[The Life of Shaun #592] Relationship status: it's complicated

I have a complicated relationship with El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula.  Growing up in Las Vegas, it was the only big city I really knew.  We went there for most of our family holidays (Disneyland, Magic Mountain) and almost every school band/choir event that was bigger in scope than Clark County.  For me, it was the city.

My Uncle Daryl was a truck driver for a while, and when I was around 12 or 13, he left me a Thomas Guide to Los Angeles, which covered all of Los Angeles and Orange counties, and some of Riverside, San Bernadino and Ventura counties, which altogether make up the astounding 5,910 square kilometres of urban agglomeration that is greater LA.  It was about 4cm thick and intensely detailed.  It had all the normal map things - roads, highways, waterways, etc. - but it also delineated each of LA's many suburbs.  For some reason, I was captivated by it.  I would study it in detail, fascinated by the zigzagging boundaries that made one side of a street LA, the other a different city, or unincorporated Los Angeles County.  This was all unknown to me.  Las Vegas technically had two suburbs (North Las Vegas and Henderson), but it was all just 'Vegas'.  LA, however, seemed almost like a whole different world unto itself, the vastness of the city and its suburbs suggested opportunity and a bigger world than I knew.  It kicked off a lifelong love affair with all things urban, and put LA in an almost mythical place in my mind.

A blurry picture of the map key showing the county seats in white (LA for Los Angeles County, Santa Ana for Orange), unincorporated areas in yellow, and the kaleidoscope of "seventy-two suburbs in search of a city" stretching inland from the Pacific.

A detail page, with a corner of LA proper in the top left, various suburbs on the sides, and unincorporated areas in between.

I received the atlas right around the time I was figuring out I was gay and realising there was a bigger world beyond Sunrise Mountain.  Though I didn't know why, I sensed that LA offered opportunities and freedoms that were impossible in Vegas, and I was determined that I would live there.  As I progressed through high school and had exposure to other cities, moving to LA morphed into moving to a bigger city in general.  New York came onto my radar with Parting Glances and Longtime Companion, and Seattle became my target city after an orchestra visit there in my Junior year.  I was actually en route to moving to Seattle in 1994 when, as the short version of the story goes, I stopped for a weekend in San Francisco and never left.

A year or so after moving to San Francisco, my friend Darlene and I drove down to LA for a long weekend and I was really excited to go again - until we were there.  I hadn't realised the different lifestyle in San Francisco - the compactness, the walkability, the vibrancy - until I was out of it and back in a car-centric city, driving miles on wide roads and freeways from strip mall to strip mall to do anything.  But it was confusing - not liking a city I thought I loved.

I don't know why it was so unpleasant - I had grown up with the exact same lifestyle in Las Vegas, and I had a car in San Francisco - not having a car was still unthinkable to me then - but having to get into the car and drive and park for everything was just...ugh.  I preferred a more pedestrian-friendly lifestyle, and this has only grown over the past 25 years of living in New York and London.  Driving has become more painful the longer I’ve lived without it, and, now that I see what cities and life are like when they aren't centred around motor vehicles, I can see how cars have ruined most American cities. 

But there's still something about LA that excites and intrigues me.  It just feels big and limitless in a way that no other city does.  Somehow you can sense its immensity while driving its iconic freeways.  I always have a giddy sense of expectation as I approach LA - and then it is routinely crushed by the transport.

This last time was no exception, only magnified: I stayed in LA for a week without a car, testing my own limits of patience with public transport.  There are journeys that you can do easily on the metro or bus, but you could not live in LA in any meaningful way without a car or a hefty Uber budget.  Fortunately, I had my own private chauffeur in Argie, so our couple's activities were smooth and quick.  But some of my solo jaunts on transit, going distances that would've been a doddle in a car, were hours-long, maddening affairs.  You do not want to know the heartache of seeing your connecting bus just pulling away from the shadeless, barren bus stop, where you know you'll be spending at least the next 15 minutes of your life waiting for the next one, after your slow crawl across Pico Boulevard in afternoon traffic.  The one good thing I can say about LA transit is that it's cheap: $1.75 for any trip, even if you have to combine trains and busses; at least those who are using the system (ie, the poor and Europeans) are not being gouged to do so.

All that being said, I did have a great visit to the Southland.  Argie has lived in LA for ten years now, and she knows both the city and me very well, so she knew where to take me; I saw more depth to LA than I had in the past, when my field of vision didn't extend much past Santa Monica and West Hollywood.  LA, for all its struggles, is an eclectic world city, and you can see that when you get off the freeway and into its neighbourhoods.  I could feel that vibe that's only generated when a mix of ambitious people from around the world come together in the same place - only more chilled and spread out than in New York or London.

