My, She Was Yar

There are things I will not miss about Los Angeles. Here they are:

1. GAS-POWERED LEAF BLOWERS. Sorry, I had to yell to be heard over the noise of the frigging gas-powered leaf blower.

2. Drivers who are both hostile and idiotic.

3. Truly frightening walking advertisements for why you should never have plastic surgery.

4. Lime-green Hummers driven by see #2 above.

5. The 405 at any time of day or night, any day of the week.

6. Electronic billboards, especially the one advertising Los Angeles by using Larry King's grisly face, which would be reason enough to move.

7. Beverly Hills.

8. Our inurement to the homeless.

9. Lakermania.

10. The inevitable weighing of Things Worth Doing on the one hand versus the fatigue of braving crosstown rush-hour traffic to do them on the other—and the fact that the Things Worth Doing most often lose.

But there are things I will miss about Los Angeles. Here are some of them.


Sunsets from our living room window.


Ridiculous architecture.


A neighbor's wacky Christmas display. It gets wackier each year.


The view of the Pacific from the palisades in Santa Monica.


The Getty Center.

And the notes left by my daughter on the white board on our refrigerator, like the one reminding me that our foot-chewing cat needs more cat treats. There will be another refrigerator, and another white board. But there won't be this one.



In The Philadelphia Story, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant discuss the boat they once shared, the "True Love." They discuss her beauty, her agile responsiveness. "My, she was yar," Grant says.

Los Angeles is often unbeautiful, infuriating, even grotesque. I wouldn't ask anyone to love it. But there are pieces of it that mean something to me. I look at them and think, "My, that's yar."