Back to how I knew nothing about LA. Growing up, pretty much my only regular experience to LA (county) was going straight to SGV. I had no concept of just how large LA is. The only pieces that I’d see were along the 101, and of course a healthy dose of the sad DTLA skyline while stuck in traffic on the 101.Â
Â
Sure, I have some vague memories of going to Santa Monica once as a child. At one point I regularly went to Universal Studios with a stream of visiting friends and family. I had been to Griffith a couple times. The Getty for field trips. But these disparate vignettes could hardly be pieced together into some concept of a city. At least, not in the way that a trip up Sears Tower or a walk through Taipei Main Station can give you a sense of Chicago or Taipei. And those, really, were my only two reference points for a while.Â
Â
It wasn’t until I decided to go to UCLA that I started understanding LA. I started seeing the different neighborhoods and appreciating their quirks. It took nearly ten years for me to learn to love LA. After all, it is an easy place to hate (sorry, LA). It’s also…well…objectively an ugly city. Sure, New York is dirty and chaotic. But no one designed Los Angeles. It was like someone puked up a few buildings, and over time, things were haphazardly arranged without regard to any sense of practical or aesthetic discipline and no amount of blue skies, palm trees and ocean views can make up for that.