| Los Angeles, California |
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| Lady of the Canyon |
| From: shanating23 |
I grew up in one of the canyons of Los Angeles so my deep connection to my current locale of Laurel Canyon makes sense. I live, eat, breathe, sleep this hillside retreat which hovers over West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip like some separate but integral entity.
It's a ghost of a former time--the era of Hollywood cowboy Tom Mix and later, the rock n' roll epoch that drew the likes of Jim Morrison and Frank Zappa to the scene. It's the humbler, earthier cousin to the adjacent Hollywood environs and so it attacts a mixture of rich old hippies (collecting rent money from their grandpa's land), slick Johnny Hollywoods and the in-between younger bohemian-spirited go-getters.
But at its core, Laurel Canyon is an "insulator," which has both its negative and positive sides.
I found myself chatting with an old friend from another of LA's enclaves today--someone I hadn't seen in months--admitting that in the past few years since I moved back to my hometown of LA my social life, love life and creative inspirations have all originated in the Canyon.
Another buddy of mine--a fellow Laurel Canyonite--who I see at the local Canyon coffee place on virtually a daily basis noted that we all have incredibly low mileage on our cars (in two years I've put on 10K; in 5 years he's put on 30k). "That's because we're all hermits," he laughed. Who would dare leave the Canyon?
After that same friend invited me to a party at his house over the weekend, I found myself hemming and hawing a half hour before I was set to get on my way. There I was nestled under my New Mexican poncho sipping red wine and listening to an old Fleetwood Mac album. That's a vintage "canyon pose," and it often signals the beginning and the end of a night out.
But I heard my buddy's voice echoing in my head, "...we're all hermits..." and took it as a warning, like an old spinster who sees a commercial for cat food. I jumped out of my RE-"pose" and bolted out to drive to his house, adding one paltry mile to my odomometer. Canyon life...
More canyon whining and wining: www.shanatinglipton.com. |
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