Spring has arrived in Los Angeles, bringing explosive blooms of multi-colored roses, the unfurling of fresh new leaves on hundred-year-old tropical plants, and an ever-growing pile of trash from those who’ve ventured here from across the country in hopes of a new start in the new year, only to be shot down by April and headed home in May.
The last week of any month is the perfect time to go foraging throughout the apartment complex corridors for cast-aside furniture, appliances, rugs, or any other objects the disenchanted have left behind in their short yet likely turbulent wakes.
Whatever the LA vanquished weren’t able to offload on Facebook Marketplace (to help cover the costs of gas for the long, defeating drive home to Iowa, Illinois, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, etc,) now lies scattered across the sidewalk under a flourishing Blue Jacaranda tree, bursting with bold, fragrant violet petals.
The Jacarandas will continue to thrive, even as the industry that made our city so wonderful picks up for greener tax incentives pastures.
The corporate ghouls have already begun to pick the last pieces of flesh off the bones of the middle-class laborers and immigrant workers who’ve held this city together and helped to landscape, literally and figuratively, their publicized lives of luxury and glamour and privilege.
As it turns out, the tens of thousands of union hours didn’t mean much once the show moved on. We made the concessions you asked for during the last round of strikes, but now we have no choice but to leave you for dead on the side of the road as we seek greater profit margins in Atlanta, New Orleans, and Europe.
Best of luck with everything.
The mayor smiles sheepishly as she boards the first class cabin of an international flight while half the city burns. According to PopCrave, Gwyneth Paltrow has recently shown signs of concern.
The average middle-class worker in LA will soon be resigned to collecting cans and scrap metal throughout the deserted streets of the valleys while everyone who remained in the hills takes in their priceless view of the Pacific Ocean with a contented sigh.
With a thousand mile stare, they’ll smile and never, by any means, let their gaze be drawn down to glimpse the grid system of busy, tired streets that stretches between their house on the hill and a vibrant, million-dollar Southern California sunset.
Soon, our most lucrative import will be the disillusioned; the starry-eyed fools who arrive in Hollywood, believing our once great city to still be great.
We must agree, as Angelenos, no matter what we know to be true, to sing the siren song of Los Angeles, sending the naive and hopeful fame-seekers smashing into the rocks off the coast of Malibu, if only so we can loot their discarded refrigerators and microwaves of copper wire after the bi-monthly exodus.
It’s a small betrayal, sure, but it will be worth it for one more spring of Jacarandas.
