Downtown, things'll be great when you're DOWNtown...
I got a full-time gig in Downtown Los Angeles about two months ago, to go with my own web design business. I’m only there at night so I can’t really enjoy the place much even though the minute I got here I realized I loved it and wanted to get to know it more than I ever had. Pretty much every day I have the urge to move here.
I grew up in suburbia, then lived fairly urban for about 10 years after I moved away from home. Not crazy urban - LA around the Fairfax district and The Grove still has plenty of trees and grass and houses and supermarkets, isn’t crammed all close together - walking places takes kind of forever. The most urban I got was living right below Wilshire Blvd, near the El Rey theater and the SAG building and La Brea tarpits - Miracle Mile, they call it. The classic Art Deco former Bullocks department store building was nearby, along with a bunch of other defunct, similarly styled multi-story department store buildings that used to serve as that era’s malls, I guess. (“Third floor, lingerie…”) James Ellroy wrote in My Dark Places that he once stole a suit from one just a block or two over from my old apartment. One day I saw a stuntman hanging from a harness at the top of another, calmly waiting for them to set everything up so he could fall from its phallic main tower. It had a lot of urban elements including loud bums in the alley outside my bedroom window and drunk couples exiting clubs late at night, but it wasn’t Downtown urban. Downtown is like New York urban.
After my urban time I moved to very suburban Burbank and felt a huuuge relief - I could breathe there. The streets were actually clean. I rented a little duplex mini-house where my cats could run out the old milk door and sleep in the sun under bushes like God intended (they didn’t like my apartments right before where they only got a balcony). Parking was easy and nothing was crowded, people were friendly and it’s ridiculously safe. I’ve enjoyed it there for about three years. When I moved there I was working at Nickelodeon and could conceivably have walked there (though I never did). And that’s my big thing: anywhere I work, I want to be RIGHT. THERE. I want to step out my door and be where I have to be. I hate commuting, and always leave at the last minute anyway (though I’m getting better about it) so having the maximum amount of time before I leave makes me happier. And I don’t know why but I’m just ready to go urban again, but super extra urban this time. I’d want to live in a specific section, naturally right near my job where it’s nicer and not as dangerous and spruced up for all the rich white people who work there. I’d want to walk out my lobby (which I’m sure I’d have) and be right in the heart of it. I want to get to know it, all its little ins and outs and the history of it. But there are a lot of reasons why acting on this whim (and it is a whim) is not terribly practical.
Let’s see…
I still want to.
I grew up in suburbia, then lived fairly urban for about 10 years after I moved away from home. Not crazy urban - LA around the Fairfax district and The Grove still has plenty of trees and grass and houses and supermarkets, isn’t crammed all close together - walking places takes kind of forever. The most urban I got was living right below Wilshire Blvd, near the El Rey theater and the SAG building and La Brea tarpits - Miracle Mile, they call it. The classic Art Deco former Bullocks department store building was nearby, along with a bunch of other defunct, similarly styled multi-story department store buildings that used to serve as that era’s malls, I guess. (“Third floor, lingerie…”) James Ellroy wrote in My Dark Places that he once stole a suit from one just a block or two over from my old apartment. One day I saw a stuntman hanging from a harness at the top of another, calmly waiting for them to set everything up so he could fall from its phallic main tower. It had a lot of urban elements including loud bums in the alley outside my bedroom window and drunk couples exiting clubs late at night, but it wasn’t Downtown urban. Downtown is like New York urban.
After my urban time I moved to very suburban Burbank and felt a huuuge relief - I could breathe there. The streets were actually clean. I rented a little duplex mini-house where my cats could run out the old milk door and sleep in the sun under bushes like God intended (they didn’t like my apartments right before where they only got a balcony). Parking was easy and nothing was crowded, people were friendly and it’s ridiculously safe. I’ve enjoyed it there for about three years. When I moved there I was working at Nickelodeon and could conceivably have walked there (though I never did). And that’s my big thing: anywhere I work, I want to be RIGHT. THERE. I want to step out my door and be where I have to be. I hate commuting, and always leave at the last minute anyway (though I’m getting better about it) so having the maximum amount of time before I leave makes me happier. And I don’t know why but I’m just ready to go urban again, but super extra urban this time. I’d want to live in a specific section, naturally right near my job where it’s nicer and not as dangerous and spruced up for all the rich white people who work there. I’d want to walk out my lobby (which I’m sure I’d have) and be right in the heart of it. I want to get to know it, all its little ins and outs and the history of it. But there are a lot of reasons why acting on this whim (and it is a whim) is not terribly practical.
Let’s see…
- It’d probably be expensive, moreso than what I have now. I’m paying for my little office too so my rent isn’t exactly low when you put them together, but even for that price I’m not sure I could get more than a single. However, I need a bedroom with a door because my cats absolutely cannot be slept with - they’re so relentlessly active and begging for my attention that I have to shut them out. I’d want a second bedroom so I could still have an office (again to shut cats out). A two-bedroom on a budget in the middle of the hopping section of downtown? Shhhyeah right.
- One of the reasons I’m on a budget and have this second job is that I’m saving up to travel for a long time - months to possibly a year, who knows how long. I’m supposed to be cutting down expenses. If I could make a lateral move this might work, but…again, not counting on it, plus unless I got my full deposit back on my current place I’d probably lose money on the deal.
- I have pets. Pets who like being outdoors. My cats would be stuck indoors again, cut off from nature. My dog is now relatively close to Griffith Park and various dog parks that he’s used to and where he loves to run free. I could still drive to these places, but not as often. Having a dog in the city is kind of cool for the person doing it and he’d certainly walk a lot, since once I got there I’d try to walk everywhere I could. I’m sure he’d be cheerful and adapt, and maybe have more of my time, but I still think moving pets to the city is a little selfish. Today I was looking around at the complete lack of grass along the sidewalk, thinking that if he lived here he might never poop again.
- I have awesome neighbors here who will help you with anything you need, including taking care of animals and cat sitting when I go to my parents’ house. My pets and I know and are known by all sorts of people around the neighborhood.
- My mom would shit a brick, thinking I was living in Murdertown.
- I’d be far away from all sorts of little necessary things like grocery stores, etc.
- My job is long-term temp, which while it’s very very likely that after a while I’d be offered a permanent gig…it IS, at the moment, temporary.
I still want to.