On April 10, 2016, I was flying back from North Carolina in to LAX and I was looking out the window down at the ground as most people do while flying and I was really surprised at how you can tell when you enter Los Angeles from the sky; especially at night, it’s an island of the sky and land. I might be pushing the limits of what Los Angles is, but flying over the from the darkness to the east of the San Bernardino your eyes are flooded with a vast expanse of tungsten lights that might as well be an island of lights, because all that has been viewed out the small airplane window for hours has been an ocean of darkness.
I’m writing about this, because although there is so much to learn and observe in Los Angeles that when you leave this giant expanse of industry and people you realize how much of an imagined space it is; whether through TV screens or popular culture it is imagined in so many ways. The fast paced lifestyle and mass amounts of people squeezed into a relatively small amount of land create a place so desirable from the rest of the country and even the world that when you’re part of it, the people sometimes forget how unique the space they learn, work, and live in is so unique, almost an experiment of society.
I guess where I am getting with this post is that Los Angeles is unique whether viewed from the land or the sky and that Hollywood movies can create whatever they want this imagined space to be, because besides the downtown skyline, Hollywood sign, and images of Beverly Hills Mansions, what is seen from the Sky above Los Angles can be anything once on the ground.
I couldn’t agree with you more Ian. Whenever I fly into LAX at night, I’m almost in awe with how much activity and light is casted from the small concentrated city. It almost reminds you of Las Vegas in a sense that its a city that never sleeps. There’s so much to do there you could spend you’re lifetime living in the city while not having completed everything that there is to do. It sucks to see so many residents of LA take their home for granted, but I believe that if anyone spent the whole night exploring the city, they’d learn to fall in love with it again.