This series will be part virtual tour and part travel guide for the city of Los Angeles. If you can't make it out here, I'll attempt to make it feel like you have. If you can, I'll give you some suggestions on what to do (and what not to do). It will mostly take the form of me babbling about things as I would if we were driving past them on the freeway.
California is big. It's about the same size as Sweden. It's bigger than Germany, Italy, and Japan. If the state of California where an independent country, it would be a member of the G8. And nearly half of that economy is concentrated in the reality-distortion engine of Los Angeles, itself the second largest city in the U.S. by population.
LA is is also physically huge. Many rankings will place Los Angeles behind New York City in terms of land area, but these fail to take into account the surrounding communities which, while not officially a part of Los Angeles, definitely comprise the region that most would consider to be Greater LA: everything stretching north to the Angeles National Forest, west to Thousand Oaks, east to San Bernardino, and South to Laguna Beach. If you live in any of these outlying places, you might take umbrage with my annexation of your home, but look at a map; it is a single urban expanse.
Because it's so big, it would be impossible and undesirable to provide a comprehensive overview of the culture of the city. The culture can vary wildly from the East to the West, from region to region, and even over just a few blocks. But I hope to present you with a fair cross-section. I'll begin tomorrow with a discussion of Los Angeles freeways and car culture.
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