Get in. Go get Korean BBQ with two good friends -- Jonathan and Kelsey -- from university. Drink some Soju, then pass out for the night. This is downtown LA for you.
It's weird how foreign the place seems even though it was part of my life for so long. The intricacies of the City escape me. It's already dark by the time we land and so the panorama city skyline is lit. Figuratively lit as well. Korean town is popping at this late hour. It's 10:30 pm, and people are clustered at a small, low-rise shop in the corner, smoking outside in their groups of three or four. Distinct from the Asians on the main continent in that they look edgier, more alternative. The hot Korean Americans are out tonight in their hauteur black and white tshirts and sweatpants cuffed at the ankles; the backwards hat, tilted oblique ever so slightly, with a tuft of hair exposed near the front. The women, too, with their dyed hair and hip hop look, accompanying them and holding their own style, not outshined. Topping this weird third culture experience off, are thick American accents. The whiny kind, but the familiar kind.
They stop selling Soju to our disappointment past 10:30 p.m. So, we're stuck eating a delicious meal sober, probably for the better. It's more savored. Kelsey pipes up. She wants a drink, so we head back to Jonathan's apartment.
It's like old times again. The old drinking-wine-out-of-a-mug, the old studio apartment, furnished with our futon that we used back in Costa Mesa, subsequently donated to Jonathan. It has the same pillows, and the apartment bears an eerie similarity to where we were living just three years ago, except this time we had all entered postgraduate programs, and all had graduated or were about to. We were so different now, but united by the same old haunts. I liked that. That familiarty, that drunkenness and openness among friends. Those good conversations that would range from the American political state and Beyonce's Lemonade, then devolve to topics about getting some ass and moving on with Life. Those suburban drives around USC and noticing how, architecturally, it was such a suburban, Los Angeles experience. What we thought was just normal before we left, but now looked slightly odd. Those wide, paved streets, those suburban cracked sidewalks, those thin palm trees placed perfectly equidistant and spanning the length of the road. Those apartments, oriented around a square and central courtyard, a modern take to those ones we saw in Beijing before we even touched down back to the U.S., but with some American finesse. I think what gave it that touch was the asbestos-looking concrete. This shit was built here in the 70s and it withstood the test of time: the superficiality of LA, the earthquakes, and of course, the modernization. Those experiences of pulling up into the parking lot and having your space being taken up (really happened to Jon at his apartment). Those small restaurants clustered into tiny clusters of fifteen or twenty odd shops, almost like some drive-in version of a hawker center. Those experiences sleeping on our friends floor, crashing for the night. We always slept well that way, among friends.
And, the next morning, that wake up drive to get some McDonalds. Ordering at Corporate America [dot] com and tasting the fresh smell of the Dollar Menu hit our lips, hit our hips. That bland, watered down iced coffee that I so used to love from McDonalds. That Egg McMuffin that I hadn't had in so long, but used to all the time back in Davis. That search for more parking. That view of the American middle class squander their money -- or, perhaps, survive with their money -- on cheap food options that were substantial in calories and wanting in substance. That visibility of Chicanos and Blacks that was so familiar. I'd forgotten how diverse it actually was, or was it just such a normal thing at the time? Or, was I living in White America at the time? None of this was that, it was Korean, Mexican, black, like some Benetton ad. That image of a modern multiracial America packed into one expansive, desert city. That calm, slow-moving peace on that Sunday morning, so different than the news reports of the next bombing, the next gun death, the next political fiasco we got abroad. Peoples lives on the ground moved on, just like it was everywhere else. Kelsey moved on, too, saying goodbye to us from our brief reunion as she began her new job back in Irvine.
And, in that Uber ride back to LAX with Jonathan, as he was going to Maine that weekend, more sights that I remember. The houses, the houses.. One by one, with a front porch, two pillars anchoring the roof to the ground. Sitting on the porch were the kids, looking out at the cars going by on the busy streets. Lawns, not watered due to the drought, brown and desiccated, matching perfectly the poverty of the area, gridded in by a small black fence no more than two meters high. Bars on the windows. The taqueria at the street corner selling Chinese food. The arid heat of the Los Angeles desert beating down on it all. Traffic. Into the mountains now. Brown like the lawns, but noticeably richer. A lot richer. The nice houses pop up in the hills. The prime real estate, looking down in their haughty way when juxtaposed with what lay below - what 'scum' lay below - what we had just passed 10 minutes, no more than 5 miles ago. The disparate scenes, passing us by. We were only in Los Angeles for 12 hours but we felt like we had seen a life flash before our eyes, a story. A story that we once knew, captured succinctly in these snapshots of peering out the passenger seat of a car, as you would have it in America, only through a tinted window. Only in Los Angeles.