So, LA, the city I love to hate, and hate to love; I think it will always be a little bit under my skin.  But next time?  I'm renting a car.

Cheerio,

Shaun

Watts is burning.

Who are you, and what have you done with the real 405?

$1.75 heartbreak

Argie's dog, Pip, giving me the good love.

Sherman Oaks is the new Williamsburg.

Take me to the Valley - the 405 over the Santa Monica Mountains.

Sunset over Century City

Hipster is as hipster does in Highland Park.

The coolest building in LA.

Argie and me at Paradise Cove, Malibu.

The last time I was in downtown LA (hiply-refashioned as DTLA, I was told) was 2003, when it was pretty much Skid Row and the new, shiny Disney Hall, which kicked off the current renaissance Bilbao-style.  It's got a lot more going on nowadays.

Mark Taper Forum in DTLA.

Am I art, sweetie?

Capturing the Broad, LA's newest showpiece museum:  "It doesn't really feel like a traditional museum.  There's no sense of authority.  When you step off the street, no one tells you where to go.  There's no information desk, there's no admissions desk.  You don't pay, it's free.  It feels extremely welcoming."

Shaun H. Coley ~ Holloway ~ Islington ~ London N7 ~ UK ~ shaunism.blogspot.co.uk

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[The Life of Shaun #591] Well, that was better

When it's come up, people have often been surprised that I'd never been to Mexico, having grown up relatively close to the border.  I explain to them that in 1980s/1990s Las Vegas, going to Mexico wasn't really considered aspirational, and I tell them an anecdote that demonstrates my ignorance - and possibly the general level of ignorance amongst my peers at the time - when I was a teenager:

In my Freshman year of high school, I was put into Spanish, like most students.  But I wanted to take German, so I went to my guidance counsellor and asked to switch; I explained to her 'I want to learn a European language'.  I don't recall her rolling her eyes, but perhaps she did.  It didn't occur to me that Spanish was a European language because it was solely associated with Mexico in my mind.  When I was in the Spanish class, before I was transferred, halfway through the textbook I remember seeing a map of Spain and thinking, slightly surprised, 'Oh yeah, I guess they do speak Spanish over there too.'

Fortunately adult Shaun is more aware of and open to the world than teenage Shaun was, so, undeterred by our South American adventure, Sushil and I went to Mexico for a birthday/pre-nursing-start holiday.  And, despite an expensive comedy of errors at the start, delayed flights and missed connections, it was a much more successful visit to Latin America.

We started off in Mexico City.  Unfortunately, I had about a day and a half less there than planned, so I really only felt like we skimmed the surface, but I liked what I saw.  Mexico City has a lot more going on and a lot more character than I had supposed.  We stayed in Zona Rosa but checked out several other inner neighbourhoods, and each was distinct and interesting - a lot more than the developing world urban sprawl I had expected from my upbringing in American media.  The city certainly does sprawl, but it felt like more of a collection of neighbourhoods than neverending, indistinct urbania.  I particularly liked Roma Norte, just to our South, which buzzed with streetlife, tacos and mezcal; it felt distinctly Mexican, but familiar in a European, human-scale way at the same time.

Having our first drinks - and overeating - together after the much-delayed start to the holiday.  The food throughout Mexico was fantastic, especially at the cheap local places.  We tried some high-end stuff as well, but it didn't compare with the local haunts.

CDMX - la ciudad that loves you back.

On the canals of Xochimilco, which remain from what was an extensive pre-colonial lake and canal system that connected most of the settlements of the Valley of Mexico.

Zócalo, Mexico City's main square (and former ceremonial centre in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan), with the Metropolitan Cathedral behind.

From above, you can see how the city stretches across the valley (there are mountains in the distance - they are just a bit...diluted).

But at ground level, much of it has a much more human scale.

Sushil enjoying a refreshment with the Torre Latinoamericana in the distance.

Leaving the city you can see some of the poorer neighbourhoods that extend up, over and everywhere in-between the surrounding hills.  I expect that the lived experience of the city is much more difficult here than our cosseted days in the central boroughs.  However, from the bus, I saw a teleférico under construction, which, if La Paz is any indication, will make a huge improvement in the lives of locals.

