Q+A with John Wilson

Had the opportunity last night to see an advance screening of The History of Concrete featuring a brief Q&A session with John Wilson afterward. I’ve written before about what a joy theatrical experiences are in Los Angeles, and this certainly was no different. Waiting in line outside the theater beforehand, a guy drove by yelling, “Fuck yeah John Wilson!” out his window. A Gen-Z woman on the corner waiting for some tacos yelled toward us, “I’m jealous of every single person waiting in that line.” It was a good vibe.

Some would argue that the weather and the water are what makes living in LA worth the steep cost of living. Some might say that there’s a lot of opportunity. Some would say there’s just a lot going on. None would be wrong. It’s so expansive, both literally and metaphorically, that you can really just take what you want and leave the rest. While it’s probably nice to be a movie star and live in such a place without having to care about gas prices, the city offers up plenty for people who aren’t in the one percent. It’s still a good place to just be.

Alone in Virgil Village

Yet gas prices are a concern for many. There are more than a couple crises facing the city right now being debated in the lingering mayoral election (go Nithya). But the larger, national issues that a mayor has no power over are hitting hard here.

I was driving down Virgil and passed a Sinclair gas station with a line into the street of waiting cars because they were selling gas for $5.79 a gallon—which is the cheapest I’ve seen in the past few weeks. As the threads of the economy are being pulled apart by profiteers everywhere, I kind of wonder how this will play out in such a sprawling, only-kind-of-interconnected metropolis with an outsized police budget.

It does feel like we’re in the last moments of musical chairs, except there are like two chairs and three hundred people trying to grab a seat. There’s no telling what chaos will ensue when the dominoes start to fall at scale, and it’ll probably hit different everywhere. A city like San Francisco, condensed and contained by geography, will respond to public discontent with measures that won’t work in LA’s sprawl. That discontent will be difficult to measure as well, because class solidarity doesn’t really begin to take hold until a large majority of people can’t afford to just be where they’re at.

So I’m trying to enjoy these fun little movie screenings while I can, because it certainly feels like this is all going really bad and is going to get much worse in the not-too-distant future, and I have no clue what living in a city like Los Angeles is going to be like if gas hits ten bucks a gallon and all the restaurants shutter, but I can’t imagine it will be the fun kind of vibe I enjoyed last night.

Laundry room views

Los Feliz 3

I was driving home from Silver Lake tonight around 7:00 pm and I didn’t need my sunglasses as usual at the intersection of Rowena and Hyperion. All summer I’ve been staring into the sun at that intersection, but not tonight. Tonight it was dark, like, what seemed out of nowhere.

Until about three days ago, the entirety of the past month has been between 90 and 100 degrees in Los Angeles, depending on what part of the city you live in. It’s been unbearable. Nobody talked about anything other than the heat because it was so overwhelming.

The thing about the heat was, though, it distracted from the normal changes that happen this time of year, like it getting darker earlier. It was 85 degrees every night and so it didn’t really matter if it was light or dark out because it was so fucking hot.

Now it’s twenty degrees cooler at night, you can wear long sleeves during the day, and suddenly it’s pitch black out by 8:00 pm. All of these crazy indicators for fall just kind of hit all at once, like the heat has been masking the change of seasons and now it’s already happened. It’s kind of a bummer, makes me miss growing up in New England a bit where the transition to fall would be marked by mornings that one day were just crisper than usual and the leaves on the tree would start to change color.

Then again this could be all due to the climate crisis and within five years southern California will be completely unlivable.

Sunset Junction in Silver Lake

One of the maddening parts of LA culture is that some restaurants are hot spots to be seen in, and so they probably get more business than the food actually deserves. When you don’t know this before making a reservation, you end up overpaying for a mid meal just because the place is on a trendy block off Sunset. Whoops.

(Then there’s always the later part of the night where driving becomes a competitive sport while street signs and traffic lights are largely disregarded and double parking and careless pedestrians crowd every other street. Sometimes I think the 2028 Olympics should feature a special LA-based contest called Taking Your Life In Your Hand By Driving Down The 110 From Highland Park To The 10 West After Dark.)

Alvarado and Sunset

Alvarado and 8th

I remain intrigued by photographing intersections while I’m waiting on the light—although I will say since moving to Westlake I am amazed at how many people on foot or scooter or bike just do not care about what light is which color at any given time.