Too many cars and no place to park. Hard to see here but many streets are hard to navigate, because due to the parking crunch, parking is often allowed even where it shouldn't be and cars are jammed into any available space... frequently making already narrow streets into unnerving tight squeezes when you're driving up the street and another car comes from the opposite direction.
Dried-up unkempt lawns with garbage strewn everywhere
Wrought-iron fencing, garbage and debris on the sidewalk and in the gutters, walls completely covered with graffiti
The gang-infested alley we have to drive through to get home, because the only entrance street is so jam-packed with traffic and most people are too rude to let you in to make the turn onto our street. Further down this alley, not pictured here, is a favorite area of several homeless who make their cardboard shelters and leave their garbage here.
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There is something primal about driving in downtown L.A. traffic that can turn a gentle, mild-mannered humanist into an out-of-control, raging, cursing, feral beast. One episode can do it, but doing it 5 days a week is liable to bring out a side of you you didn't know existed, a side you wish didn't exist. After almost a year of this, I'm so through with this commute. I'm a pretty defensive driver, but almost every day I have a dangerous near-miss situation as someone makes a reckless move and almost takes out everybody around them. This, coupled with the fact that the main freeway I take has regularly been plagued with drive-by shootings in recent months, often makes me wonder why in the world anyone would ever move to L.A. and how existing residents can stand it here. It doesn't help that my current job is frustrating sedentary work in one of a sea of cubicles. I think there is something about being that caged up that can drive people to the brink. Maybe that's why we have so much craziness here.
If there's one thing that working field positions in a wide area has taught me, it's that the farther away from L.A. you get, the friendlier and more peaceful people are. You find that the grocery clerk stops to chat with you, people on the street say hello to each other, and drivers cooperate so everybody can get where they're going safely. I mean, naturally there are always exceptions, but in general I've found that this friendliness factor is in direct proportion to your distance from L.A. Of course, I don't know how far that radius actually extends.
I am so looking forward to finding out. :)
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