Los Angeles is grand and oversized. The billboards advertising cosmetic boutiques, blockbuster films, and ambulance chasers are bright and huge and nearly at eye-level. If New York travels upward, Los Angeles travels outward: massive stretches of concrete studio lots bleed into rustic Spanish architecture and back again. It is dizzying, a head rush. It’s as if the entire city sprung up overnight, because it almost did. Early proponents of the burgeoning ‘moving picture industry’ at the beginning of the 20th century chose California as their new home because of its vastness and varying landscapes. You could film a mountain adventure or a desert excursion in the same state. They displaced the indigenous inhabitants in the name of selling fantasy to the American public.
Perhaps this is why the city seemed so surreal to me. It was built to manufacture dreams. While visiting LA’s various beautiful graveyards, it was eerie to realize that the Neo-Gothic crypts were constructed only one hundred years ago. There is something unsettling about modernity imitating the ancient. It’s as if the whole city is a film set. Or maybe it was surreal to me because I had never traveled West before. “I’ve never been west of Missouri,” I used to proclaim. But as I fly further from the East Coast, the land thousands of feet below might as well be the surface of Mars. I am on the same continent, and yet I am in a totally alien country, one covered with cracked red earth, snow-capped mountains, and lush, perfect squares of farmland. When I land and step into the arrivals area to reunite with my college best friend and Los Angeles tour guide, I am met with palm trees. How literal! Palm trees, in California.
Our first stop is Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which backs up onto the Paramount lot. The water tower with the iconic logo is visible over the cemetery gates. It feels appropriate — it’s called “Hollywood Forever” after all. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I’ve chosen the destination because of a Father John Misty track. We go in the middle of the afternoon, when the light is perfect and diffused. I shed my cardigan and explore the grounds in a black sundress, which would be unthinkable for February in New York. I spot the graves of Mel Blanc, Burt Reynolds, Hattie McDaniel, and Cecil B. DeMille. Rudolph Valentino’s resting site is a demure slot in the mausoleum bedecked with coy bouquets and a color photograph from his younger days. Douglas Fairbanks, on the other hand, is buried in a veritable tomb. A long rectangular pond littered with fake plastic lily pads directs you to his ornate marble casket. Apparently they show movies there in the summer.
But what really chokes me up is the amount of very recent additions to Hollywood Forever — so many death dates in 2020 and 2021, perhaps victims of the early pandemic. These graves are marked hastily with print-outs, placeholders for engravings to come. Most of them still have fresh flowers in the holder beside each stone, flush against the marble wall. A loved one must have placed them there quite recently, and here I am, a voyeur to their private pain. My friend and I wonder aloud over the empty spots. How far in advance must you plan to be buried beside Valentino or Fairbanks? Think of your name appearing in a row with Mickey Rooney. It may be called “Hollywood Forever” but despite this lofty proclamation, it’s the great equalizer.
We leave the cemetery at dusk, passing a crowd of mourners; two of them are sturdy Italian men sharing a cigar back and forth. Swerving to avoid the gaggle of mysterious cemetery peacocks, we make our way to Mulholland Drive. I feel very provincial suddenly, asking to be driven somewhere simply because I know it from a David Lynch movie. We climb higher into the hills, winding past unadorned concrete mansions; brutalism appears to be the new signifier of wealth. In the distance, an illuminated cross hovers against the dark blue sky. It belongs to one of the Forest Lawn cemeteries — more on that later. This cross haunted most of our drives until I eventually figured out its source. Apart from the shining cross, Mulholland Drive is poorly lit, probably by design. My friend takes the hairpin turns like a pro, but I clutch my seatbelt as if we are trekking across a mountain path in the Alps. We park at the overlook and pick our way through the undergrowth to gaze into the valley at the lights of Los Angeles below. It looks sweet and small, like a city which was just plopped there one day by the hand of God.
“It’s messed up to say,” my friend comments, “but it’s as though all of the rich people live up here so they can look down on the rest of us.”
