LIFE IN L.A - THE TRAFFIC, THE HOMELESS, IT REALLY IS THAT BAD?

On the Metro we pass Compton, and the paint is peeling from the "superior groceries" sign. An automated message loops on the tannoy, 'we're all in this together'. Piss-puddles geyser out from underneath the toilet door, flooding one half of the carriage. Benny the waiter at the Westin Hotel in Long Beach is a great guy. He loves his kids, his movies and his job. He warned us about the Metro. 'As soon as you feel uneasy, get off, and steer clear of Skid Row. The homeless got really bad in the last 3 years. Hopefully the Olympics will come and clean all this up like they did in Paris. They'll just hoover them up and stick them in hotels for the summer.' We made it downtown. Two beggars in the same carriage are selling bags of crisps, or chips as they say in the U.S. One is selling 3 bags for a dollar, the other; one bag for a dollar. A passenger informs the latter that he needs to start price matching or else he'll go out of business. They all laugh at the craziness of it all and a part of me dies.

Downtown L.A has a guy in the street screaming at traffic, and as we make our way to Building 444, (the HEAT bank robbery building) my head is on a swivel. We get our photos and Uber it to the Beverly Hills Hotel. The Uber guy tells us, Orange County is not as loud and as obnoxious as the rest of Los Angeles and that Mulholland Drive is the most beautiful street in L.A as you can see the hills from both sides of the road. He drops us outside the Beverly Hills hotel and tells us a silver 2.5M Dollar Shelby Daytona (real life Monopoly car) got totaled outside the entrance a year back. You can find it on YouTube.

Inside the hotel, we're informed lunch at the Polo Lounge is $155 a head and that I needed to remove my hat. We didn't have lunch, instead ordered some cocktails at the bar. The bartender Michael spoke about catering for Salma Hayek's 50th. She complained her wedding cake was too small, so for her 50th her husband, (François-Henri Pinault one of the richest men in the world) made sure the cake was big enough for Erika Eleniak to leap out from. Michael served us the drinks and said, 'At Salma's party, one of the patrons complained about the smell of weed. They asked me, who is smoking weed here. I turned around and it was Pierce Brosnan with a massive beard smoking a spliff. I told them, "that's James Bond over there smoking a spliff." That's Hollywood.'

We walked 30 minutes down to Rodeo Drive and had drinks at The Beverly Wilshire. Yes the Pretty Woman hotel, although it's had major renovations since the film's release. The only features that remain are the bronze gilding on the elevator doors in the lobby and a historic letterbox remains, but everything else is more or less unrecognisable. The rooms and restaurant were filmed elsewhere or on set. The cocktails were 30 bucks for a Negroni, five bucks more than the Beverly Hills hotel.

On the way back to Long Beach The Uber driver ached as he said, 'People warned me about the traffic here. I didn’t believe them, I do now.' I asked him if he thought California will be renewable energy by 2045 and he didn't answer. Instead he went on a jag about how his crazy wife caught him cheating and so he moved out to L.A with his squeeze and now he's miserable. We all sit in traffic for an hour. In silence. In misery. *written before the LA fires of 2025

Photo by Cedric Letsch on Unsplash