasks a day. So. Get the vacuum fixed or buy groceries. Post a package or buy a sweater. The rest of your time is spent in traffic. Los Angeles is like that except instead of living in London you're in fucking Los Angeles.
This lack-of-reward is what drives Los Angeles culture: you're either driven enough to put up with the bullshit until it pays off or you're stuck there because you're a low-functioning loser that doesn't realize there's more to life than this.
No one anywhere cares that you listen to Carcass and Pat Robertson. In Los Angeles, though, there's such a barrier to progress that listening to Carcass and Pat Robertson defines your goddamn existence.