I spent some time today with my brother Andrew. We went on a hike in the canyon behind JPL in Pasadena, seeing a lot of fire damage on the hills from the apocalyptic fires earlier this fall.
We drove over to the west side, to get my stuff I'd been storing at Wendy's in Culver City. Driving around LA is so… unpleasant. And it was smoggy. But once on the west side, I took joy in seeing the cultural mix that the city represents: I could find bilingual signs for churches, dry cleaners, and auto dealers… Spanish and Korean. No English included.
I love the cultural mix of LA. But the city itself… just seems so stunningly badly laid out. So difficult to exist in on a day-to-day basis. I was talking with Andrew about it, as we sat parked in traffic on the 110 near downtown, and we decided it could be a new motto for the city:
Los Angeles — good idea, bad implementation.