You're Wrong About This Place

A love letter to the subtle and strange seasonal shifts of Los Angeles

New Yorkers don’t like it when outsiders complain about New York. Even if it’s something they agree with, they won’t tell you. They’ll take to the grave the fact that they feel the same way. In Los Angeles, people are less defensive of their hometown. Angelenos will complain about the traffic with you. Or the rent hikes. Or anything really. You don’t have to be from here to complain about this place. You can just join right in.

I draw the line on only one topic: seasons. East coasters love to visit LA and wax poetic about “the lack of seasons.” How they could never live here. They need change. But we do have seasons here— they just have different names and markers.

I’ve spent the last two months basking in the gloom and gray under a marine layer that blankets this city during spring. On most mornings, I’d scrape myself from my bed as early as I could, just to walk below the cloud cover during its most poignant hours. These are the days you declare as perfect. Even if you had the chance, you wouldn’t want the temperature to move a degree in either direction. Sometimes the clouds grow so thick you’d almost swear you were on the coast of a fishing town in Maine or Canon Beach in Oregon.

While the first day of summer is June 20th, I consider the first day to break 90 degrees as day one. This is the death knell for the gloom. It’s a warning sign signifying the end of balance, and the beginning of sensory assault. Soon the daily soundtrack becomes the hum of AC units and the constant barrage of fireworks long after July 4th has passed. You get used to finding the dogs hiding under the bed. If you’re not an early riser, you’ll become one. You have to. The concrete turns to a grill top by early afternoon, so if those dogs are going to get any exercise, it must be done before the sun is in full force.

The good news is that it’s a dry heat. You won’t sweat the way you do simply buttering a bagel in New York humidity. Then again, New York doesn’t hit 110. Or 117. Those days are preceded by a text from the Department of Water and Power, politely asking you to conserve, which feels like a cruel joke. And if you dare try and actually do anything outside at 3pm, when the sun is directly overhead, you can run your finger across your skin and scrape the heat off of you. You can feel your body struggling to cut through it, like pushing a knife through gelatin. Those days aren’t as frequent as they are in Phoenix or El Paso, but they’re becoming more common.

By mid-August, fire season is in full swing. You walk out the front door and ask yourself why someone’s BBQing at 7am, only to look up and notice that the sky has an out of focus look to it, like you slept with your contacts in. You check your weather app, and the air quality says: get the fuck inside. You google to see how far it is. You hope it’s a small brush fire at Griffith Park. You hope it’s 90% contained. Sometimes it is, but other times it rages for days. The buzzing chorus of central air units reach their peak, as opening a window would wreak havoc on even the youngest set of lungs.

The mountains on fire. View from my home on a smoke filled day in 2017.

September brings fall in many places. In New York, I remember it came on quickly—as if the public school district sent a memo out to the powers that be, saying “We don’t have central air and it’s hard enough teaching these kids.” It was like someone flipped a switch and turned off the sun in the second week of September. But not here. The heat lingers. But we do get another season, and it’s thanks to a phenomenon the northeast knows nothing about: the Santa Ana winds.

There is no point in me trying to say anything poetic about Santa Ana season, because Joan Didion already wrote the greatest piece of literature ever to be penned on the subject. So, instead, I’ll just say that it’s a strong, hot, dry wind that originates from inland, and it can have psychological effects. Here’s Joan’s description of the madness that is the Santa Ana winds:

I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air.

She goes on to recount details about murders, spikes in car accidents, and all sorts of other chaos inspired by the mysterious, temperature raising wind that sweeps through Southern California. Between fire season and the windy period, by October, I’m usually ready to move back to New York and brave whatever snow and hail I once ran from. But just as I’m about to give up, I am reminded why I chose this place. The heat breaks. The windows open. The nights drop into the 60s, and you no longer think about what to wear. Anything works. At any hour, really. There are still a small handful of scorchers— the summer showing its teeth and reminding you it’ll be back next year. But for the most part, relief has come. And it only gets better from here.

November marks the beginning of the exodus season. Being as though this city is full of transplants, many of whom work in the various entertainment industries that call this place home, the city begins to thin out just before Thanksgiving. It’s inhabitants migrate back to whatever suburb or cookie cutter town they fled, to spend time with family, drive past their old high school, and lament over the fact that they knocked down the old deli and put in a Starbucks. The city gets thinner and thinner throughout the holiday season, and if you drive through Los Angeles on Christmas, you’d swear there was some kind of apocalyptic event. It’s beautiful.

You probably won’t spot a celebrity on your LA trip, but you’ll more than likely cross paths with a coyote

As the year turns, we get another season that east coasters know nothing of: coyote season. They mate from January through March, and if you don’t hear them wailing or yipping in the night, you’ll be made aware of their presence via coyote gossip. The neighbor starts walking her chihuahua while holding a Gandalf-like walking stick. Fellow dog owners yell from down the block, “Don’t go that way! There’s one down by the corner and he’s aggressive.” The game of coyote telephone begins, where a story that began as “one chased down my friend for a full block,” becomes, “I heard a toddler in Highland Park got eaten.” We’ve had our own close calls. Forrest tussled with one at dusk at the park, and we also once had a den of six in the neighbor’s overgrown yard. Maybe all the stories are true. Either way, it feels exciting to live in a metropolis that is also somehow wild.

By March, the temperature returns to near perfect, and we await the gloom and the inevitable heat that follows it. It is a cycle, just like any place else, and while it may not have the overt signs of falling leaves, dead trees, and knee deep snow that other cities claim, there’s a nuance to the changes that I’ve grown to love and look forward to. There is a beauty to the subtlety, and because I’ve lived here for 9 years now, I believe I’ve earned the right to complain about it just like I did in New York. If you want to join in, that’s okay. I’m obliged to let you as an easy going Angeleno. Just get your facts straight.

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THE RECORD CLUB

Last week’s selection was Dolly Parton - Coat Of Many Colors (1971)

You can find my ramblings on last week’s record in the comment section below.

This week’s selection is…

Week #5
George Michael - Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990)