Golden States

Driving down to Venice Beach is such a wonderful experience. You spend a long time on Hwy 5, one of the ugliest, boringest stretches of highway on God's earth. It's dirty, cloudy, trucks everywhere. But by the time you start to reach Orange County, the hills start rising and the sun starts shining. Around San Fernando the anticipation starts to build. And when you finally hit LA proper you feel like the coolest person alive. If you've timed it right the sun will be about to set but you can still roll down your window, tooling around Hollywood Blvd. And then the next day you can stand on that great big pier and watch the surfers bobbing around, acres of sand, the whole thing is one big art-walk... It took me a while to switch my head around, but now there's something about LA that I love. I like the feeling that everyone in the city is contributing to the vibe, that there's a certain energy that everyone is aware of and is tapping into and feeding back on. I guess you could call it affected or pretentious, but to me it's like an enormous art project, which happens to be a city. I like it.