LOS ANGELES -- It's 25°C on the freeways and on the pavements of Los Angeles, a city I long associated with many examples of American culture that epitomises and stereotypes this nation of mine. Things like
- Cowboy hats
- Yellow school buses
- Drive-up takeaways
- rollerblades on beaches
- Indians on the high mesa
- 4 x 4 monster trucks
- bottomless glasses of iced tea
- chrome fins
- velvet Elvis rugs
- 18 different kinds of coffee
- McDonalds
- halter tops
- 24 oz steaks
- cops with big belts in donut shops
- Hummers in parallel parking slots
- Valley girls
- churches in strip malls
- home addresses with five-digit numbers and nine-digit zip codes
- dining portions large enough to feed a parent, a toddler and a granny off the same plate
- big hair, big cars, big butts
- hair in curlers during morning rush traffic
- "smog" rebranded as "haze" so as not to discourage overseas visitors
- 14 different kinds of bottled water in the shops, often priced higher than juice or carbonated soda
- pizza-for-two that extends beyond the edge of your table
I had forgotten many of these things since 1982, the last time I traveled through San Fernando Valley. No worries--they're part of the permaculture here and deserve to be annotated in posterity.
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