It wasn’t until the spring of 2006 that I started to see the beauties of LA. One of my professors talked about the prevalence of the “Teriyaki burrito” so much, it must have begun to hit me how unique the city is.
The most difficult part of becoming a Los Angeles resident is figuring out what area you want to live in. East side, west side, residential-y, urban-y. Please reference the map below. It took me 2 hours to make and about 4 years to figure out (click to enlarge).
I moved to Silver Lake after leaving school (within the “Where the pretty cool young people live” section on the map). It’s a nice walk-able community, the rent is cheap, and although there is a large hipster population, they are quite harmless (for the most part). I lived there for nearly a year when I was accepted to a school in New York City for my MFA in poetry. I was going. My roommate was going. Hell, almost all of my friends were going.
Then the school started pissing me off by never sending me my information and being generally disorganized. I went to a CalArts accepted student event on a whim and was immediately charmed. But the moment that truly made me decide to stay was when I was driving up the Pacific Coast Highway along the water on a fucking ridiculously gorgeous day, listening to great music. That was it. I was officially in love. I was staying.
This moment reminded me of a family friend who spent a lot of her adulthood in Los Angeles. She got a job in Tempe. The night before she moved to Arizona, she rode on the Santa Monica pier’s Ferris wheel right as the sun was setting in late summer. She told me she had asked herself “what the hell am I doing leaving this place?” but left anyway.
Not me. No ma’am.
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