Tag Archives: Los Angeles

A Couple of Comments on Lewis Hamilton, and Los Angeles

Japan,

“Having seen the hosts before, I remember I would look on and think, ‘It would be cool one day to be a host.’ Anna’s been so gracious as to include me within that group.” Lewis Hamilton

People cut themselves off from their ties of the Old Life when they come to Los Angeles. They are looking for a place where they can be free, where they can do things they couldn’t do anywhere else. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.  Frank Lloyd Wright

Like earlier generations of English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original, I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original. Reyner Banham

I would describe Los Angeles as actually not having taste. In New York, there’s taste. But you have to remember that taste is censorship. It’s a form of restriction. James Turrell

In past posts, I’ve written about Lewis Hamilton winning races, moving to Ferrari, and as a black role model. I’ve even written about Lewis and random numbers, and I’ve written about Lewis at The Met Gala, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s annual fundraising event, so there is not much left.

Ah, but there is. This year, Sir Lewis Hamilton was made one of the co-hosts of the 2025 Met Gala. The theme is “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” The Gala costs $75,000 a pop – it started in 1948 with tickets at $75 – and it is generally considered the hottest fashion event of the year. I think Hamilton has been going for about ten years. An interesting side note is that Donald Trump is the only person who has been publicly banned from The Gala by the chief honcho, Anna Wintour.

View of Los Angeles from the backyard of Lewis Hamilton’s home used as a segue picture (he has homes in LA, NY, Aspen, London, and Monaco).


A couple of months ago, Peter and Ophelia were talking about their trip to Mexico. Peter mentioned that Mexico City was his favorite city in the world. I was shocked; the concept of favorite city had never occurred to me. I have a favorite athlete, Lewis Hamilton*; a favorite place, Southeastern Utah, especially Coyote Gulch in the Escalante River basin**; and even a favorite car, the Birdcage Maserati – or Tipo 61 – the last great front-engine racecar, but a favorite city had never occurred to me.

Maserati Tipo 61, showing the unusual space frame that gave it the nickname Birdcage.

But now that I knew the concept of favorite city, I started thinking about what mine would be. As a disclaimer, when I say favorite city, what I really mean is favorite city to visit. It seems to me that it should be something cool like New York, Paris, Florence, or maybe even Shanghai, well, the French Quarter in Shanghai, anyway. But none of those cities work, maybe because I haven’t spent enough time in them, maybe because they are filled with furriners. I don’t know why, but I kept coming back to Los Angeles; how uncool is that?

But I don’t want to give the impression that Los Angeles is my favorite city by default; it isn’t. It is my favorite city because I love visiting it. The same goes for Coyote Gultch; when I told Michele that we should consider moving to Escalante, all she said was, “Why don’t you check the weather there for a year.” I did, and after about three months, I decided moving there was a bad idea. I don’t want to live in Los Angeles; I just want to visit it…often.  

I love the chaos of Los Angeles – and, by Los Angeles, I mean the greater Los Angeles area, including places like Manhattan Beach and Glendale and even Pomona – the anything-goes attitude. I love the sprawling size and the diversity. I love the car culture, and I love that I can get an excellent Chinese snack at midnight after a Stravinsky concert. And, I should add, it is not a generic Chinese snack but a spicy pork snack in a Schezwan restaurant, and the concert is in a building designed by hometown architect Frank Gehry with superb acoustics. Rather than rambling on, I just post some pictures to show my point. 

*duh, **duh, again

Harriet Tubman, William Dickey, and John Brown

Japan

On this site, on August 14th, 1881, nothing happened. A brass plaque on my neighbor’s stone fireplace.

[Southern California] is the last stop for all those who come from somewhere else, for all those who drifted away from the cold and the past and the old ways. Here is where they are trying to find a new life style, trying to find it in the only places they know to look: the movies and the newspapers. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion.

Michele and I went to L.A. to go museum shopping last weekend; it was our first trip since we went back East last fall. While we were on our trip back East – as everyone called the East Coast while I was growing up – we drove through and around the Delmarva Peninsula, stayed with Tom and Linda Melton in Dickeyville (Baltimore), and visited Harper’s Ferry. Three places where the past is still alive.

That presence of the past is, to my mind, other than the topography and weather – which, OK, are big deals – is the biggest difference between the East Coast and the West Coast. Harriet Tubman performed her first act of resistance at the Bucktown General Store in 1835. A slave tried to escape, and the overseer yelled at Tubman to stop him, which she didn’t. The Bucktown General Store is still there.

We stayed with Tom and Linda in Dickeyville, and it was almost like being on a movie set. Some of the buildings date back to the late 1700s, although most are originally from the 1800s. I say originally because many of them were rebuilt in the early 20th Century.

On our drive from Washington DC to Pittsburgh, we passed by farms that were there when John Brown was still alive, farms he must have passed on the way to Harper’s Ferry, where he played his part in ending slavery. Everything feels the same. The past is still alive.

L. A., where the oldest building – downtown, at least, the Bradbury Building, is known for being the location of the ending of Blade Runner – is not like that.