LA musings

.....As the plane soared over the city with the impressive San Gabriel mountains in the background, all I could see down below was a grid like, very intricate system of highways, and flat roof tops of millions of homes. It took the flight almost 20 minutes to cross the LA city and land at the LAX near the pacific (speaks volumes about the size of the LA county). Although I had a rental car at my disposal, I was really scared at the prospect of driving around this big city without a navigator. But all my fears were put to rest when I finally hit the road enrouute to Culver City and Palms - first stop on my apartment hunting trip.

The first thing that hit my eyes as I cruised around the Palms area was the number of Mustangs on the road( the gas prices were the second thing to hit my eyes :) ) . Rear wheel drives thrive in warm snow parched areas, and rightfully, I saw a platoon of Mustangs on the streets - the sight of people cruising around in cool looking convertibles made me regret my choice of a hard top coupe. By not converting a lot of major surface streets into freeways LA surely has made it easy for the directionally handicapped. Most of the famous boulevards run right across the county. Besides, Angelenos passed of as very patient and polite drivers, especially after one has driven in Jersey and Manhattan. I didnt hear a single honk on the road for hours. Culver city and Palms seemed like a little Mexico to me - as I tried tuning my car FM stereo, I hit atleast 7 spanish stations ! These areas were much prettier than suburbs of some of the other cities like New York, Philadelphia or Jersey.

The second day I drove to Pasadena. Even though I hit the notorious 405 and 10 at 9:00 am on a saturday morning the roads were choc-a-bloc - something like Garden state parkway on a Monday morning. If people could inundate 6 lanes of interstate on a weekend morning, I can imagine how nightmarish it would be on a weekday morning. In 1930's LA had more cars than 41 states in US put together and turned out to be the precursor for this "road built economy". In 1928 LA had 1 car per 2.9 people, my USC friend claims that the ratio now is 1.2 cars per person - truly unbelievable !

After my 30 minutes drive, through various interstates and through downtown LA I finally landed up in Pasadena. Culver city and Palms really paled in comparison to Pasadena - it was a very posh locality set in the foreground of the towering San Gabriel mountains. If Mustangs were abundant in Culver city, Pasadena made its statement with Porches. To be really honest, I saw more Porches in 1 hour in Pasadena than I have seen my entire life. Pasadena seemed like those dream neighbourhoods, where one would settle after retiring. Caltech was small and hardly noticeable, but I did meet up with a friend and also managed to score 4 boudaries at CCG - caltech cricket ground ! I left Pasadena determined that I would come back and find an apartment in this area.


After all the work I met up with another friend in downtown LA. Being a weekend evening, the downtown was deserted and had an eerie look....surely wouldnt want to be at this place after dark. After that we drove to Santa Monica beach and venice beach, and in the meantime I got a bit of a taste of Pacific Highway (or route 1). Unfortunately we missed the sunset by 1/2 hour and even though I didn't site Pam Anderson or Carmen Electra strutting around Santa Monica in their attractive outfits, the beach was impressive. The evening was capped off with dosas at Annapurna restaurant in Culver city. The food was ordinary, but the service or should I say the server was great :)