City of Bored Angels, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #192 | @MDWorld

August 15, 2012 Arthur Tebbel 2 Comments

Dear Art,
Los Angeles is in serious trouble.  Tourism is down and we just don’t know what to do about it any more.  Advertising is lagging and, really, how often can we sell people on Hollywood landmarks and La La Land glitz?  You’ve been in Los Angeles for a shade over four years; certainly you have some favorite spots.  What would you do if you were in charge of LA tourism?  Where do you have to take out of town guests in our wonderful city?
-Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor of the city of Los Angeles

Tony,
I seriously can’t help you.  I’m very sorry.  I’ve struggled with this mightily but I’ve come to a truly inescapable conclusion: Los Angeles is a terrible city for tourists.  I’ve had numerous out-of-town guests come to town and after a day and a half I’m completely out of ideas.  I could offer you a comprehensive list of fun things to do in LA but there’s no way the formatting here would look good with a one-item list that just says “Go to the Beach (weather permitting).”

I suppose the root of the problem is that all of the things you would think would make good tourist destinations really suck.  Worse than being boring, which most of them are, they don’t take any time.  You could see the Chinese Theater, The Walk of Fame, and the Hollywood Sign and you wouldn’t be late for lunch.  You could hit Universal Studios and take a healthy nap and hit an early dinner.  There’s just no there here.

I’m not saying LA isn’t a great city; it’s just way too subtle for a short visit.  The soothing effect of eternal summer won’t really wash over someone in a few days.  The subtle intermingling of various ethnic communities is hard to get in a short visit unless you spend the entire time eating which is an impulse I respect but is ultimately a hard trip.  The Arclight is a fantastic movie theater but can you really appreciate that without being able to really wallow in… OK that one doesn’t work.  The Arclight is amazing and everyone should go there at every opportunity and only by indoctrinating tourists to the shining beacon of movie perfection will there be a chance of similar palaces spreading across the country.

The reason I took this letter is my mother is coming to town this weekend and while I know she’s here to see me and other friends I really regret that there’s so few places to burn off a solid afternoon in this town.  Someone should really get on that.  Perhaps making things for citizens to do could take precedence at city council meetings over stealth attempts at banning gourmet food trucks.  Seriously, stop fucking with my food trucks you asshole.