Meet The Birdcage: Los Angeles Edition
Sometimes LA is like a bad romantic comedy. You know the one, where the fiance comes to meet the weird-ass parents and the protagonist tries, unsuccessfully, to hide just how crazy they are. (see “The Birdcage”, “Meet The Fockers”, et al). I live a quiet, unassuming writer’s life here. Yet whenever friends from out of town travel through, despite my assurances that I live a perfectly normal life in our sunny, smoggy city, LA seems to go out of its way to roll out an assembly line of “only in LA” clichés the moment they step off the plane. Only when out of town guests are here does that 80s hair rocker with the Skid Row t-shirt come stumbling, stoned, into In-N-Out at 11pm. Every Angelyne sighting I’ve ever had has been while in the company of an out-of-town guest.
Thanks to recent national news reports (gangs! traffic! bedlam!) the most prominent cliché these days is "LA as apocalyptic, anarchists playground". When a friend from out of town showed up a week ago, I decided to debunk the myth by taking him to the least anarchist place in town; The Getty Center. And by going there on a Sunday morning, I was sure even the typical traffic on the 405 would be manageable.
But just like that embarrassing, drunk uncle who once pissed on my mother’s sofa, the city once again rolled out the weirdness. First, traffic on the 10 slowed to a virtual crawl. As it turned out, the 405 North was completely closed due to a fuel tanker that was engulfed in flames. The plume of smoke could be seen half a mile away.
Things got really “LA” when more than half a dozen smiling, happy motorists on the 10 abandoned their cars (some in the middle of the road) and sprinted across the freeway so they could get a good look at the inevitable explosion from the fuel tanker. “I think it’s filled with jet fuel!” said one obese woman giddily as her daughter (who could be no older than 10 years old) strolled around ALONE on the I-10, bobbing and weaving between passing cars while holding her stuffed animal! Before you know it, I’m screaming “get your kid off the road, you crazy bitch!”
My buddy, once he pulled his jaw off the ground, took a bunch of photos of the spectacle, which he emailed to me after he returned home. We eventually made it to the Getty (an hour and a half later), but the "flaming tanker/impromptu freeway tailgating" incident was certainly the lasting image from his trip. Looking over the photos, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps the clichés aren’t always there, but I only notice them when in the presence of out of towners. What do you think? Are we just a bunch of crazy motherfuckers, but don’t know it?
photos by my out-of-town visitor, Kitundu