From Mexico City we went to San Miguel de Allende to see smaller-scale Mexico.  The city has a large, mostly American, expat community, so it might not be the most authentic experience of a Mexican town, but it's certainly an enjoyable one.  The expatriate migration began when foreign artists 'discovered' the town and set up art and cultural institutes, and the town has a notable artsy and hippie bent with a relaxed foodie culture.  While it's too small (and too American retiree) for me, I can see its appeal, and I imagine it must be a bit like Santa Fe was 20 or 30 years ago.

The colourful streets of SMA.

Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, the city's most famous landmark.

Last up was a long weekend by the sea, in Puerto Vallarta, the 'San Francisco of Mexico'.  I knew about the town as a gay travel hotspot, but I didn't realise just how very gay it was.  It felt like a gay cruise on a beach - almost everyone on the streets was gay, and all the businesses catered to the gay population.  I was shocked to learn there were 53 gay bars in the Zona Romantica - far more than London - and that, while the sidewalks were mostly thronged with tourists, there is a sizeable permanent gay community as well.  We were fortunate enough to have Argie connect us with a friend who lives there, so we got to see it a bit more from a local's perspective, which was great - it'd be easy to lose sight of the city behind the drag queens, massage boys and margaritas if someone weren't taking you away from the bars and showing you where to look.

Slightly different approaches to the beach.

Beachtown - beauty or banality?

[The Life of Shaun #590] Nurse Shaun

That's it - as of today, I am officially a Registered Nurse at the Nursing and Midwifery Council.  I finished my placement hours last week, had my hours and documentation validated, received my 'invitation' to register today, and was quickly added to the register once I paid my registration fee (£120/year, if you can believe it, to which will be soon added my £197 Royal College of Nursing fee [union fee - I'm officially blue collar now]).

I will be working at a specialist cancer hospital on a small NHS ward, with only eight beds, which specialises in palliative care and complex needs.  I'm really happy with the placement as this is the area I am most interested in, and I've enjoyed my shifts on small wards - it's hard to feel like you're getting lost in the fray in such a diminutive setting.

I am taking a little break before I start, though.  Sushil and I leave on Friday for ten days in Mexico, then I will spend a week in LA, and a week off here before my first nursing shift on 05 Dec.  I'm very, very glad to be done with my HCA placement shifts and looking forward to gaining some independence as my skills get signed off.  But I'm also feeling a bit of trepidation; this has been a big life change and I'm about to find out for real if I like it.  I still don't regret my decision to retrain, but after two years in the field, I have some reservations - I just have to get in it to see whether the good outweighs those or not.

But that's for future Shaun to worry about.  I have a whole lot of tacos, tequila and friendtime between now and then.

Cheers,

Shaun

Shaun H. Coley ~ Holloway ~ Islington ~ London N7 ~ UK ~ shaunism.blogspot.co.uk

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[The Life of Shaun #589] Uno y listo

After I finished classes and my student placements, Sushil and I took a twice-delayed trip to Chile, Peru and Bolivia.  The original itinerary included Rapa Nui (Easter Island), but it was still closed to protect its isolated population from covid, so we added Machu Picchu instead.

This was not one of my favourite trips.  There was nothing bad about it, per se, but - and I feel almost ashamed for feeling this way - there was very little that was great about it for me.  I don't know how much was due to the destinations, and how much was due to an ongoing undercurrent of malaise, but I felt underwhelmed for most of the time we were there.  The language barrier was an issue, of course, and getting altitude sickness in Cusco certainly didn't help, but whatever it was, I was just not enthused to be there.

When you travel, some places will speak to you more than others, so it's fine.  I am always happy to see somewhere new, and there were some highlights, namely Valparaíso, the teleférico (cable cars) in La Paz and phenomenal ceviche.  I would still like to go to Rapa Nui, so I will hopefully be back in that part of the world again, but I expect I will be booking an airport hotel for that one.

No hasta luego,

Shaun

 

Santiago is not a quick charmer.  The impressive Andean setting is often obscured behind phalanxes of later-20th-century architecture, and the overall impression of the city is a place of work and economic opportunity rather than joy and beauty.  But with improved weather and choice of locations, the city began to reveal its gritty charm.  It won't be shouldering its way into the alpha cities anytime soon, but there is much to appeal to the modern urban hipster in its gentrifying central barrios.

 

Lima was a flight transfer on our original itinerary, but very glad we reshuffled to have a couple of days there.  The city has a streak of the energy and chaos of India, and a palpable civic pride.  Its mix of indigenous, European and Asian peoples influences the flavours of its streets and its proud food culture; nikkei hasn't taken the world by storm for nothin'.