The next morning, we travel downtown to fulfill my personal travel contract of always visiting a place of worship and a cemetery. The place of worship in question is Los Angeles’ cryptic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, a vast, new-age building with whispers of Catholicism, generic Christianity, and Scientology all coalescing under one impossibly high roof. “Liminal” is an overused word now, but this place is truly liminal. My friend and I are basically the only visitors, and our footsteps echo hollowly in the cavernous building. I don’t really feel God here, but I feel something. It’s other-worldly. The church itself has the classic wooden pews, but the imagery is sharp and modern. A set of steps at the back of the nave lead to the crypt, a crucifix-shaped labyrinth of hallways filled with niches for ashes and urns. I learn later that this type of structure is called a columbarium. Like Hollywood Forever, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is nearly empty — several niches have no markers, or they’re simply reserved. Some married couples have already had their names engraved, but the death date is blank. “1954 —” the stone announces. I happen upon Gregory Peck’s casket; it’s not ostentatious, I might have missed it. There is also a prayer room dedicated to the church’s patron Saint Vibiana. None of the chairs are filled. It’s like visiting a historic site after a mass extinction event.
Death seems to haunt my Los Angeles trip, though it’s not intentional. That night we eat dinner at El Coyote, where Sharon Tate ate her last meal before being murdered by the Manson family. I expected fanfare, I suppose. Usually, when a restaurant or bar is associated with tragedy or celebrity, they don’t shy away from this fact. But the only indication that Tate ever visited is the display of flowers on top of her alleged booth. Otherwise, it’s a typical Mexican restaurant, though very cheap by L.A. standards. The chips and salsa are bottomless and gratis — I stuff them into my mouth as though I’m about to embark on a fast. After three refills, the waiter asks if we’d like more, and we say no. But I guess our eyes say yes, because he brings more, and the funny thing is I really did want them. It does feel weird to sit where she once sat. I hate being a morbidity chaser, but I am one of those weak people who become severely affected by facts such as this. While living in London, I traveled to the location where David Bowie shot the cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It is now an inconspicuous doorway with a small bronze plaque demarcating its significance. I took a photo posing like Bowie, but no trace of the original remained.
On Friday, we make the long-ish drive to Venice Beach and Santa Monica Pier. I have spent much of my trip sing-whispering to myself, “It’s me your little Venice bitch,” a la the Lana del Rey song. In many ways, this whole trip is some sort of Lana del Rey pilgrimage for me. When I was a teenager I’d rush through my homework and then click through a queue of her music videos on the family desktop, reblogging Tumblr gif-sets of Lana speeding down the highway on a motorcycle, lithe arms looped around the thick waist of an older man. She had taught me about California, really — it was Lana’s California, even if she hails from Lake Placid.
“The Pacific Ocean looks larger than the Atlantic,” I remark to my friend when we approach the coast. I don’t know why, it’s a nonsensical statement, but it just does. It’s wilder, less familiar, a shade of near-teal that you don’t expect to find in nature, only on Home Depot paint chips. I stare out to the horizon for a long time. There are even surfers out on the waves, like they’re posing for a postcard of Southern California beneath curly red text that coos, “Wish you were here.” It’s rough, and they’re thrown about, disappearing every couple of minutes into the white foam. We walk from sleazy Venice to Santa Monica. The pier is the only crowded place I have encountered thus far, packed with tourists who smile and snap pictures beside the famous Route 66 sign.
For the duration of my trip I find myself longing for a bygone place and time. I wanted the Los Angeles of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the blissed out malaise lovingly chronicled by Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. This California of my dreams no longer exists. Maybe if I drove out into the desert I would find it. I picture Santa Monica strewn with suburban runaways, all knotty flowing hair and smock dresses and bare feet, hanging from the arm of unkempt but handsome men with guitars. I am such a sap. I always want places to feel the way you think they will. Paris achieves this unity between imagination and reality, but it is one of the only cities that does, and I am sure many of you will disagree with this assessment.
