LA works (sometimes)

There's an intersection in my neighborhood that makes me gasp every single day. Cars come careening off the Hollywood Freeway, or over the Cahuenga hill, or up from the Hollywood Bowl - all are blind approaches and there's only a stop sign to regulate it. We noticed last week that the powers that be have put up a new stoplight. Heartattack averted.

Why do I mention this incredibly boring little tidbit? I was thinking about my nutty neighborhood and thinking about all of the things that got fixed this year: Junkie Palace was cleaned out and turned into condos; new "no parking" signs have gone up so all the mullet-heads that pay $250 for a ticket to see Genesis at the Hollywood Bowl (yep, still irritated about that one) dont park in front of our garage anymore; they put in left hand turn lanes up and down Highland (the major road that runs from our house down to the Kodak Theater) so the traffic moves faster with less honking; and now the stoplight at Heartattack Corner. I got a minor warm fuzzy feeling that these things were getting accomplished. Of course, Iain points out that it took about 2 years for them to repair and rebuild another intersection in the neighborhood. But that's just sour grapes.

Its no mystery that in a town as car-based as this one, politicians have to pay serious attention to the road situation or risk intense public rebuke. I have been living in major cities for most of my adult life and have become used to the one thing that they all have in common is that they just dont WORK. You just have to accept that in exchange for living in a cultural capitol and/or where you can have saag paneer delivered at 10am or an Absolut Mandarin and cranberry at 4am, the things that irritate you are just never, ever going to get fixed. The crime is never going to get better. The traffic is never going to move faster. Your rent or mortgage is still going to make your family members spit their dinner out their mouth when you tell them how much it is. That's just the way it is. But these tiny changes in my neighborhood over the last year make me think that maybe I'm wrong. Or not. But worth thinking about.....