It is hot in Los Angeles this week. Everyone always thinks it’s hot — ideas of palm tree paradises flocked with bikini clad women and men in sunglasses, relishing the look of themselves in their convertibles have somehow managed to infiltrate the rest of the country like a fairy tale at bed time. As a native Angeleno I’ve never particularly identified with the love of palm trees or convertibles. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fancy the ocean, but that is just a simple water affinity. I’d be just as happy near any lake or coastline in existence. Hell, just get me in a pool and I’m all smiles. The Pacific Ocean just happens to be the water body of my home. That being said, I haven’t been to the beach in years. Perhaps it is because I’m self conscious, perhaps the reported toxic water conditions play into it, but I have the feeling that I am more a product of so called normality than anything, even in this city of supposed dreams. I work. I clean. I buy groceries. I go to the gym, but not as often as I should. I sit in traffic. I sit on the couch watching prime time television, glad to be home from a long day of drudgery – often times worrying about the days to come. It’s frankly odd to live in a city with so many preconceptions, even odder to have grown up in one. It so often seems that the populous at large forgets that people are at their core just people, so many of us just trying to make our way from day to day in this life without glamour or dramatic turns. Sometimes I’ll pass the palm trees on the side of a freeway or road and think to myself that I don’t really care for them. They aren’t a symbol of any sort of lifestyle to me, they are simply a tree, and not a particularly nice one. I suppose they are symbolic of Los Angeles. They are not native of this region and have to be planted purposefully with much cost and circumstance, but I think Los Angeles is so much more than what could be bound to that analogy. Feature Image Credit: Meet Me In...