I just finished watching the first two episodes of Desperate Housewives, filmed on the backlot of Universal Studios, in Los Angeles, California, where I used to live. The perfectly framed images of the women of Wisteria Lane standing in warm sunshine and cool breezes on their immaculately groomed street, brought me back to the tram tour I took through there, and immediately I was reminded of what was beyond the frame. High above the heads of the Housewives a T-Rex was assaulting sight-seers and nearby Scooby and the gang were taking pictures with dozens of tourists. In front of the ladies, beyond the cameraman, was greater L.A., a sprawling, smog thickened, asphalt-and-concrete blanketed wasteland. The perfection of Wisteria Lane could only be found some thirty miles away, in Pasadena, or a little further south, in San Diego. But the immediate surroundings of what Hollywood magic made into the form of quintessential domestic American aspirations was far from the perfectly manicured lawns on T.V.
I was never eager to go to L.A. I'd spent some time there before and had developed a distaste for the urban sprawl and hovering smog. Flying over Los Angeles I could see the seemingly endless expanse of homes, thousands upon thousands of homes, and thousands, yet again, of cars jamming the surprisingly wide freeways. Everywhere, two-level shopping plazas--but only a small handful of small malls. Everywhere, solid. All concrete, asphalt, glass. Barely a green thing in sight, all is grey or a gut-turning yellowish-beige. And everywhere, everywhere, are houses. Maybe it's having come from the New York City area, where either people are stacked away in apartment complexes or a spread distantly in traditional suburbs, but the sudden, bold awareness of all this...humanity stretched out, teeming, as it were, through the valleys, just overwhelmed me and made me--makes me--somewhat nauseous to think about.
Catherine and I landed and got right into a rental vehicle and hit the road. But that's it. We hit it, and stopped. The infamous L.A. traffic, which I had not had a chance to experience my last few times in town, yet had heard all too much of (yet believed could only be myth) was all too extraordinary. What in New York, even during rush hour, should only take twenty minutes, could easily take upwards of an hour, hour and a half in L.A. Think of the worst, tanker-just-blew-up-on-I-95 traffic you can imagine. Now paste that image and frustration onto every single major road (not just the highways) during nearly every single hour of the day. Traffic could occasionally be standstill at two in the morning. Every time I think longingly back to California, idealizing certain aspects of what life was like back there, I just remember the traffic and it straightens me out. In fact, I might go so far as to say that the traffic had a large part in driving me out of L.A.
We ended up in a hotel in Sylmar, in the North Eastern corner of the county, and just a minute's drive from what might as well have been Mexico. Just beyond our hotel gringos like us could not tell the difference between America and Mexico. Every street sign, every advertisement, every noticia was in Spanish. Every person was Hispanic. We even drove through a fairly nice area, a real "Main Street USA" looking place, only to see that everything was written en Espanol. Very strange.
We quickly set out to find three very important things: a car, a home, and a job. There were a number of Outbacks in the surrounding area, but we narrowed our search down to just three we were interested in. One of them, situated central to most everything and conveniently in a shopping center, had so many employees scrambling for the job that we'd have never gotten the hours we needed. The next one, in a more fashionable part of town was, well, fashionable. The hostess had an earpiece and talked to the manager in the back office like a member of the Secret Service--and she expressed her disdain for us in a truly fashionable way. But, far away, just past Pasadena, in a place called Arcadia, was an Outback which, though distant, was just right for us. The manager was accommodating, and the employees were friendly. We were working just a few days later.
The next thing to be checked off was the car. We knew we wanted a fuel efficient, affordable Toyota, so that meant the Yaris. The whole dealership process doesn't leave much to discuss here, but I'd like to think that Catherine and I held our own pretty well against the sly car salesman...who continues to call to see how we're doing to this very day. We didn't get ripped off, and managed to get what we wanted within our budget. Brand new car, too!
Searching for a home proved more difficult. Many places were already off the market, too far away, had hidden costs, or just didn't look very nice compared to their pictures. We finally found the perfect studio in Van Nuys, along Sepulveda Blvd. The apartment was massive, with a sloped roof, separate kitchen, and a small hallway leading to a desk nook and the full bathroom. Not to mention the two massive closets. And the rent was cheap.
But despite the lithe palm tree towering in just in front of our window, it was still planted in soil surrounded by concrete, and something about that unsettled me.
We had everything set up, and I only ended up working about three shifts at the Outback before I finally found myself on the set of a Hollywood production as a P.A.
But more about all that, later.
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