Downtown LA

Morning sun, up since 2AM

We fly to Los Angeles en route to Palm Springs and CW's wedding to Lisa.  We stay at The Standard in Downtown Los Angeles where we meet Catherine and Catherine's daughter Anneke for a game of ping-pong followed by dinner.

It is hard not to be struck by Los Angeles, which is clearly on the move. Downtown, which was deserted in the 1980s and 90s, is back with new skyscrapers on the build, the Broad Museum (Eli Broad, the wealthy founder) opening this month, the hipsters found across the valley sprawl. Hollywood and Trojan football. 10 lanes of traffic.

Los Angeles was always the superior city to San Francisco in size, culture and  arts, then overtaken during the early halcyon days of Silicon Valley until recently, as San Francisco rents go through the roof and anybody outside of tech (and only a few inside tech) can afford to live there.  It's become an outpost for Google and Facebook and Twitter and AirBNB employees.

Sonnet's Russian Hill studio was $800 or $900 a month while today likely 5 or 6x that (It was a lovely flat with bay views from nearby cross street of Union and Jones; there was always parking but sometimes it took some circling).