My gracious host returns home to do some work, and I meet up with my photographer friend who drives me to Forest Lawn in Glendale — another cemetery, of course. It’s quintessential golden hour, and everything is soft around the edges. My friend has brought a beautiful medium format camera so I pose for some pictures, but I’m not a natural. I never know what to do with my hands. Luckily, Forest Lawn is photogenic by design, one of the most stunning places I have ever been. Something I have started to notice about spirituality in California is that it feels like a hodgepodge of influences. Forest Lawn boasts a giant painting of Jesus that is unveiled every couple of hours in an elaborate ceremony, but it also has its own bizarre hall of presidents, Gaelic monuments, and Buddhist graves. The stonework is cream and tan, everything larger-than-life, even in death. At the top of the cemetery there is a panorama of the mountains that seem ever-present in Los Angeles. I apologize to my friend for how often I need to look at the view.
Later my photographer friend takes me to Los Feliz, where we go to a Bigfoot-themed bar as soon as it opens for the evening. The bartender calls herself “party mom.” She is a statuesque brunette with long, bouncy, Stevie Nicks hair. I ask her what the secret is and she tells me, “Extensions.” She wears high-waisted jeans with a suede vest and turquoise belt like a Robert Altman character, and she regales us with tales from her band-managing days. I nod and pretend to recognize the names she conjures up. “Never go to Utah,” she warns me. I drink an old fashioned; she proclaims that she makes the best in the world. I leave pleasantly buzzed, greeted by a smoggy neon sunset.
I rise early the next morning and head to Griffith Observatory. I’m grateful that my host is being such a good sport about all these tourist activities. We park at the bottom of Griffith Park and walk up to the summit. I cannot believe that a place like this can exist in the middle of a city. It smells almost medicinal, and the view of the craggy mountains and perilously steep drops into the valley remind me of Oregon, though I’ve never been. California is offensively beautiful in ways that I didn’t anticipate. Its beauty cuts the observer, clear and sharp and high contrast like a desktop screensaver. At the top of Griffith Observatory I become overwhelmed by it all. The Hollywood sign is right there, I could touch it if I stretched. It’s all exactly how they said it would be, whoever they are.
That night I attend a birthday party for a friend of a friend at a trendy new American bar. After one drink I loosen up and chat easily with the other guests. “This is my friend who’s visiting from New York,” my host says. One of the attendees is an actor and writer. He tells me his job might soon require him to become bicoastal, that most glamorous of descriptions. I imagine boarding business-class flights from LGA to LAX, living from sublet to sublet. “But I don’t want to be poor in New York,” he says. “It’s all relative,” I reply. “It can be powerful to learn the bottom limit of what you need to maintain your lifestyle.” I don’t know why I said that or if I even meant it, but it seemed like the right thing to say at the time.
It storms viciously as my friend and I make the wet journey back to LAX for my return flight to New York. As I watch an unusually rainy California pass before my eyes, I think about what my life would be like if I had made a different choice. In January 2020, my college cohort moved to L.A. while I moved to Brooklyn. I was very lonely those first few months, and when the pandemic struck, leaving me all by myself in my barely-christened Crown Heights apartment, I imagined my shiny, beautiful West Coast friends getting tanner and rosier and leaner every day. When I was in college, I had this silly belief that Los Angeles was for people who wanted to be happy even when they were sad, and New York was for people who wanted to be sad even when they were happy. Now, I understand that this, like most things I believed at nineteen, is not true.
Los Angeles is stunning but strange, like walking through a postcard. But if I lived there, it would desaturate. I remember when I first moved to New York at twenty-two and teared up with no shame at the view of the skyline from the Q train as I passed across the bridge. I hoped that this feeling would last forever, but the feeling outgrew its mold and became something more viscous. Four years later I don’t tear up anymore, though the view is still arresting. In the car on the way to the airport, I want to ask my friend about all of this. Are you happy? Do you look at the hills in disbelief? Do you sometimes find the smog to be gorgeous even though you know it’s bad? But I stay quiet and let the rain streak the window as I leave the sunniest place on earth.
I love your writing on travel.
also - really feel this ‘I am such a sap. I always want places to feel the way you think they will.’ though in my case I think it manifests in being better at reading about travel and other places rather than actually travelling to them...
Okay but your visit and this essay was the LA reset I needed….