Languages in LA

Driving in LA can reshape your perceptions. When I lived in Hollywood, I would speak of coming over to Weho as if it were 20 miles away. In fact, it was four miles, but four miles on Sunset Blvd between 7:30am and midnight takes a half hour. If you reroute over to Fountain, which runs parallel, you’ll save six minutes, but there’s nothing to look at and you meet all the same stoplights. So I moved to Weho.

 
But Sunset Blvd in the wee hours of the morning is a shock to the senses. I recently drove from Bronson to Doheny in 11 minutes flat. To understand the significance of this, you have to imagine how a student pilot feels the first time his wheels leave the ground. I realized, suddenly, how small was the area to which my world had shrunk.

 
Last night, I saw another symptom of driver mentality. My friend, now six blocks away, came up to see my new apartment. She parked her car in my neighborhood — for which she needed a parking permit; this is how controlled it is – and we walked over to Dan Tana’s restaurant. Dan Tana’s is famous for its Italian food, mafia connections, and celebrity visits. George Clooney was there looking dapper with his young girlfriend and two other couples.

 
My friend sighed in contentment. “If I lived here, I’d go broke because I’d be over at Dan Tana’s every night.”

 
If she lived here? SHE DOES live here! She’s six blocks away! But there’s the car thing. If you drive here, you have to have a permit or pay the valet a ridiculous sum to park it. You then have to worry about driving home after a few drinks, and the cops patrol this area as if the Queen were visiting. Six blocks becomes a vast distance.

 
Well, you could walk it, I suppose, but not in the kind of shoes you want to be wearing when George Clooney strolls by.