In the spirit of the most recent feature, The Streets of Chicago, being in the only other place I’ve ever lived, let’s take a ride on the streets of LA.
It all started in downtown for me when I arrived in LA; our office was located on Figueroa… right down the street from the Lakers/Kings home venue, and previously the Clippers. And now, all these years later, we’re a few streets away on Olive & 6th. Downtown LA isn’t exactly like Chicago or New York or even San Francisco, but it is where I worked while on the West Coast. Taking Figueroa north, you end up at the beginning of one end of Sunset; you may have heard of that street. It was there one day, when I first moved out there, where we found our favorite Mexican spot in LA; you know I’m going to hit that up before coming home. It’s right down the street from another landmark off of Sunset: Dodger Stadium. After some beers and shots, we’d make our way up the big hill to see the Dodgers and Cubs play; I may have told a story of one of those games… Winding our way down Sunset, we start to cross very familiar streets from our time in LA. Virgil, Vermont, Western… My first apartment in LA was actually in Burbank, on Elm St… it wasn’t quite the nightmare; I would get off the 5 on the Western exit to get there… can’t escape that street. When we moved in together, we stood right between Vermont and Virgil, just south of Melrose on Madison; another Chicago street of note. We would run up Virgil, which turned into Hillhurst, wound around Los Feliz Blvd, and came back down Vermont. It was on one of those runs, on Los Feliz Blvd, on May 5th, 2008, where I faked an injury, got down to one knee, and proposed to my girlfriend. She said yes…
OK, back to the streets… There’s Hollywood of course, which runs parallel to Sunset for a while, through the parts that everyone is familiar with. If you stay on Sunset, you can take that all the way to the ocean… from Figueroa to PCH… Sunset is probably my favorite street in LA. How about Mulholland Drive? That’s a cool road that winds through the mountains, giving some beautiful views. Of course, there are many more streets to drive in and around LA, but the freeways… how about those? The 1, 5, 10, 101, 105, 110, 134, 210, 405, 710… shall I go on?
I’ve talked about many streets, but not necessarily what memories I have of each. 40+ years of Chicago streets vs about 5 years of LA streets… there is really no comparison, but that doesn’t mean I can’t drop some stories about LA… That may be good for another day. I think we covered some of the most important, and definitely THE most important. Is it time to come home yet?
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