Inspiration
So, how did this blog get the name This Ugly Beautiful City? It came to me because of this picture
It was the morning after a crazy windstorm that had kept me up the night before. I came across this messy scene, groggy on the way to work. I paused and thought about how beautiful this section of the sidewalk outside my apartment was. Berries from the tree were strewn this way and that by the wind in seemingly random patterns like a Jackson Pollock painting. Many Angelenos hate these purply pink berries and think of them as a nuisance. Try as you might to avoid stepping on them, one inevitably adheres to your shoe, staining everything they touch. Then, of course, the solo cup, a memory of last night’s resting where the windstorm left it. This section of the sidewalk outside my Koreatown apartment reminded me of the ways that Los Angeles can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time.
There are many ways in which Los Angeles can be both beautiful and ugly.
Native Flora
Take, for example, the beautiful Jacaranda trees with their canopies of light purple flowers that line the streets. As those flowers start to drop in the spring, they float in the air like a scene in a romantic movie. You know that scene where two people suddenly realize that the person they were looking for the entire time was always there in front of them–if only they realized. Their big pent-up kiss happens in the middle of the street, the music swells, and it rains these beautiful purple flowers all around them. It all seems so magical until you go back to your car the next day and try to brush them off, and you realize that the sap has shellacked them where they landed. People stuck in traffic with outlines of the blooms, bits of flowers, and gummy sap stuck to their hoods.
Sometimes the horrible traffic can be worth it
You can crawl through the nastiest traffic up the Pacific Coast Highway for over an hour, although it is only twelve miles from home, take a left on Solstice Canyon, and in less than twenty minutes, you are climbing the switchbacks up to find one of the most beautiful views of the Pacific Ocean, find waterfalls, and most importantly find quiet.
Los Angeles is the land of opposites that exist at the same time. I guess that this is just a long drawn-out way to say that this place can be as ugly as it is beautiful. It is all in how you look at it.
Hence This Ugly Beautiful City.
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