L. Lee

Weekend

Weekends like the one I just had are the reason why I start to miss LA in the most devastating manner when I’m abroad.  I was in the mountains, I was at the beach, I visited museums, I saw live music, I ate terrific food, I saw some crazy people, and as always, I discovered new pockets of charm and grit in my sprawling metropolis.  

My friend, The Organizer (she is a professional organizer and aspiring candy maker!), is moving to Raleigh in 1 week after having spent the better part of her 20s in LA.  I went to her last girls night out on Saturday at Three Clubs, a tiny little dance place on Vine and Santa Monica Blvd. 

Irrelevant side note: She made it sound super mysterious in her text: “There’s no name, just a neon sign that says ‘cocktails.’”  When I found it, I remembered passing by this place a gazillion times when I lived in Hollywood and thinking it looked like a real seedy joint.  It turns out that the club’s claim to fame is its role in the movie Swingers, which I don’t remember at all except for Heather Graham’s Rollergirl outfit, and after paying the $5 cover, I saw inside that it wasn’t so seedy after all.  

Anyway, my friend The Organizer is leaving LA for good.  She and her boyfriend, both East Coast transplants, quit their full-time jobs and decided to replant their roots where housing prices are not insane and a middle class income isn’t wiped out by the cost of living.  I completely understand their decision. 

Yet I can’t imagine doing that myself.  It’s not like I plan or want to live the rest of my life here, but I always envision myself returning to LA.  Despite my extreme Francophile tendencies, Korean background, and genetically inherited wanderlust (my parents gave birth to me in the UK and took me on a grand tour of Europe when i was less than a year old!), I always consider myself an LA girl, or more broadly, a California girl.  (Whether or not I am the kind of California Girl the Beach Boys sang about is another subject.)

I asked The Organizer if she was getting preemptively sad or nostalgic, and she said no.  “I’ll be back in August for a wedding,” she said.  But I know already that it won’t be the same for her, though I don’t think she will mind in the least.  After all, this is the woman who has been planning her cross country move for more than one year and was over LA even before that. 

My former roommate, a girl whose friendship I value dearly, is on the same path out of LA.  She’s been loving life here since our university days, but I know she has been squirming and plotting to get back to the East Coast for a long time now. 

I suppose for these two, the LA phase of their lives is over, or pretty close to it.  For me, I don’t think LA will ever be a phase.  I may not always live here for long periods of time, but I feel that it will remain an active place in my mind, not one associated with the past.

When Joan Didion was here for LAT Festival of Books a few years ago, someone asked her if she still considered herself a Californian after years (decades?) of living in NYC.  She replied, without one second of hesitation, “I always consider myself a California girl.  I still renew my California driver’s license.”  And that, plus her writing, is why I am in love with her.