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Comment by christianbryant | Hacker News Reader

Born and raised in Los Angeles. Lived in Downtown Los Angeles, Venice Beach, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Marina Del Rey, Playa Del Rey. Lived on a boat, in apartments, in houses. Commuted 2 hours one way, 1 hour the other, and then 10 minutes max each way.

I love L.A. - every facet of it, top to bottom, rich to poor, chilled to stressed. But there are more L.A.'s than two. Los Angeles is a bona fide schizophrenic. If the layers of Los Angeles were onion layers, you'd need a thousand onions to demonstrate the complexity of this county, of this town.

I appreciate the article, but I recommend taking a trip to the library and checking out a book from each decade going back to 1930, written by an Angeleino, preferably a few from different ethnic and social backgrounds (and genders), and then you will closer to unraveling this beautiful mess I call home.

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I grew up both close enough and far enough that I always hated LA—hated going there, hated the traffic, the city busy-ness, the randomness and amorphousness that was both easy and difficult to describe.

I hated it so much so that I began to love it. It reminded me of a person: human, flawed, honest, complex, paradoxical, somehow both ignorant and wise at the same time—and fundamentally alive and beautiful and generally happy in spite of it all. Some would say it lacks perspective, but I do think it has one. And it has such a personality, and knows itself. I've lived in cities without much of a personality, and I think knowing LA has helped me see that clearly. I miss it, for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.

Your comment and the parent comment are exactly how I feel.

I've now lived here for almost 15 years. I've traveled all over the world, and LA is still my favorite city of them all.

It's a cruel mistress one day. And a wondrous utopia the next day. Never predictable. Home.

checking out a book from each decade going back to 1930

Even better is the anthology "Writing Los Angeles", which excerpts writings from the 1880s to 2000: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Los-Angeles-Literary-Anthology... It really brings out how the competing cultural narratives of LA as paradise and LA as near-apocalyptic wasteland have co-existed since the beginning.

Aldous Huxley's essays on Los Angeles are easily the best pieces that still ring true to this day.

[1] (Linking to Huxley's essay on the Southern California desert, as I find it the most thoughtful and universal reflection on how to live amongst any environment) https://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-h...

Do you have any recommendations for an overview of the architectural history of LA? Moving there this summer...every time I move to a new city I like to understand the how and why of the way it looks. I especially enjoyed this[0] piece that popped up on HN a few months ago.

[0] http://blog.longreads.com/2015/03/23/the-last-freeway/

City of Quartz by Mike Davis. Probably the best social history of Los Angeles, and a major influence on the film this article takes its title from.

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