dooorrrrrrrff

[garote]

Finalized the mail server upgrade at work today. Burned some backups, had some meetings. Decided to walk home. On the way I endeavored to greet everyone I passed. The majority pretended I wasn't even there, but continued stolidly on, grim-faced or suddenly interested in their accessories.

Then, 30 yards from my house, I finally understood the pattern. The older the person, the more likely they were to greet a stranger on the road. No other factor - not sex, not dress, not even mood - came close to mattering. This proves to me more than anything else, more than the SUVs, more than the voting trends, more than the iron railings welded over the planter boxes to keep tourists from sitting down, that Los Angeles is spreading north, and the hard-edged materialism that it champions is coming with it.

I'm not sure I'd want to raise children here any more. I'm not sure I'd want to send them to these schools, to play with the kids of this community. Not while I have other options.

We may move north.

Comments

[garote]

I'm using "Los Angeles" as a blanket label, for the conditions that seem to become more prevalent, the closer I get to that area. It's those conditions that disturb me. And to be fair, Los Angeles definitely doesn't hold a monopoly on things like urban sprawl, materialism, violence, cynicism, and pollution. (There's a nice little market for those in Sacramento, for example.) It does however provide an epicenter from which those things are radiating, as the population grows, and in it's role as one of the most influential cities and cultures in the state, and arguably the entire country, the world, and in history.

LA's urbanization is not much different from Chicago, or Dallas, or Miami, or Las Vegas, or any other large city. And you're right of course, LA is much more diverse than any of these, with a greature mix of cultures, lifestyles, and pursuits. But I'm speaking from the perspective of a Northern Californian, who is seeing his local environment become, as it grows, more and more afflicted with the problems that he first got a real eyeful of in Southern California. So from where I stand, those problems are spreading north. The only solution that I can think of, as a mere individual, is to stay ahead of the wave. My relatively brief experiences in Oregon, B.C., the Yukon, and Alaska reminded me of how the local community used to be when I was growing up here.

Perhaps I just fell in with exactly the wrong crowd when I moved south, and exactly the right one when I went north...