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BLDGBLOG‘s Geoff Manaugh, (whose interview with TR will appear soon) argues in favor of Los Angeles, proclaiming it the most interesting city in the country. Some of our contributors already know this. The rest will eventually come out West whenever Manifest Destiny gets a hold of them.
There are three great cities in the United States: there’s Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York – in that order. I love Boston; I even love Denver; I like Miami; I think Washington DC is habitable; but Los Angeles is Los Angeles. You can’t compare it to Paris, or to London, or to Rome, or to Shanghai. You can interestingly contrast it to those cities, sure, and Los Angeles even comes out lacking; but Los Angeles is still Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is where you confront the objective fact that you mean nothing; the desert, the ocean, the tectonic plates, the clear skies, the sun itself, the Hollywood Walk of Fame – even the parking lots: everything there somehow precedes you, even new construction sites, and it’s bigger than you and more abstract than you and indifferent to you. You don’t matter. You’re free.
I mean that Los Angeles is the confrontation with the void. It is the void. It’s the confrontation with astronomy through near-constant sunlight and the inhuman radiative cancers that result. It’s the confrontation with geology through plate tectonics and buried oil, methane, gravel, tar, and whatever other weird deposits of unknown ancient remains are sitting around down there in the dry and fractured subsurface.
It’s a confrontation with the oceanic; with anonymity; with desert time; with endless parking lots. And it doesn’t need humanizing. Who cares if you can’t identify with Los Angeles? It doesn’t need to be made human. It’s better than that.
Couldn’t have put it any better myself. Suck on that awhile, SFist.
Molly Lambert is Senior Editor of This Recording.
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But he doesn’t ever mention the damn flowers! Or the hills! Or the easily available fresh produce!
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