Los Angeles – The Beauty And The Beast

Los Angeles is one of the cities I have traveled to the most. Mainly because of a very dear, longtime friend who lives in Santa Monica. For this reason, I have been able to observe the transformation of the Californian metropolis from the past to the present more closely.

My recent visit to Los Angeles left me feeling quite emotional. Sure, it is still a fascinating city with many beautiful facets. And yet many things have changed for the worse due to the political situation, economic changes and environmental disasters.

Los Angeles – The Beauty

Los Angeles, the city of angels, is spoiled with endless days of sunshine. It has wonderful, long beaches, great stores, countless restaurants with cuisine from all over the world, green spaces, modern architecture next to beautiful, old buildings, and the people, at least most of them, are friendly, open-minded and helpful.

There is a fitness, Pilates or yoga studio on every corner. Sport and looking good have always been top priorities in Los Angels. Angelenos jog on the beach, sweat on Pilates reformers and flock to the workout studio early in the morning in skimpy knickers and crop tops. The water bottle is always tucked under their arm.

And then the aha moments that leave me amazed. A foretaste of the future catches up with me here every day in Los Angeles. Cash is hardly needed anymore. Everything is paid for by app or card. On the roads, you come across white cars without drivers several times a day. They are called Waymo. These self-driving cars are a test model that has just been launched by Jaguar in Santa Monica and the surrounding area as far as West Hollywood. Locals claim that Uber is no longer safe after several assaults on passengers, and Jaguar’s driverless cars are supposed to solve the problem. Download the app, order Waymo and enter your destination. And off you go.

Another aha moment for me: I am often overtaken by small red or other colored boxes on the sidewalk, depending on the operator. These self-driving “Cocos” or “Briannas” bring orders from restaurants to their customers’ homes. A relief, especially for older people who can neither drive a car nor walk well.

Los Angeles – The Beast

But there are also the downsides of the 3.9 million metropolis. Everything has become extremely expensive in Los Angeles. Hotel costs of $400 per night are no exception and often don’t even justify the high price. If you want to live as a local in a good neighborhood, for example in Beverly Hills, but not even on the side of the celebrity villas, you have to earn at least $225,000 a year as a single person. Families accordingly more.

For my breakfast to go – yogurt and a cappuccino – I never get away with less than $20. Parking a car costs from $3.15 per quarter of an hour. Shopping at the supermarket isn’t exactly a bargain either. It’s no wonder that homeless people set up camp all over the city. You see them in the entrances of prestigious office buildings, on the streets, on the beach and even on the hard shoulder of the freeways.

Around 50,000 people live on the streets in this, the second largest city in the United States. Most of them, around 5,000, can be found in an area in the city center called Skid Row. There, people live in cars or tents around a disused train station. In the whole of California, the economically strongest state in the USA, around 115,000 people have no permanent home.

The Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass wants to change this, at least for her city. 1.3 billion dollars are to be invested over the next few years to create temporary and permanent housing. She can already claim one small success: since taking office, she has already given around 14,000 people a home. Only New York City has an even bigger problem with homeless people. It is estimated that over 100,000 people live there without a permanent home.

The Promenade in Santa Monica, a tragedy

Another negative thing that stands out. Formerly my favourite shopping mile, the Third Street promenade in Santa Monica, two streets away from the beach, is hardly recognizable anymore. Entrances smell of urine. It’s dirty, many stores are empty. The nice boutiques of yesteryear have disappeared.

Only the huge Apple store is still there. The once imposing ivy-covered dinosaur sculptures on the promenade have also fallen into disrepair. Rioting is the order of the day. On one day of my stay, a shooting also took place there. A homeless man shot a policeman. The police search for him from the air by helicopter and on the ground with dogs until they are able to arrest him after four hours.

The consequences of the fire disaster in January

If you continue along Ocean Drive in Santa Monica towards Malibu, you can still see the devastating effects of the fire disaster in January this year. The five fires burned down over 11,000 hectares and destroyed thousands of homes. In the posh suburb of Pacific Palisades on the north-western edge of Los Angeles alone, more than 1,000 residential buildings were destroyed.

Apocalyptic images are still visible – charred trees and palm trees, burnt-out cars and naked stelae towering into the sky where people once lived. Reconstruction is proving laborious. In addition to high costs, the availability of building materials and skilled workers also plays a role. Local building regulations must also be adhered to, which vary depending on the location and development plan.

Downtown, the real center of the city

Downtown Los Angeles, which has fought its way out of the dingy corner in recent years to become a popular residential and entertainment district, has suffered particularly badly in recent weeks. After the riots and demonstrations with large police forces and the deployment of the National Guard in June, there was looting and devastation.

Many stores were abandoned and remain empty to this day. Others are still secured with wooden boarding because the huge windows were smashed during the riots. It was not the mostly peaceful protesters against Trump’s immigration policy, but, according to locals, hired troops who also caused unrest in other cities.

It’s a shame about the beautiful facades of the old American buildings like The Stile Hotel. This historic location used to house the United Artists Building with the United Theater on Broadway. The film company was founded in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin and fellow actors such as Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks with the intention of giving filmmakers more creative freedom and independence from producers.

Another historic building is the Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel. It is located in a restored building from the 1920s and has 148 rooms and suites designed by Kelly Wearstler. The 360-degree view of the skyline from the rooftop is simply breathtaking. My conclusion: Downtown will take a long time to recover from this shock.e. Mein Fazit: Downtown wird noch lange brauchen, um sich von diesen Schock zu erholen.

Once top, now flop

The former shopping mile of Melrose Avenue is also depopulated and run-down. Its pretty little boutiques have disappeared, replaced by tattoo and nail studios. Entire rows of stores are gone.

Things are better on Montana Avenue on Santa Monica’s Westside. It has recovered somewhat after the Covid pandemic and lives up to its reputation as a shopping and dining Eldorado with dozens of restaurants and small stores.

Escape from the Hollywood movie studios

Hollywood is also in crisis. The film industry is no longer what it used to be. The big stars are becoming fewer and fewer. The film industry has changed. For cost reasons, more films are being shot abroad instead of in the studios. After the Supreme Court decided to dismantle the studio system, the five largest film studios, the so-called “Big Five” (Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures) were forced to sell their cinemas and cut back on productions.

Rising costs, stars becoming free agents, meaning they are not exclusively tied to a particular film studio or production company, and major television studios consuming airtime have brought an end to Hollywood’s Golden Era. Last year was the worst for filming in Los Angeles in 30 years, aside from the 2020 pandemic disaster, and now only a fifth of the television shows and feature films seen by American audiences are shot in California.

Governor Gavin Newsom has therefore called for the annual funding for California’s so-called film and television tax credit program to be increased from 330 million to 750 million dollars. Two bills are currently being discussed in the Californian parliament. One can only hope…