The Los Angeles Report: We Aren’t the Brightest Collection of Bulbs

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Abstract

in that arena is no one is there to have fun. That takes some getting used to, but eventually, you understand. People are working. Young women are trying to network to advance their entertainment careers and guys calling themselves any combination of agent/manager/producer/ DJ/ promoter are trying to take advantage of that. A friend of mine who ran a club once casually observed “You don’t really see a lot of girls in their mid-twenties at the club. Once girls hit twenty-two, twenty-three years old they realize they need to be more serious about their careers, take care of their looks and health more… they start waking up early and doing yoga and hiking and shit like that… so they stop going out.” So telling this group of people they can’t “go out” is a problem as you can see.</p><figure id="97e5"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*1fpFKiRNX8VEDSjX"><figcaption>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@gpthree?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral">George Pagan III</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral">Unsplash</a></figcaption></figure><h2 id="c3d0">The Influencers</h2><p id="51c6">So yeah, it’s weird here, but that’s how it is. So the fact that Tik-Tok stars, YouTubers and Instagram celebrities are desperate to show themselves “going out” even in the<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/influencers-la-ignore-coronavirus-on-social-media-as-cases-spike-2020-6"> middle a pandemic was predictable</a>. The entire business model these kids have going is making people jealous of their fabulous lives. That isn’t going to work for them if they’re hiding out in their studio apartment in Palms. They have been going out, documenting themselves going out and spreading that message to millions of followers. The disconnect from health officials and politicians is embarrassing. Los Angeles is just now beginning to reach out to these stars to plead with them to set a better example. I mean the celebrities who are “olds” have been making any PSA video they can. They are making them in black and white. They are singing. They are quiet talking directly into the camera. You can’t keep them away from an opportunity to voice their overall concern and show people they care. Unfortunately, they aren’t the droids we’re looking for in this fight. We need celebrities who actually have influence to influence.</p><figure id="427e"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*TsqudnCDjZhXFZdV"><figcaption>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@seemoris?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral">Caleb George</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&u

Options

tm_medium=referral">Unsplash</a></figcaption></figure><h2 id="b551">Racism</h2><p id="2194">I always laugh when I hear “Liberal Hollywood” thrown around by the corporate media and the right. It’s a sad laugh. I laugh like an old movie starlet alone in the mansion and I just thought of something very funny I would like to share but I have no one to talk to. I laugh just like that. Los Angeles has some issues with race. We are a predominately Latin X town, but huge portions of the city don’t quite acknowledge that. We have a rich and amazing history of Black culture here but gentrification is actively trying to erase that.</p><p id="2516">There is an invisible line which is drawn across the map of Los Angeles which separates races, classes and cultures. The line shifts like a river of sand over the years and lands in different spots in the city but it’s always there. I worked a job once setting up sample sales and I picked up a Latino guy who lived south of downtown, probably twenty-five or so, who was part of the crew to drive to the set up on La Brea in West Hollywood. When we were driving up he was looking around and then turned to me and said “It’s cool here. I’ve never been here.” We were fifteen minutes from his house but it could have been a foreign country to him and the same thing goes in reverse. So bring COVID-19 into this mix and the result has been beyond depressing. The mostly white residents of the affluent areas of Los Angeles Brentwood, Melrose, Beverly Hills, etc, who were travelling for business or vacationing around the world returned to their areas with the virus. The numbers were clear early on. All of the case count was in the higher income neighbours. These rich people then sheltered in place, isolated and withdrew. The virus spread was knocked down in their areas enough for them to feel safe.</p><p id="5d46">The whole time they depended on Latin X and Black essential workers to run their grocery stores, pharmacies and work for them domestically. Those essential workers contracted the virus from them and went back to their neighbourhoods and now it’s flipped. The most virus is in lower-income areas. Have the rich areas reciprocated and made sure to aid those communities now that they are hurting? Eh, not so much. There should be a fully organized, community to community response and there’s not. The essential workers of Los Angeles are invisible to the high-income communities. They do not see them at the bus stops. They do not see them working in their midst. They do not see them ringing up their groceries. And now when we need to see each other the most? That invisible line has become opaque.</p></article></body>

The very specific challenge of fighting a pandemic in LA

So yes, things are bad. For those of us living here in Los Angeles, we knew things were bad a month ago, but apparently politicians live on a different planet than us. If you live in the Palisades and get everything delivered to you and do drive-by graduation parties in convertibles, then you were not seeing the signs. But if you had your eyes open the simmering problems were everywhere to be seen. There are some specific problems we have here in Los Angeles that are unique to this city. It starts with a sad one. We have a pretty fierce anti-intellectual streak here that gets us into trouble quite a bit. And it ends with a tragic one. We have a pretty gruesome history of racism which has never been overcome.

