Dear... Apparently, Stupid Freeway Crashers

Dear... Apparently, Stupid People:

Ahoy there!  It's been awhile... and as much as I'd love to say the reason is a sudden onset of deep inner peace, this is not necessarily the case.

Traveling up the 2 recently to the far-flung Highland Park section of Los Angeles, I was struck by this sign as I pulled off the exit ramp:

To me, this is a chicken-or-egg situation.  Do people not know what to do without signs such as these?  Or do signs such as these in fact negate needing to know what to do?

Do the people driving the freeways of Los Angeles genuinely have no idea what to do in the event of an accident?  Were there just legions of people getting into fender-benders on the 2 unclear of how to proceed afterward?  After getting golfed, did they just slam on their brakes, airbag deployed against their noses, arms aflail, and sit in the middle of the passing lane, simply waiting to be crashed into again?

Or do nanny state signs such as these telling us what to do make us stupid?  Does the knowledge that an LED road sign will appear before us providing instructions for any and all possible adverse circumstances that could arise plunge us into a blissful reverie wherein we don't need to even consider having a modicum of preparedness at our disposal?

My frustration at this binary is that either option is equally horrible, but I think, in this case, necessity must be the mother of invention.

I appreciate road signs informing me of something I didn't already know.  "X amount of minutes to a certain destination"... "Caution, a flaming tanker truck awaits you in three miles" etc.  But road signs telling me what to do - especially if it's something involving the barest minimum of logic - make me seethe in anger - at myself, at my fellow citizens, indeed, at humanity.  I have plenty of opportunities in my day to day life to be patronized - a CalTrans LED sign on the side of the 2 need not be one of them.

Happy New Year,
Dear Crabby

Dear Courteous Neighbors

Dear Courteous (But Maybe Not That Courteous) Neighbors:

You live in a Moorish house in the Hollywood Hills, on a street lined with other castle-based dwellings.  You've had it refurbished to fit your 21st century lifestyle, rather than that of Rudolph Valentino, or whoever it was originally built.  You have, without question, arrived.

But it's nice that you haven't become too big, too fancy, too much of a someone, to be a courteous neighbor, demonstrating a healthy [sic] concern for the well-being of your neighors.  And any of their dogs that might be prone to grass-eating:

That said, you could be a courteous neighbor by just not using toxic chemicals at all to begin with.  But that might be asking too much.

Maybe it's a hoax.  Maybe this strangely designed and positioned sign is just an elaborate ruse to keep the neighborhood Fidos from doing their business on the grass.  Who knows?   In the meantime, if I were you, I'd keep off the grass.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Heavily Marketed Church Parish

Dear Church Parish:

It's official.  Everything in Southern California can be marketed.  Even the lord:

"Oh I've been LOOKING for a church to go to!  I'll go to this one because they have license plate brackets!"

I'm not exactly a devout follower, but something about this strikes me as blasphemous.   I don't even want to Google and see if they have a website.  But I bet they do.

#WWJD?

Best Regards,
Dear Crabby

Dear Morning Highland Ave. Morning Pedestrians

Dear Pedestrians:

In general, the foot traffic you see in Los Angeles is fairly eccentric, as most of the city's more normative residents have the good sense to stay in their damn cars if they're going anywhere.  Emerging from their underground parking structures already be-vehicled and exiting only to scuttle from the valet stand to the shade of the covered awning of whatever restaurant they're popping into for a $20 salad, layers of German and Japanese glass and metal generally incubate Angelenos from the outside as they pass through the alternately majestic and depressing cityscape around them; their cars rolling, incubated bubbles of willingly suspended disbelief punctured only by traffic lights and sewer construction backups.

Occasionally, however, you encounter some pedestrians... Of which there were a noteworthily inordinate amount morning in the Highland Avenue corridor in Hollywood.  Positively inordinate.

First off, some trannies.  Trannies!  So early in the morning:

Now, for some reason, LaBrea to Highland between Santa Monica and Fountain is universally accepted as LA's tranny corridor.   After conducting an informal poll, I have determined that this is known and acknowledged as a truth in the city of Los Angeles through a combination of perpetuated myth and actual observation.  I have no idea why this otherwise unremarkable section of Hollywood is a Mecca for trannies, what they're doing there, and where they live in what is actually a fairly industrial neighborhood, but, as this morning's 8:32am sighting would seem to confirm, that this indeed their hood:

Without getting into an in-depth gender studies/queer theory analysis of the sexual politics and identities of low-income urban transgendered individuals, suffice it to say, these trannies looked pretty busted.

Then, immediately across the street, there was this fellow:

Why the suit?  Why the walking stick?  Was it just for foppish affect, or was there an actual physical impediment at work?  Or was he on his way to a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest, and his top hat was just blown off by a passing taco truck?  Or was it just dress-up day across the street at Fal Sal's?  (Which is, incidentally, a deli co-owned by Jerry Ferrara - of "Turtle" from ENTOURAGE fame - see next photo.)  What's disconcerting here is how smugly, eerily happy he looks:

Perhaps the secret to life is trolling the streets of Hollywood on weekday mornings in a suit with a walking stick.  Perhaps this gentleman knows this.  Perhaps the joke isn't on him, but, in fact, on us.

Then back across the street, this Lovely under-Rita, emptying the neighborhood parking meters of their winnings... a job increasingly irrelevant with the advent of parking meters that take credit cards:

I wonder if he's afraid of getting mugged, wheeling his strong box of loose change through some questionable neighborhoods?  Does he live in fear of a THE TOWN-type heist, writ small?  Clearly he can put his fears to rest on this block, however, as the trannies would no doubt jump to his defense if any malfeasance befell him.  Some of them looked pretty burly.


