#63: The View From Everett Park.
Everett Street, One Block North of Sunset.
(explanation of series here.)
When we first moved down to LA, we were not willing to surrender to the fact that LA has crappy traffic. We were convinced for a brief period of time -- such time has long since passed, mind you -- that we could find secret routes! that would make our morning commute more manageable. The interesting thing about this is that, with certain big caveats, we are believers in the power of free markets. So it is unclear to us why we believed that, in a town with literally millions of commuters, we could just show up one day and find a route that nobody had yet discovered. [Whether this should be classified as being stubborn or delusional, we'll leave for you to decide.]
Anyway. What would inevitably happen while looking for secret routes! is that we would get completely, hopelessly lost. And getting unlost would just add another 45 vein-popping, nerve-shattering minutes to the commute.
What changed a lot for us was the time we got lost in Everett Park. Everett Park is somewhere either in or between Echo Park and Downtown. We realized that we were headed North and were driving up a Big Fucking Hill. We work more south and on Flat Land. Something was Seriously Wrong. Until we turned around and saw this:
And at this point, two things happened. One, it hit us that we actually lived and worked in Los Angeles, and this was a kinda exciting realization. Two, it occurred to us that everything would turn out okay.
We like this story because we think there's truth in it, corny though it may be. We are human and thus it is our wont to feel confused and sad and anxious at times. But sometimes, at the height of that confusion, sadness, and anxiety, the best course of action is to simply turn around and look at our surroundings. Sometimes, when we feel the most unsure, it turns out that we're actually just at the top of the mountain, overlooking our kingdom.
Of course, it also helped that Everett Park has a sign that reminded us, once again, that we are a government of laws and not of men:
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