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Showing posts from March, 2005

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula

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You're not supposed to like Los Angeles. New Yorkers will tell you it's soulless suburban sprawl, you can't walk anywhere, you spend all your time stuck in traffic, breathing toxic smog. San Franciscans will warn you that it's full of plastic people, air-kissing backstabbing phonies who can't think about anything but flashy cars, chiseled abs, and which celebrity name to drop next. And people from other countries will know without ever having been that it exemplifies the very worst of narcissistic self-congratulatory America. But in the same way that Europeans don't get the USA - don't understand the size and diversity of the place, that there are at least a half-dozen Americas tucked uncomfortably into one legal nation - non-Angelenos will never grok L.A. Yes, it's sort of a relentless pea soup of suburbia thickened only occasionally by clusters of density, but hidden in this bland fog are a few terrific places. I'm now back in Canada (like a s