On the next corner, I encountered multiple long-haired bass players:

... a duo not so out of the ordinary in Hollywood.  But, upon closer inspection, I realized one of these gentlemen too had a cane!

Was there some sort of cane convention in Hollywood this morning?  It seemed unlikely to so organically encounter two young, unlikely candidates for cane possession so close upon one another's (potentially very slow-moving) heels.



A couple blocks north, I encountered these three women, who, while somewhat distinctive in and of themselves, were especially so as a trio as in no way could I decide what their unifying thread was:

They weren't of the same age, or dressed as though they were on their way to the same destination.  Other than the large bags, (and, suffice it to say, lower halves) and their seemingly apparent and actually quite charming breezy camaraderie, it was unclear what these three ladies's common bond.

All this diversity, all in a morning's quarter mile.  Welcome to Hollywood.  While some might see great beauty in this rainbow of eccentricity - a vital (if potentially handicapped), diverse, cross-section of humanity enriching one of America's largest megalopolises, I choose to invoke the sentiments of some of society's early cartographers, and label everything outside with a "there be dragons."  While it's all very nice to behold, I think I'll leave my bubble un-punctured, and stay in the car.


Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Mythological History of Los Angeles

Dear Mythology of LA:

Los Angeles is a city that wouldn't exist if it weren't for the entertainment industry. Well, it might exist, but what would it be? Phoenix with orange groves? Bakersfield with an ocean? Or worse yet, the canned cultural wasteland that is San Diego - a city whose lamps in their eponymous district are as filled with gas as are the rectums of the many frat boys who troll it? Hopefully not.

Los Angeles is a city built on and perpetuated by a singular, unifying myth; that of the silver screen. This acts as a wide-reaching siren call penetrating the subconscious of even the farthest flung hamlet across the country, and, indeed the world. This summons makes for a hugely variegated populace, sophistication and trash often marching hand in hand with a surprisingly egalitarian presence and ballyhoo. And while the silver screen myth lies at the core of the Los Angeles narrative, as a relatively recent phenomenon, the city of Los Angeles itself is still trying to figure out how to honor its history. Its architecture is only beginning to be preserved - countless midcentury homes designed by influential architects are becoming increasingly protected by concerned citizens - and its landmarks, oftentimes barely old enough to be considered such, are under the jurisdiction of the city's Office of Historic Resources which was only established in 2006. In essence, Los Angeles in all its vast splendor (and grimness) is still figuring out what to make of itself.

It is universally understood, however, that the city's movies remain at the center of its historic narrative. Even Los Angeles, with its rag-tag patchwork of disjointed civic imperatives, cannot ignore its movies - the very phenomena that made it what it is, and does its best to pay appropriate homage, in whatever way it knows how. On the Fox lot the other day, I was reminded of this fact:

Julie Andrews, may you live in infamy in the hearts and minds of movie-goers around the world... and on the side of a parking garage in Century City. Better there than in San Diego.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Colorful License Plate Bracket Displayers

Dear Bracket Displayers,

While I appreciate the occasional whimsical vanity plate or chuckle-inducing bumper sticker to punctuate the monotony of traffic, at 8:45 in the morning, this is a little much:




I'd prefer not to be forced to contemplate the size of the dong of the driver in the car in front of me. Besides, the reputation pool men have stands on its own merits; the logo on the side of the truck is enough to infer this statement without beating your fellow drivers over the head with it, or any manner of pool skimmer. We get the idea.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Eccentric Angelenos

Dear (Strange) Fellow Los Angeles Citizens:

While eccentricity is ubiquitous, it is easily on rampant display at all times in southern California. One of the causes might be, among others, undoubtedly, the lack of preoccupation with the weather. People in the northeast, and indeed in any part of the country that experiences climatic volatility, are obsessed with the weather. And it's as if this fascination amoebas up a lot of time and mental energy, squelching any penchants for individuality and forcing a kind of draconian earnestness of the spirit which can crack down on whimsy and force a kind of cookie-cutter conventionality. (For instance, most people from Maine or North Dakota.)

Bottom line, since they're not shoveling snow or worrying about what kind of jacket or shoes they need to wear, people in Southern California have a lot more time on their hands in which to be bizarre. You see strange behavior and even stranger sartorial choices, such as on the part of this gentleman in a Starbucks on the west side recently:



Perhaps he was German; the capri pants are normally the European giveaway.



That purse next to him on the floor belonged to I believe his wife, who was accompanying him... which is to say, a woman was voluntarily OK to be seen in public with a man dressed like that.

I also recently encountered these people, walking through a neighborhood full of multi-million dollar houses:



Why the ski-poles? The neighborhood communicates with no high-octane hiking trails... and both of these gentleman look firm enough to walk up or down a paved incline without any extra support. And the backpack? Rations? A first aid kit? Is he afraid he will suddenly be confronted with a need scale Everest while walking through Beverly Hills?

And while often beautiful, the SoCal easy living does not make for a hale and hardy population. People move slowly, confusedly, driftily; there has always seemed to me to be an unusual amount of people with broken arms or on crutches as well; their starved thinness making all them all the more suscebtible to broken bones, the medications they're on the more likely causing them to trip and sustain said injuries... The results of this phenomenon doubtless a prodigious amount of handicapped placards hanging from the rear-view mirrors of the enormous(ly) expensive cars that clog our roads. Nothing makes it easier to be bizarre than being wealthy.

After five years here, aspects of southern California life still remain a mystery to me. But maybe all of its transplants will slowly fall into the fold, drifting through life attired strangely, the filtered, hazy sun glinting off our handicapped placards as we slowly, if happily, lose our edge. Next thing you know you're a Swiss cowherd, wearing argyle knee socks to Starbucks and going for your Sunday constitutional with ski poles, a true Angeleno caricature of eccentricity.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby