Randy Newman famously sang: “I love L.A.!”
But given the Toronto Blue Jays are now in the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, let’s go with 10 things we hate about La La Land.
1.Traffic
The SNL skit The Californians that pokes fun at how people travel from one end of the city to the other is a real thing if you’ve ever driven in Los Angeles. As in: “You take the 405 to the 10,” etc. Just experience getting stuck in it on a Friday night while trying to get out of town, as happened once to me. The usual hour-long commute to Laguna Beach took about triple that.
2.Car requirement
Everything is so spread out you have to have a vehicle to get around or else you can spend your monthly wages on taxis and car shares. And don’t expect those folks to always know where you’re destination is located. Otherwise, strap in because driving the highway in L.A. can feel a bit like the Indy 500.
3.Cost
As Canadians, we’re faced with the wretched difference in currency rates so just add about 30% to everything you pay for once you land in L.A. From hotels to dinners to shopping, when the credit card bill arrives, it’s always a shocker.
4.Bad Plastic Surgery
There’s plastic surgery and then there’s plastic surgery Los Angeles-style. In the never-ending quest to stay young in a town that eats its old, you can see some surgical whoppers just walking down the street in Beverly Hills (my L.A. pals used to call it Hollyweird). And if you have yet to watch the Bravo TV show Botched — about two plastic surgeons in L.A. correcting bad surgeries — or Demi Moore’s The Substance — about an aging actress literally slipping out of her skin to become young again — that’s all you need to do to get a feel for just how bad it can be.
5.Over-the-shoulder look
The prevalent feeling in L.A, a one-horse town where entertainment is the main business, is basically: “What can you do for me?” So while you’re at one of those swanky bars or restaurants speaking to someone, they’re invariably looking over their shoulder to see who else is coming in, and how big a celebrity they might be, before quickly moving on.
6.Celebrities
There’s an old saying: You look the same on the way up as you do on the way down, so be nice to everyone. Thus, the mega-stars like George Clooney couldn’t be more approachable. Same with those starting out. It’s the ones in the middle who you really have to watch out for.
7.Climate
When it’s snowing and -20C in Toronto in February, nothing seems better than Los Angeles’s warm climes, right? But the year-round sunshine might make you start to feel a bit loopy without the seasonal changes of fall — our colours have L.A. beat — or even winter during Christmas, dare I say it?
8.Wildfires
The increasing proximity of the wildfires to L.A. is downright scary so you better know your exit plan if there’s a raging blaze nearby. And even then Mother Nature can pull a fast one and change course pretty fast. See the new Matthew McConaughey movie The Lost Bus (about a bus driver trying to get school children safely away from the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest in California history) for some real scares in that department.
9.Downtown
The homeless population can be an arresting visual and a tough thing to navigate if you wind up on the wrong street. You kind of feel like you’re in a war zone. I was genuinely surprised that the city’s homeless population of about 72,000 ranks second in the country. I thought it would be first.
10.Earthquakes
If you’ve every experienced the earth rattling, it’s definitely an existential wake-up call. And with L.A.’s proximity to the San Andreas Fault, they keep saying it’s only a matter of time before the big one hits. Hollywood’s even gotten good at making movies about it — San Andreas, anyone?
