Remembering My Lost Los Angeles
After the fire, I slipped past the police lines. I took pictures of other homes that we admired and looked at the photographs online to remind myself what these piles of ash had once been. When I reached my favorite house, only the chimney remained. That and a small USC flag near the garden gate.
I imagine that my old neighbors in the Pacific Palisades will be making the same walks in the days to come. They ll recall white stucco walls adorned with neon bougainvillea or ficus hedges shielding some fading star s privacy.
But the rest of the country must understand: this world of The Beach Boys, The Parent Trap, avant-garde architects, physicists, novelists, of soft Southern California light was once here. Now it s gone, and it will never come back. The imagination that made Old California come to life was snuffed out long ago. It won t be remade by tech bros, influencers, or anyone else. Here, in this pretty world, Old California took its last bow.
Aaron Gigliotti.
A lot of areas in SoCal are like this, or have their own histories. And it can all go up in smoke.