The LA Years: What looks good… but is actually not worth it – Macarons

I frequently thought of doing a photo series in LA called something dramatic like “The Other Side of the Camera.” Basically, it would be a photo series of side-by-sides where one photo is one you would typically see on an influencer or celebrity’s instagram. The kind that makes LA look like a beautiful and glamorous place, with the sun shining brightly on some beautiful building, or as they dine at some great outdoor patio. The other photo would be the view if you turned the camera 180 degrees, or maybe if you walked half a block down the street. It would be the juxtaposition of what is right next to the beautiful or glamorous thing. 

Because most things worth photographing in LA are next to something ugly, disgusting, or distressing. You can hardly go two blocks without seeing something that bursts the bubble of LA. For every cool photo-op, there’s a block full of tents. On every palm-tree-lined street, there’s four bags of trash that have been dumped on the side of the road. For every patio brunch spot, there’s an inescapable stench of trash and human feces. No photo of LA captures the reality of just how ugly it is. Even on my hikes up the mountain, where I would be rewarded with beautiful views of the whole city (where you’re far enough away that you can’t see anything ugly), you’d have to walk past trash and debris on some pretty ugly and smelly streets.

It cracks me up to see posts like this. In the third photo of her post, Daisy Edgar Jones (famous actress) looks like such an It Girl, posing with her sunglasses and windswept hair in front of a massive poster for her movie on the side of a building. I drove past that building everyday on my commute. The poster for my first credit was on that building. But I can tell you, the sight she’s looking at through her Cool Girl sunglasses, and with her unaffected stare, is a derelict gas station that is home to a colony of rats big enough to see from your car, and at least three homeless people at any given time. 

Everything in LA is a lie and a facade! Metaphorically, it’s like they took the sets from the big studios that are just cardboard fronts of buildings, and they put them up throughout the city. Who cares about depth and consistency. You don’t need everything to look good – just what you’re able to fit in the frame! Who cares if there’s someone living in a tent underneath this palm tree. Just angle the camera up! As Ansel Adams says, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” In LA that means: Yeah, this town is ugly and gross. So you’ve got to carefully construct your shot before you take a photo, else you’ll reveal the secret.

This was always a major detractor to pretty much anything fun. I’ve already discussed how it takes at least 40 minutes to get between the areas of LA that are fun. But then within those pockets of fun or interesting places, there’s frequently only a block or two that feels walkable and consistently enjoyable. The worst is when you drive 40 minutes to go somewhere fun, and it’s on a street covered in trash. There’s just an insane juxtaposition between opulence and poverty that is on every street. It’s inescapable. Every attempt at enjoying yourself is met with a reminder of how much you’re just trying to ignore the ugly parts of the city.

This is largely pretty funny to look back on now. But it’s also annoying, because I know that there’s people out there who think LA is some aspirational place because of the photos and movies that come out of it. They think of Malibu and Calabasas and think the whole city is like that. But even Beverly Hills, where the homes are all over $10 million, is subject to the problem. I would sometimes run near Beverly Hills, and there were people sleeping on benches on the trail next door to $10-20 million houses.

That feeling that everyone is just trying to crop out the ugly parts of the city feels very on brand for a city built on movies and tv. Everyone is an aspiring cinematographer or DP or filmmaker, and they want to crop and shape their view of the city to be a glamorous one. They can’t reveal the secret to the rest of the world!

And I think a whole other issue is how one-industry the town is. Everybody is desperate for their big break – whether it be getting their first job in the industry, or just the chance to move one more rung up the ladder. When you meet someone new, the first question is what your job is, and the implied question is: will you be able to help my career? It means everyone is constantly competing over the same jobs. And everyone is desperately trying to frame their own reality and their story to look like they’re succeeding.

You could make the argument that everyone is trying to do that in every city, and they’re posting it on social media. But in LA, it’s just worse. With everyone aiming for the same dreams that only have a limited number of slots, people are always looking for a way to make their situation look better than the next person. Or maybe just better to make it look better to themselves, to make them feel like they’re actually making progress and it’s worth living in LA. It’s just like everyone framing their photos to make LA look good, but for their whole lives.

I was living in LA for the reason that most are: to work in the movie industry. And I was! I had a job at an animation studio! And for the first year or so, I framed that as a success, because it was initially. I had my foot in a door that I, and so many people, wanted their foot in. I had my name in movie credits. But then… it was an entry level job that going nowhere, and it was increasingly obvious that getting to the job I wanted would have taken years, or just been impossible in the culture and financial future of the studio I was at. And maybe even the culture of the industry at large. It just became impossible to convince myself that that was success.

I also fail to think inside just one scope or sphere, which I think everyone has to do in LA. I realized that my dreams for my life and what success looked like were far more expansive than just a career. It became clear that my job was not going to be able to fund the rest of my life’s aspirations. I never thought owning a home or seeing my family or being able to afford vacations and a family were a “dream” that needed to be planned for, but… It turns out they are.

After I had that breakthrough of deciding that my dreams were bigger than a job, I could not escape the fact that frankly, none of those were going to be possible in the way I envisioned if I stayed in LA. There was no calculation or re-framing of my purpose in the city that was going to make it work. In reality or in my brain.

Looking around me became a sort of game: calculating the cost of what a family of four would have to spend to live in LA. It may seem silly to imagine a single, childless 24 year old thinking of these things, but unfortunately that’s just who I am. I couldn’t go to a movie without thinking of what a movie night would cost with a family of four (easily $120). I couldn’t go for a run in the park past some tennis courts without thinking of how much the same tennis lessons I took as a kid would cost in LA ($10000 for a summer, probably??). I couldn’t even drive to the donut shop that was 7 minutes from my apartment without thinking that if there was a kid in the car, I would want to shield their eyes from the things I saw on the side of the road. 

I couldn’t ignore the ugly parts of the city and the industry, and I just couldn’t muster the energy to convince myself or anyone else that life in LA was great. It just wasn’t. You have to look at the full picture!

To fit the theme, today’s recipe is macarons. They look good and they’re photogenic, but they never actually feel worth it. They’re almost always a let down, the epitome of style over substance. (At least, in the world of dessert. There’s only so bad a dessert can be.) Out of frame are some of the failed ones that didn’t look very good.

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