 

Machu Picchu and Cusco.  When it comes to old stones, England, as with so much else, has a greatly inflated sense of its accomplishments and place in the world.

 
La Paz is one of the coolest cities that I’ve been to, geographically speaking.  It’s built in an Andean valley 3,625m above sea level. The city sprawls up the surrounding hills, and El Alto, its poorer twin, overlooks it from a plateau 500m above. To accommodate this geography, and give better access to the city for the poor, the public transit system includes the world’s most extensive cable car network. The city is chaotic and buzzy and fascinating.

 

Street art, refurbished vintage architecture, hills, seaside, galleries, bars and restaurants aplenty - Valparaíso has everything that makes a hipster(-adjacent) heart flutter with joy.  If we had started here rather than finished, it might've set a completely different tone for the trip.

[The Life of Shaun #588] Has the world changed, or have I changed?

The Queen is dead.  And with her goes the last vestige of Cool Britannia.  You don't have to go back the 70 years of Elizabeth II's reign to see a changed country; in my 17 years here, Britain has gone from open and confident to insular and neurotic.  London has changed, too, from an important global, yet charmingly low-rise, city to one heaving with capital and gauche petro-fuelled hyper-development.  

It's all feeling a bit too much.  I was a fan of the Queen, but not a flag-waving Royalist by any means.  Still, with her death I am feeling that bit more adrift and disconnected from these old islands that I used to love so much.  And it's hard getting through each day when you feel trapped somewhere you don't want to be.

Queen Elizabeth's vision of the monarchy was that it represented "the notion that while generations of people and politicians come and go, while governments rise and fall, while great social and economic change sweeps the country—it is still the same nation".  Perhaps on the surface, but not in its soul.  There is nothing that Charles III, Truss or any government in at least a generation will be able to do to change that.  I fear my Britain is gone forever.

Shaun

Shaun H. Coley ~ Holloway ~ Islington ~ London N7 ~ UK ~ shaunism.blogspot.co.uk

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[The Life of Shaun #587] NNQN

My course comes to an end next week; I have three shifts left, and then that's it.  I still have to do 500 hours of additional healthcare-related work experience over the Summer (I'll be picking up HCA shifts), but the education and training are coming to a close.  

This last placement has been a bear, but I've enjoyed it.  I'm in oncology, and it's tough.  By the nature of the area, the patients can be very 'heavy' in the (frowned-upon, but universally-used) vernacular: complex problems, requiring frequent and time-consuming nursing interventions, at high risk of deterioration, and often bedbound.  When the ward is understaffed - and it almost always is - you feel it.  Each week I get it a little bit more, though, and I like working with cancer patients, so I have accepted a position to work in oncology once I qualify.  It's nice to know where I will be.

I'm ready to be done.  I can't say I feel adequately prepared to take on patients independently, but I am ready not to be a student nurse anymore.  All nurses say you'll never feel confident until you've been doing it yourself for some time, and every ward has a training and mentorship programme for their newly-qualified nurses, so I won't be freely unleashed on an unsuspecting NHS population just yet.  I am looking forward to more independence and developing my place in a team - and starting to get paid won't be so bad either.

With the end of the course will also come a covid-delayed holiday; Sushil and I will be going to Chile, Peru and Bolivia.  New countries for both of us, and we know very little about any of them, so it feels like we're going very far away.  I am looking forward to the mental distance from the everyday that foreignness and a long flight bring, and putting my Duolingo Spanish into use.

Also on the homefront, Sushil finally got covid.  Very mild, and he feels 100% now, even though he's still testing positive.  I've somehow fended it off this time (at least enough not to test positive myself).  Hopefully this means our antibodies will be primed and at the ready to keep us healthy for the holidays.

Yo como manzanas,

Shaun

Sushil went back to India in April to see his family for the first time in three years.  His grandma and her cat were particularly excited to see him.

I joined Natasha and Chris for a few days in Weymouth, Dorset, where Chris's parents have retired.

Chester has become a regular at our favourite local, The Horatia.

Shaun H. Coley ~ Holloway ~ Islington ~ London N7 ~ UK ~ shaunism.blogspot.co.uk

[The Life of Shaun #586] Freedom is their religion 🇺🇦

Sitting here at my desk, watching alerts on my phone about Russian troops getting ever closer to Kyiv, I am disheartened.  I keep thinking back to my trip there five years ago, and how I felt by the time I left.  You could tell that Ukraine was proud to have a chance to showcase itself to the world, to show that it's part of Europe, and that it wants to be part of the West.  I've watched the sign-off to Eurovision several times over the past two days, and it makes me ache for what the Ukrainian people are going through.

