LA IS MY LADY
Goodenough Mashego feels invincible after visiting Los Angeles
THEY call it the City of Angels. Slain US rapper Tupac Shakur said it was “full of drama like a soap opera”. To me, Los Angeles is the heart of America. The ambience is so electrifying it has inspired some of humankind’s greatest inventions and pop songs.
After spending a week in the Sunshine State, I think of LA as a “virtual solar charger”. Being there transfers so much positive energy into you that you feel nothing is unachievable after that.
I landed at LAX after a four-hour flight from Atlanta. Even from the plane, the clear gridlock on the highways that network the city’s east, west, south, north and central already gave away the fact that LA is a busy-buzzing city that don’t slumber.
LA’s famous Pacific Ocean beaches include Santa Monica and Venice. The latter is where you go for celebrity spotting. I went to the former due to its association with the historic Route 66. The pier across Ocean Avenue was packed with tourists speaking various languages, from Spanish to Cantonese. It’s a magnet for talented dreamers singing for a fee and hoping to be discovered. They came for the American Dream and now, at most, they get token dollar bills thrown into tins.
However, if Santa Monica — with its hobby fishermen; migrants selling mementos on the beach; and fast-food vendors dishing greasy hot dogs — embodies the spirit of hustle, Baldwin Hills in the west is a laid-back, predominantly African-American part of town boasting the famous Martin Luther King Boulevard.
Where it meets Crenshaw starts a quiet suburb that ends at the famous Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. This mall features in many music videos, such as Tupac Shakur’s To Live and Die in LA and Lil Durk’s My Beyoncé.
Of course, one must experience Hollywood with its world-famous Walk of Fame. Tinseltown is a tourist magnet, where Chinese tourists love taking pictures of the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard; I love the Rastafarian clothing shop at the entrance to the Hard Rock Café.
I visited Culver City; was fascinated by the LA’s metro system; the green and blue buses; the landmark red fire engines and ambulance sirens; the ever-vigilant LAPD in their blackand-white American cars; and the buzz of Downtown LA.
Having gulped beer on the Sunset Strip, been mesmerised by those sun-tanned bodies walking their poodles in Beverly Hills and enjoyed the wonders of Century City, I left for a pit-stop in Atlanta en route to Johannesburg. I didn’t meet any angels in LA, but I left with my battery fully charged. — © Goodenough Mashego
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