Los Angeles.
2011.
Photograph by Andrew Stephen Goodrich.
Los Angeles is full of awkward absurdities. Anyone who has ever made “Hollywood” a vacation destination must know. The fact is that Hollywood itself is nothing more than the name of a subdivision (the sign once read “Hollywoodland”). The fact that Hollywood as most people know it, the famed sidewalks with stars embedded (the imagery is almost too perfect: us pedestrians treading on the celebrated), is dirty like the streets of the French Quarter, lined with homeless and reeking youth. So many of us dream of heading West, an illusory Promise. But the fact is that dreams come to L.A. to die. Our roads are sliding into the ocean. Tar and natural gas bubble up from the ground along Miracle Mile, sinking the streets. Every waitress is an ‘actress’; everybody here to prove something to somebody because they heard this was the place to get it done. Meanwhile, these quiet, leftover places surround the city. Looming. Watching. Waiting to move in.
