Money Grows on Palm Trees

We just returned to St. Louis, after spending our first American Thanksgiving weekend visiting friends in Los Angeles. Yes, don’t worry ... even in California, they eat turkey with gravy and cranberries. My new friends here in St. Louis fretted that their fellow countrymen would ruin it for us by serving some new age or healthy vegetarian dish at the most anticipated meal of the year. But, we were visiting aliens – other Canadians – who recently landed in the City of Angels, so we ate a wonderful, traditional Thanksgiving dinner!

There are lots of aliens in La La Land. By aliens, you know I always mean transplants from another part of the world but out there, I think there are real aliens. In any case, there are people who don’t resemble the human beings that I know. They are impossibly young and beautiful. They are real but fake. They saunter and strut and stroll with confidence and insouciance, all the while checking oncoming faces for a sign of fame or, at least, usefulness. They wear designer shirts over pyjama bottoms to buy coffee at Starbucks. They wear ski hats with khaki shorts and purple socks at dinner parties. They go to bed at sunrise. They work three jobs or none at all.

Then again, the whole city didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. We were staying west of Hollywood, in an area where you don’t even need to be a pop-culture junkie to recognise the names of neighbourhoods, streets, nightclubs and hotels that have found their way into urban legends and gossip columns. This part of the city is plastic but beautiful. It’s like a film set; nearly real and strangely clean. I saw a man in shades and a pricey three-piece suit scoop up and throw out a piece of garbage on Rodeo Drive before ducking into a glamorous boutique. Later, far from Rodeo, I saw a homeless lady surrounded by her garbage bags on a bus bench holding up an old-fashioned plastic mirror by its large handle as she combed and then carefully sprayed her unkempt hair.

Hollywood is the kind of place that little girls in kindergarten draw: an oversized sun with impossibly long rays, one tall tree full of chirping birds, a girl with long hair looking out the window, and unicorns in the yard. Okay, I didn’t see unicorns, but there were horses and a couple of old goats at the top of a sweat-breaking, breath-stealing hike up Canyon Road in Runyon Canyon Park just before sunset one afternoon. The Los Angeles area is hillier than I had expected and the view from up there was magnificent. How on earth was this improbable mound saved from development while every other one of its siblings to the east and west is covered with a network of tiny, twisted streets and glamorous houses stacked cleverly one after the other?

Here, west of downtown, long, wide boulevards lined with towering palm trees, lush green hedges, and stucco walls overcome with vigorous bougainvillea carry you from one splendid area to another. Shady trees cleverly hide mansions and villas where famous actors seek refuge from nosy tourists with Star Maps and ruthless paparazzi desperate for a million-dollar shot. On one hot, sunny day, we let Santa Monica Boulevard pull us to its namesake, where we rented bicycles and pedaled through crowds of hippy, happy folks in flip flops who could have been on vacation but for the ever-present i-Phones and Blackberries buzzing news of upcoming auditions and house parties.

Los Angeles is young and vibrant, even in its worst areas, along which we skirted as we drove down to the Staples Arena for a hockey game on Saturday night. Here, there are also long, wide boulevards but they are lined with tiny shops in mismatched shapes, sizes and colours with signs announcing food or merchandise in a myriad of languages. Hand-painted signs compete with newer, neon ones that rhythmically light up the faces of passers-by who duck silently into doorways and up dark alleyways, hands jammed deeply into pants pockets.

As we trudged toward the baggage carrousels in St. Louis, I observed to my daughter that I didn’t feel as if I was returning “home”, which tends to be my litmus test for whether or not I feel settled after a move. She, on the other hand, felt very much like she was returning home. She had a spring in her step. She had new jeans from Abercrombie in her bag and a little cotton scarf from The Grove’s market around her neck. She is young and beautiful. She loves heat and music and movies. I’m quite sure that the City of Angels has just caught another Angel.