To walk and cry in L.A.
A blog about my choices
It was already weird, my life in Los Angeles. Having moved there without planning to move there, I had a job but lacked an apartment.
Texting acquaintances in hopes of crashing with them proved both awkward and fruitless; I did not yet realize I was in my mid-30s, much less that my peers were too. Neither begging nor not-planning was working. I was ready to panic.
In desperation I found a hostel on San Vicente with good reviews and a charming name: Space Pods Hollywood. I’m thinking, hey, people love this sci-fi themed hostel—and it’s in the same neighborhood as the office.
When I arrived at the hostel I learned that “space pods” was a euphemism for bunk beds with privacy curtains, also that it was nowhere near Hollywood.
The next morning I’m thinking, hey, I’m practically a New Yorker—I love a good stroll. It was a brisk two miles from the hostel to the WeWork on LaBrea—and the scenery was, surprisingly, pleasantly residential. I couldn’t wait to tell my colleagues.
When I arrived at the office, my colleagues were disturbed that I had walked to work. Some were openly skeptical that I was telling the truth.
The skeptics, I later learned, suspected I was sleeping at the WeWork. This was untrue. I was, however, staying late at the office to binge Black Mirror on my work laptop in a small glass-walled conference room, usually with microwaved popcorn.
Why?
Because while Space Pods Hollywood was an acceptable place to sleep, it was not a nice place to spend time. Additionally, the office had popcorn (and a microwave).
In retrospect, it’s probably for the best that they thought I was homeless.
Do you really need a car in L.A.?
One of my coworkers was a fellow Brooklyn transplant. He not only offered moral support for my stubborn belief in legs, but even rode his bike to work from his apartment by the ocean. In short order, he was hit by a car.
I got a car in L.A.
Newly mobile, I left the hostel and Airbnb’d a spare room in Glendale from a nice Asian man whose kitchen featured a water-alkalization machine that cost several thousand dollars.
For me, the first upside of Glendale was that it provided pseudo-plausible water-cooler material for the cute Armenian coworker with whom I had nothing in common—Glendale being the global headquarters of Armenianism, Armenia excluded.
The other upsides of Glendale were its dueling be-fountained malls, the Galleria and the Americana. When, taking myself to a midday movie at a deserted Americana, I ordered a “large popcorn, large Coke Zero and—,” I was interrupted by the concessions worker:
“Slow down.”
In this way I discovered I lived in Southern California. The year was 2019.