BLDGBLOG: Greater Los Angeles

Finally, I'm so sick of people who don't live here recycling the same shit about Hollywood and how LA "doesn't actually exist", just because they can't submit to the fact that LA's too big and weird to figure out.

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.

LA residents given to talking about life in the city talk about freedom a lot. Without a cohesive citywide identity or community structure, without a city center in any sense of the word, you don't situate your life in relation to some imagined ur-community or parental figures. You're just there. But I'd add one thing: it's true that the city as a whole cares about nothing. But there are a thousand communities, more, within the city.