Standing in Barnes & Noble (“Will you be saving ten percent with our discount card today?” trills the girl at the till over and over) at the corner of 3rd Street and Wilshire in Santa Monica, reading through the new Michael Palin diaries. I’m struck by how often something depresses him, and how ...
So I’m spending a lot of time at Santa Monica’s main public library these days, and it’s completely fascinating. It’s actually the temporary main library, because they’re building a shiny new one a few blocks from here that won’t be finished until next year. But that’s by the by. ...
I think I’ve worked out what Los Angeles is for. What it does. It struck me the other day as I was driving to work from Santa Monica to East LA. Forget the motion picture capital stuff. That’s just a front. On Lincoln, in Santa Monica, I watched a girl test drive a new Vespa ...
It was probably nothing, she’s probably just fine, but she couldn’t have looked any more lost than she did while I was watching her wander up and down the street on Lincoln. The window at the diner booth I was sitting at might as well have been only one way, so clearly could I see ...
Walking westwards down Wilshire from our new apartment towards the commercial centre of Santa Monica, a funny but almost magical thing happens. The street that pumps like a main artery through the centre of LA seems to vanish into a blue haze in the distance. It’s the Pacific Ocean, of course, but it comes as ...