LA As Wonderland
You know, when I was a kid, I got to see so many different places living in LA, but I had no conception of where exactly I was. Since I was just a passenger looking at one freeway or another anyhow, I never much cared where on the map we were. Yet I would go see the Redondo Beach pier, church carnivals, parks, the zoo, and be amazed by the variety of setting in the LA area.
When I started driving, I really had no idea which freeways went where or even what numbers matched to each name. But I sure picked it up quickly. Now I can tell you the best way to get from Woodland Hills to Pasadena and so on, but more importantly, I have a mental model of LA. That’s a very valuable thing, and it’s been developed for a long time.
Since I started driving, I revisited a lot of those places I went with my parents and quickened all those vague memories I had. I get a kick out of that. I’ve gone to places I’ve never been before but I had heard were interesting. And I’ve actually seen a lot of those places I’d only known from a Thomas Guide.
And yet, still, LA is amazingly varied and has so many things to discover, know about and visit. I’ve read in some research papers that the modern urban experience is that of a permanent tourist. I like that. It makes sense. And it means in some respects you’re never going to be entirely familiar with the sprawling metropolis as you would living in a small town. I like that too.
So if I don’t, maybe can’t know all of LA, how hard is it to find one little spot in LA that suits them? Not so easy, and I’ve lived here just about all my life. How can you get a sense of place about one little part of LA?
Well, let me introduce the Los Angeles real estate website that I’ve been working on for the past nine months. It was born of the difficulty I had in trying to find a house in Los Angeles that was within reasonable commuting distance of my job in Santa Monica yet was affordable and had good neighborhood qualities – relatively safe, good schools.
Even though it’s been so long in development, we’re really just getting started. But we do have the one simple thing I wanted when I was house-hunting, the ability to simply copy and paste an address into a site, click a button, and have it tell me what the neighborhood is generally like (crime and school performance) and how much houses go for in that neighborhood. I invite you to try it and let me know what you think.