Los Angeles: city of thugs

As the third most populated city in North America, Los Angeles is known for its celebutants and toxic smog. When originally founded in 1781 the city had a longer name than most actor’s careers: El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de la Porciuncula,’ which translates to ‘Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angeles of the Small Portion.’ Another interesting fact about L.A., next to Amsterdam, it has the second largest porn filming industry in the world, with Montreal coming in third. Go Canada!

Also, animals are banned from mating publicly within 1000 feet of any school, tavern or place of worship, I would think they should be banned from mating in public period, but that’s the great thing about travelling, you get to experience different standards.

Touristness

When you think tourism, you don’t generally think L.A., San Diego has the

Rodeo Drive, I just wanted to see it, we didn’t actually go in any stores

zoo, Anaheim has Disneyland (granted it’s only 30 minutes from L.A.) and San Francisco the wharfs and a big bridge, but there are a lot of fun things to do on the cheap (which is always the goal on our tight budget) in Los Angeles. Besides the obvious of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre or Santa Monica pier which are both horrible tourist traps there are a lot of places in L.A. that let you explore the culture without being trapped in it.

Beachwood Canyon Drive: ($0)

This is the view from the hills above Los Angeles

Take a drive up the hills, not only is the scenery fantastic, it’s completely free! At the top there’s a place to park with trails that take you to the top of the hills for a fantastic view. And you can see the Hollywood sign from there (albeit, it’s tiny) but there are a lot less crowds than around the more popular Hollywood Hills trails.

Randy’s Donuts: ($10)
Grab a bag of assorted donuts (avoid the coffee if you like your stomach lining) from this famous landmark in Inglewood and drive over near LAX for a sugar and thrill fix. If you find the right spot you can see the planes fly right over you.

Drivability

L.A. is a city of cars, or as Chris explains it, a city of rims. And that city is lined with freeways. If you don’t have a car, you’re not going very far. The traffic is constant, however, not nearly as bad as home. According to a recent study Toronto ranks as one of the worst gridlocked cities in the world, worse than Montreal, Berlin, New York and L.A.. Having personally spent an equivalent of 165 days of my life already sitting in traffic with only crappy radio to keep me company, this makes me kind of heartbroken.

Peopleness

Perhaps it was where we were staying in Inglewood, but it seemed that L.A. was populated by thugs, little baby thugs. This is probably not true, I’m sure there’s a wide diversity of people living in L.A., and I’m sure most of them know that your pants should start above your ass crack.

Livability

For me, it’s all about the weather. Everyone seems to jump on the fact that it never rains in L.A., like that’s a good thing. It’s true it gets less than 308mm a year compared to Hilo, Hawaii which gets 5100mm. But that makes L.A. more like a desert and less like the tropical weather I’d like to become accustom to. That, coupled with the lack of greenery makes L.A. unlivable for me. But is definitely a great place to visit.