The obviousness of inequality is grating on my soul. I’m not saying anything new or particularly insightful here, but holy moley the fancy hotels and condos, the expensive cars, and then 2, 3, 5 people curled up asleep or hunched over in wheelchairs or just standing and staring into space. One stupid art-couch in a boutique window could house a person for a year, I’m sure of it. What the everloving goddamn is wrong with society.
And man, at the same time, I’m sitting at the fancy hipster coffee counter in a converted open warehouse space, drinking a $6 mocha, and enjoying it. Enjoying the music, the taste, the ridiculously good-looking people working the espresso machine. I had a tiny gelato (OMG BLOOD ORANGE) from a little place in yet another in-the-middle-of-revival building (arcade?) yesterday, and on the same block stores that advertise buying gold, but with the dirty half-faded sign in Spanish.
So there’s a part of my head that’s reveling in urbanity, holding the contradictions in perfect balance, aesthetically appreciating all the things about the city: what’s different, what’s like I remember. And there’s a part of me that’s just: nope nope nope nope. [noptopus.gif] The part of me that’s acclimated to a smallish Cascadian city, I guess.
I’ve got another day or so in downtown LA before I relocate to Pasadena for the rest of the trip. We’ll see what that’s like. Downtown was always terra incognita to some extent: we came downtown for specific things, museums usually. (I’ve half a mind to make a trek out to the Natural History Museum.) But Pasadena/Altadena, that was HOME. You know those places where you can close your eyes and even though it’s been a decade or two decades, you can see them perfectly 3D in your head? That.
:deep breath:
“nope nope nope nope… The part of me that’s acclimated to a smallish Cascadian city, I guess.” @epersonae http://t.co/bEiNK6m16F