Partying is work in Los Angeles

I was at a bar once with a friend who had just had a short film accepted to Sundance. He proceeded to ask every girl in LA to go with him to Sundance for the screening. A girl I knew a little bit came up to me at the bar after she’d been asked to accompany him on the jet-set adventure.

“Your friend, he has a film at Sundance?”

“Yeah he just got his short film accepted it’s huge!”

“Oh, it’s a short film? I’m glad I told him no.”

The LA nightlife phenomenon changes as you move away from the core reactor of Los Angeles which is Hollywood. But in Hollywood “going out” (going to bars, parties and clubs) is considered work. And that culture affects all of Los Angeles and now with generation Z and their powerful social media platform in the lead, it’s even more influential. When I first moved to Los Angeles many many orange smoggy moons ago I “went out” a lot, and one of the first things you learn in that arena is no one is there to have fun. That takes some getting used to, but eventually, you understand. People are working. Young women are trying to network to advance their entertainment careers and guys calling themselves any combination of agent/manager/producer/ DJ/ promoter are trying to take advantage of that. A friend of mine who ran a club once casually observed “You don’t really see a lot of girls in their mid-twenties at the club. Once girls hit twenty-two, twenty-three years old they realize they need to be more serious about their careers, take care of their looks and health more… they start waking up early and doing yoga and hiking and shit like that… so they stop going out.” So telling this group of people they can’t “go out” is a problem as you can see.

The Influencers

So yeah, it’s weird here, but that’s how it is. So the fact that Tik-Tok stars, YouTubers and Instagram celebrities are desperate to show themselves “going out” even in the middle a pandemic was predictable. The entire business model these kids have going is making people jealous of their fabulous lives. That isn’t going to work for them if they’re hiding out in their studio apartment in Palms. They have been going out, documenting themselves going out and spreading that message to millions of followers. The disconnect from health officials and politicians is embarrassing. Los Angeles is just now beginning to reach out to these stars to plead with them to set a better example. I mean the celebrities who are “olds” have been making any PSA video they can. They are making them in black and white. They are singing. They are quiet talking directly into the camera. You can’t keep them away from an opportunity to voice their overall concern and show people they care. Unfortunately, they aren’t the droids we’re looking for in this fight. We need celebrities who actually have influence to influence.

Racism

I always laugh when I hear “Liberal Hollywood” thrown around by the corporate media and the right. It’s a sad laugh. I laugh like an old movie starlet alone in the mansion and I just thought of something very funny I would like to share but I have no one to talk to. I laugh just like that. Los Angeles has some issues with race. We are a predominately Latin X town, but huge portions of the city don’t quite acknowledge that. We have a rich and amazing history of Black culture here but gentrification is actively trying to erase that.

There is an invisible line which is drawn across the map of Los Angeles which separates races, classes and cultures. The line shifts like a river of sand over the years and lands in different spots in the city but it’s always there. I worked a job once setting up sample sales and I picked up a Latino guy who lived south of downtown, probably twenty-five or so, who was part of the crew to drive to the set up on La Brea in West Hollywood. When we were driving up he was looking around and then turned to me and said “It’s cool here. I’ve never been here.” We were fifteen minutes from his house but it could have been a foreign country to him and the same thing goes in reverse. So bring COVID-19 into this mix and the result has been beyond depressing. The mostly white residents of the affluent areas of Los Angeles Brentwood, Melrose, Beverly Hills, etc, who were travelling for business or vacationing around the world returned to their areas with the virus. The numbers were clear early on. All of the case count was in the higher income neighbours. These rich people then sheltered in place, isolated and withdrew. The virus spread was knocked down in their areas enough for them to feel safe.

The whole time they depended on Latin X and Black essential workers to run their grocery stores, pharmacies and work for them domestically. Those essential workers contracted the virus from them and went back to their neighbourhoods and now it’s flipped. The most virus is in lower-income areas. Have the rich areas reciprocated and made sure to aid those communities now that they are hurting? Eh, not so much. There should be a fully organized, community to community response and there’s not. The essential workers of Los Angeles are invisible to the high-income communities. They do not see them at the bus stops. They do not see them working in their midst. They do not see them ringing up their groceries. And now when we need to see each other the most? That invisible line has become opaque.