By day, the 110 freeway
through downtown Los Angeles is a wasteland of ripped off bumpers and lost
license plates. The asphalt is cracked
and broken, the storm drains clogged with bird shit and dirt, the sloped sides
leading to the street level littered with dead weeds, trash and cigarette butts. The light from the sun ricochets of skyscraper
glass and superheats the car. It is an
ugly, ugly thoroughfare stoked with traffic and noise and heat and people
trying to get to work or get home from work or get on with their lives.
By night, however, the
area is transformed, as long as you keep looking up. The skyscrapers bejewel the night sky and the
air from the ocean wraps the towers in misty high clouds and brings a freshness
to the city. It is as close as L.A. gets
to a sparkling metropolis. It is almost
enough to make us forget the day-to-day detritus and the arc of human misery
playing out on the streets below, on Skid Row just a few blocks to the south,
and under the overpasses where the homeless toss and turn in restless sleep.
Los Angeles is not
beautiful in its decadence like New York or Paris. It lacks the pulsing life of the mind so
common in the east or in Europe. It is a
city of facades, each one good for a few years until it is torn down for some
other build-up of an already broken dream.
But there are moments of possibility, moments of slight-of-hand beauty
if you look.
So it was one recent
night-ride through Los Angeles on the edge of another summer.
