Los Angeles Overview

Di Yin and I drove to Los Angeles on Thursday, March 24, 2011. We left L.A. on Saturday, March 26, and, after stopping in a central Californian town for the night, returned to the bay area on Sunday, March 27.

I've been to Los Angeles four times before: once on a road trip with B to visit E (2002?) (unrecorded), once with S and Oj in 2005, once on a company trip to visit Disneyland in 2008, and once to again visit E in 2009.

Los Angeles is a city a la how the bay area is a city. (Notice how I said the bay area--as a whole--not San Francisco.) Much of L.A. feels like dense suburbia, not like a city per se. There are corner strip malls packed everywhere. There are also both squat apartment buildings and single-family houses, all placed together with often little space between. Furthermore, Los Angeles is huge, probably the size of the whole bay area.

Los Angeles has a remarkable diversity of tasty food. From my experiences this trip, I have no doubt one can find a good version of any cuisine, any dish, that one wants.

However, my main memory of L.A. will be its drivers. They're aggressive; they drive too fast and don't signal. This really came home to me the times I had to drive in heavy rain (unusual for L.A., I think)--people sped past me as if there was perfect visibility, while I was driving ten (or more) under, straining to see out the windshield. The lane markings practically disappeared.

L.A. tried to kill me twice! Both times were as cars in one lane that were stopped (because someone ahead in the lane was waiting to make a left) jumped into my lane without looking or signaling. Loud honking and rapid braking ensued.

Also, L.A. has many red-light runners. I don't mean the typical thing that when a light turns red the first car will sneak across. Indeed, L.A. is filled with unprotected lefts, but I'm not complaining about red-light runners for those--you need to run those if you're going to get anywhere. But the runners in L.A. take it to extremes, with three or four cars crossing against the red to make a left. This even rubs off on how drivers go straight through intersections; sometimes, cars clearly enter it after the light has changed.

Potholes are a pretty bad problem in L.A., more so than anywhere else I recall. We found a couple so deep (six inches) that they're shocking, and they jostle the car dangerously.

Overall, it felt more dangerous driving in L.A. than anywhere else I've ever driven.