perhaps i shouldn’t blog about this sort of stuff, but i found a really cool apartment at the bottom of the Hollywood sign. and i hope that i get it. because i’d be living, technically, in the Hollywood Hills.
do you know how rad it is to see that sign after you’ve had a shitty day? Los Angeles isn’t so much a city as it is a brilliant idea - that, fuck it, if you don’t make it, then someone else will, so you might as well roll the dice. that all seems to maudlin and tacky, especially to people that live in Los Angeles. yet at the first place i lived at in LA you could see the sign if you climbed up the fire escape. i lived on a guys couch at the Asbury for the first six months i lived there, eating canned tuna and protein powder, and when i could afford beer i’d climb up there and get kind of drunk and think “fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, put all the chips on red, fuck it, might as well go all out while i’m down here”. Bukowski used to live in that building at one point - on the 11th floor - HUGE inspiration. i’d put my headphones on and listen to / sing along to ‘Blue Valentine’ and get yelled at by the assholes on the fourth floor. i never made it past the fourth floor on that fire escape. i’m scared of heights. that, and asshole neighbors who can’t appreciate a well-meaning drunk man on their fire escape singing Tom Waits songs at two in the morning. but i digress.
thats the thing about LA. in other cities, the history is much more apparent. you can see it; be it a building or a monument or what not. one of the best things about Los Angeles is that 95% of the history is all heresay… word of mouth… “didja know?”… “i know a shortcut” sort of thing. while it might not provide the heartwarming grandeur of New York or the comforting affibility of, say, Chicago or Seattle, Los Angeles offers up a lot of hope and - if you’re prepared for it and the literal champagne fountain of bullshit that comes with the uphill struggle - the ability to eventually and ultimately become whatever you want. it’s weirdly euphoric.
its like someone painting a Norman Rockwell painting backwards until you just see a blank page.
anyway, i hope i get this apartment. it’d mean a lot.
