los angeles

apart from beverly hills and santa monica, a place with a lot of traffic and pretty bad.

crime seems to seep out of every corner of this place. you are constantly on guard, always looking over your shoulder. it's incredible how completely a city can be ruined.

los angeles is slowly becoming a city where you can get around without anyone actually driving.

waymo's self-driving taxis keep expanding across la, and at this rate, being able to take one almost anywhere in the city within a couple of years doesn't seem that far-fetched.

and honestly, la also has some of the best year-round weather in the us.

one of the funniest things about los angeles is that even its iconic palm trees are part of a carefully manufactured image.

most of those tall palms you see in hollywood movies aren't native to the area. they were deliberately planted to make la look like a tropical paradise and attract people to the city.

in 1931 alone, los angeles planted over 25,000 palm trees, partly ahead of the 1932 olympics.

and here's the interesting part: the city is now moving away from planting them because they're expensive to maintain and provide very little shade. many are being replaced with more practical trees.

beverly hills, meanwhile, is still preserving and replacing palms along some of its famous streets.

kind of crazy that one of the most recognizable images of california was essentially a marketing strategy that worked so well we forgot it was one.