For his new series of documentaries about Los Angeles, Louis Theroux and his family relocated to the city, where they found themselves gradually embracing the Angeleno way of life.
Late in 2012, having grown temporarily tired of life in dark and rainy west London, I moved with my family to sun-kissed Los Angeles, land of freeways, palm trees, beaches and celebrity.
We wanted an adventure. My children were young enough to be open to the idea of a big move - or, more likely, too young to understand what they were signing on for. My wife, raised abroad in sunnier climes, craved a break from another British winter. As for me, a professional observer of American culture in all its glory and absurdity, I reasoned it could only be a good thing for my work if I lived in the midst of the strange tribe I was studying, in classical anthropological style.
The alleged negatives of Los Angeles are well known. You have to drive everywhere. The city is a big, ugly sprawl. The people are shallow and obsessed with appearances. Everyone is either in The Industry or trying to get into The Industry. It's "faddy" - there is always a new ludicrous self-help regimen which involves drinking "kale smoothies" while "soul cycling", then spending the afternoon in your dojo studying the Kabbalah and getting a butt-wax.
Read on....
Louis and LA
Louis and LA
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Louis and LA
Son of Paul Theroux, famous travel writer and occasional novelist.
The LA basin is not a wholesome place, overall. There are a lot of nice things there and some nice places to live, mostly near the coast. But it takes such a long time to get OUT of L.A., compared to most urban areas west of the Mississippi, that you feel trapped. There is a lot of nature around you to cling to if you're used to being in nature and used to seeing it. I was always amazed that no one seemed to notice the family of acorn woodpeckers living on our street ever though they'd 'machinegunned' a couple of telephone pole to store acorns in and were noisily going about their business every day. A flock of 30 very loud yellow-headed green Amazon parrots, just one of THREE such flocks living in the Pasadena South-Pasadena area, escapees from captive 'pets' which had found the climate very much to their liking made their 'dawn patrol' flights in between coffee and breakfast every day. In the isolated barrens on the edge of hilltops you could see red-tail hawks hunting regularly. A local Coyote left a skinned and gutted cat on the lawn in front of our garden apartment; spine bitten through between the ribcage and pelvis.
Other than the question of scale and distance its not worse than other US cities. We went there only at need and would not willingly go back to live there. Lots of good things; Santa Anita racetrack, Descanso Gardens, the LA arboretum, Huntington Library and gardens, great body surfing at Huntington Beach, and quite close to a fantastic desert in the branch of the Northern Sonoran desert which loops up into S. Calif. Cal Tech (I used their science library a lot).
yrs,
rubato
The LA basin is not a wholesome place, overall. There are a lot of nice things there and some nice places to live, mostly near the coast. But it takes such a long time to get OUT of L.A., compared to most urban areas west of the Mississippi, that you feel trapped. There is a lot of nature around you to cling to if you're used to being in nature and used to seeing it. I was always amazed that no one seemed to notice the family of acorn woodpeckers living on our street ever though they'd 'machinegunned' a couple of telephone pole to store acorns in and were noisily going about their business every day. A flock of 30 very loud yellow-headed green Amazon parrots, just one of THREE such flocks living in the Pasadena South-Pasadena area, escapees from captive 'pets' which had found the climate very much to their liking made their 'dawn patrol' flights in between coffee and breakfast every day. In the isolated barrens on the edge of hilltops you could see red-tail hawks hunting regularly. A local Coyote left a skinned and gutted cat on the lawn in front of our garden apartment; spine bitten through between the ribcage and pelvis.
Other than the question of scale and distance its not worse than other US cities. We went there only at need and would not willingly go back to live there. Lots of good things; Santa Anita racetrack, Descanso Gardens, the LA arboretum, Huntington Library and gardens, great body surfing at Huntington Beach, and quite close to a fantastic desert in the branch of the Northern Sonoran desert which loops up into S. Calif. Cal Tech (I used their science library a lot).
yrs,
rubato