I also feel angry.  Angry that neither of my countries, nor the EU, are doing anything meaningful to help Ukraine.  The self-styled global protectors of democracy and freedom are standing aside, watching a modern-day Sudetenland, impotent.  Our neighbour in Europe, which we pledged to protect, is being invaded and Balkanised, having its democratically-elected government toppled, and we move a football match and freeze a portion of the fortunes of a few dozen kleptocrats.  Pathetic.

Not that America and Britain have much of a leg to stand on after our own false-flag war in Iraq.  But that's certainly no excuse for inaction; if anything, it's a chance for redemption.  But, like a century ago, the West is tired of war and Putin's accomplished a de facto Munich Agreement.  Poland must be hoping that history won't rhyme too closely this century.  And I expect China and Tawain are watching our inaction with equal levels of glee and horror.  Leaders of the free world indeed.

The Maidan, Kyiv, 2017.

Shaun H. Coley ~ Holloway ~ Islington ~ London N7 ~ UK ~ shaunism.blogspot.co.uk

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Two Ports, One Trip

With university done for the year, and Sushil's company closed for the holidays, we decided to visit Porto, Portugal's second city.  What this northern port city lacks in eponymous creativity, it makes up for in charm.  The city is beautiful but scruffy, and, other than the Luís I Bridge, which you can't help but come across, there are no real must-sees, so you can take your time.  We spent most of our visit just picking a part of the map and wandering about.

Oddly, given its geography, Porto reminded both Sushil and me of Venice.  There's a similarity in the faded glory aesthetic and the way the buildings hug the roads.  Porto has been on my radar for some time, and it's popping up in media more and more.  But, for now, it hasn't been hyperdeveloped or had its charm glossed away for the benefit of the perfect Instagram shot.  There are still boarded up buildings metres from the River Douro, and prices away from the riverfront quickly descend from tourist to local levels.

I've read that Lisbon has adopted the London model since I was there in 2007, becoming an investment haven, squeezing out locals in favour of newbuild flats for overseas investors.  Fortunately, from January 2022, Porto has been excluded from Portugal's golden visa scheme, so that might relieve some of the pressure.  Still, there was enough scaffolding around town to imply that change was coming.

The streetscape outside our lovely hotel.

The riverfront Ribeira neighbourhood.

Sushil at the Igreja de Santo Ildefonso.

Night in Ribeira.

The Ribeira and Luís I Bridge from Miradouro da Serra do Pilar.

Miradouro da Serra do Pilar

    What €1.75 will buy you in Porto.

Based on the description, we took a daytrip to Braga, expecting a quaint town in the countryside.  Instead we found a drab, postwar bedroom suburb with a small preserved centre.  The only real notable sight was the Bom Jesus do Monte, some way out of the centre.  Braga will not make the revisit list.

From Porto we flew to Bremen, Germany.  Pops is living there with Lara and her family currently, and Lisa and Danai flew over so we could have a family Christmas.  Bremen was part of the Hanseatic League and has solid, wealthy bones as a result.  Its port has been eclipsed by nearby Hamburg's, and most visitors to Northern Germany have Berlin firmly in their sights, so Bremen mostly flies beneath the radar, and seems content with that.  It is a nice, but unexciting city.  

However, I can see what keeps my sister's family there (besides Alberto's job), as my niece and nephew seem to be thriving.  Bremen is big enough to have all the things teenagers are interested in, like dance studios, bars, clubs, shopping, along with an excellent public transportation system.  The kids are able to have the independence and freedom to experiment and be their best teenage selves, without Lara and Alberto having to worry unduly about their safety or them falling in with the worst elements.

The visit was mostly lovely, but Pops was unwell (not covid, per several antigen tests) the whole time we were there.  He was diagnosed with dementia in Summer 2020, so there was a natural cognitive decline, but it was exacerbated by whatever virus he had going on.  Lara said he was much more forgetful and out of it than normal, and Pops missed a couple of the evenings as he was wiped out.  He returned to health a couple of days after we left, so it was just rubbish timing.  I'll be looking to go back in Spring for a redo, presuming Germany starts letting us in again.

Even staid Bremen has its rebellious side!

The Coley+ family.

(Danai, Lisa, Sushil, me, Emilio, Alberto, Lara, Chiara; Pops up front with the newest addition, Toby.)