Wires and Tires

I've been here more than a week now, and some of the things that hit me on arriving have started to become commonplace now.

The constant, insistent hum of cars pulling up to intersections, and pulling away. It's like leaving a video game playing in the background. The engines are bigger, smoother sounding with a whirr and a bass note you don't get in motors back home. The tarmac is smooth and the cars seem newer. They're mostly automatics so no one needs to rev that high, they just pull up, and glide away. It happens all night, and everywhere you go, even in the Santa Monica backstreets. But this I am starting to notice less and less.

The car runs the road. Everyone says it and it's true. Buses come every 20 minutes. Jaywalking is a crime, punishable with a fine and a bollocking. To cross the street, even minor roads, you push a button, wait for ages, then cross when the forbidding upturned palm turns to a green man. The green man appears for mere seconds, then the palm returns, accompanied by a countdown clock that makes you instinctively break out of a Californian amble into a half-jog. It all seems designed to hurry pesky pedestrians out of the way of the progress of the mighty automobile as quickly as possible.

The streets are covered in billboards, signage and telegraph wires bisect the blue skies every time you look upwards. The telegraph wires and poles have an oddly Third World look to them, feels like they wouldnt be out of place in Calcutta. Perhaps its because in Europe they are all underground now, and it seems an odd anachronism for country supposedly at the peak of modernity like the USA. But you dont have to look far in LA for signs that the USA is in need of some extensive modernising. I notice this less and less too, so before it fades into the background like the whirr of V8 engines into the night, I thought I'd better put it down here.

My observations at the moment are still those of a tourist. The only contact I have had with residents has been with people in shops or at bus stops or bars. They're friendly but they hear the English accent and they talk to you as a visitor. Soon I hope to be talking business with LA people, and then it will be interesting to note the differences in behaviour. I feel ready to give it a shot.