Leaving Los Angeles

It’s hard to know what to memorialize as I head home from a trip to la-la land. On the one hand, I was only an hour or less from where I spent my formative years, but that was worlds and lifetimes away.

Every place name, street name, is famous or familiar: Hollywood Blvd, Santa Monica Blvd, Wilshire, La Brea. But somehow when you see these magic places by daylight, passing through en route to a client call, it’s a little seedy, mostly, out on the west side, down by the airport. The cloud of … something … that keeps the sun hidden didn’t help.

On my jet-lagged predawn runs I saw all the magic tropical plants, always photogenic, but not in the dark. I saw homeless people with their overloaded shopping carts, and exuberant architecture from too close to appreciate. On lunch break, I saw skinny blonde girls with big shoes and bigger sunglasses, surely she is Somebody, perhaps a Starlet. She totters between the Orthodox guys with their fringes and hats and an Asian family who may or may not feel a need to fit in. And I saw so many fancy cars, you leave your 911 on the street at night because you only have a 1-car garage.

I also saw Dad and Judith, and we had a nice belated birthday visit with Greek food and a pumpkin beer ice cream float ( which would have been the perfect dish if it had only included a strip of bacon ).

All memorable but all hard to capture for one reason or another. And then with an hour to go I saw this trash can at fine dining spot LAX Tacos, and met my day’s muse. Such pride, such exuberance these taggers have! Such flair!

Now I know why Randy Newman loves it here.