I Love Los Angeles
My second attempt to get to LA was successful. I flew across the country with a bunch of grumpy tourists returning from Paris. They all complained about how they hadn't seen the sun once the whole time they were in France, how there were too many plane flights to get there, too many hotels, etc.
The flight was late leaving Dulles because there was some maintenance problem with the aircraft leaving Paris. So I slept on the flight whilst listening to the flight deck, as usual, on Channel 9 . Our call sign for this trip was United 947 Heavy. The result was a kind of hallucinatory trip. In my sleep, my brain converted the voices of the pilots and controllers and I thought the were saying things they weren't. You know, that feeling when you wake up to the news or fall asleep to the TV and you're so groggy you don't hear properly?
E.g., while were in Minneapolis air space, I'm sure I heard someone report in and say, "Minneapolis Center, Rosemary died in the back bedroom." I thought of a spartan, clean, upstairs back bedroom with a white lace bedspread out on the windy Minnesota plain. Later, I heard someone say, "Who wants a Texas ice cream?" Odd. Finally, Los Angeles Center told our pilot, United 947, "United 947 Heavy -- don't talk to Hector." That one may have been somewhat accurate, because it turns out that Hector is a beacon just east of Big Bear on the way into LA. There were others, but I can't remember them. I also heard the hectic process of "vectoring" planes into the LA Basin. Due to weather, we all had to slow down whilst still over Utah somewhere, and fly in funny directions for a while until the controllers told us to speed up again. The controllers said that LA had reduced it's acceptance rate so we had to stack up out there over the Grand Canyon and line up for the long approach into LA. That sort of puts all the geography into perspective.
It was 50 degrees when I arrived and the natives here thought it was freezing. The taxi dispatcher was all wrapped up in a wool hat, a wool scarf, heavy winter coat, etc. I, on the other hand, had taken off my winter clothes and packed them up in my wheelie before I even got on the plane in Dulles, for fear of dissolving like a tablet in water once I arrived in balmy LA.
I took a taxi to the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City. My hotel is built on the former back lot of 20th Century Fox. They sold off a bunch of property to developers a while ago and that's how Century City came to be. I thought that was pretty neat trivia. I'm told that John Wayne, Judy Garland, Gregory Peck and Marilyn Monroe filmed movies right here on this spot. The Westin Hotel company was first among the developers to biuld here, and the person who built this hotel is the same guy who desinged the World Trade Center in NY. Hmmm. It's all white and chrome inside and very LA looking -- the halls are slightly curved so you can never see where you're going, and you expect Elizabeth Taylor to come around the corner. The front if light at night with pale pink lights. You get the idea.
This morning I woke to a beautiful view of the Santa Monica mountains with the sun rising and the sky is perfectly clear. I really like LA -- I much prefer it to SF. If I ever moved to California I would move here. The view of the mountains is beautiful, and the city is not trying to be something it's not (like SF). It embraces the fact that it's maligned and considered superficial and silly. It adores movies -- there are movie billboards here that you never see on the East Coast. They prune and and shave the palm trees here, as if they were poodles. The weather is fabulous. The food is yummy. I actually feel uplifted in Los Angeles, almost the way one feels uplifted in New York. I am excited to step out onto the Avenue of the Stars and go to the Beverly Hills courthouse.
Some of you may be wondering about the weather out here. It rained yesterday and will rain tonight, I'm told. Interstate 5 was closed down in the Grapevine -- the twisty turvy part near Pasadena that goes through the mountains -- due to ice. The roads up near Big Bear are in their "snow chains required" status. In the higher elevations of the LA Basin, there will be snow today. Down here in the lowlands, it will be in the low 60s, and brilliantly sunny.
posted by Anonymous @ 10:26 PM
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