I Can't Keep Living In This Alternate Reality

We turn everything into a meme these days.

I understand the whole you have to laugh or else you'll cry mentality. But, as social media helps take away the sting of reality, it also contributes to our failure to deal with it.

You’ve seen the memes.

For example—

Cute and everything, but this is real life we’re dealing with.

It’s presents and futures.

It’s baseline existences and livelihoods.

It’s a nation that’s no longer the land of opportunity (unless you’ve already set yourself up).

It’s a country an increasing number of people want or feel the need to flee if they hope to thrive today and have a fighting chance at tomorrow.

I’ve never seen clearer writing on the wall in my life.

Consider the present, nothing short of absurd situation in Los Angeles right now.

• Housing prices hit an average of $869,082 in March in the six counties that make up Southern California. In Los Angeles, the median is $1.2 million. To afford spend no more than 30% of your income on an $800,000 home, which is going to be a literal dump, you need to earn more than $220,000 annually. And this is after a 20% down payment ($160,000!) that results in a freaking $5,510 monthly mortgage obligation.

• Last week, I went to the farmer’s market. I bought two heads of red leaf lettuce, five medium size tomatoes and six apples. It cost $17.

• Prices at the pizza place in my neighborhood are up roughly 33% in six months. Two cheese-only slices and a freaking PBR cost $25.82. I didn’t leave a tip. This is hardly in line with inflation.

But it’s about more than what everything costs. While we can’t ignore it as a nation (even though we are), it would help more than a meme if we found a way to deal with daily microaggressions we face in our society. Microaggressions caused, at least in part, by the escalating and persistently high cost of living.

The seemingly small things that add up to a hostile environment.

Here’s a sampling from my writing over the last few months—

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 2008, it was common for one car to make a left turn across the opposite lane of incoming traffic once the light turned red.

A few years passed and it became two cars effectively going through the red light to make that left turn.

Then, it became three.

Now — in 2023 — we’re up to four cars pretty much every single time.

When you walk in LA these days — and plenty of people do — you routinely encounter drivers at crosswalks and coming out of residential and commercial driveways looking to turn or enter the street before you pass. Of course, it’s your right as a pedestrian to take the crosswalk on green and pass on the sidewalk before a car exits off of a curb cut. But that doesn’t matter.

By my rough estimate, half of drivers lately make eye contact with you — or not — and either just go without regard or use the slight forward motion of their car to get you to stop walking and let them pass first.

Since I wrote that story, there was a shooting in the parking lot of the grocery store at the busy intersection a block from where we live. A guy got shot in a dispute over driving the wrong way in one of the store’s parking lot lanes.

Just a few weeks ago, driving along La Brea in Hollywood, my girlfriend wife and I saw a homeless guy swinging one of those aforementioned bats around, not really at people and cars. You see it all of the time. And your street smarts tell you that 9.9 out of 10 times that guy is harmless.

Be alert. Keep walking or driving.

Well, one guy in a beat up old Mercedes didn’t keep driving. He swerved and circled the width of La Brea no fewer than three times, aiming straight for the homeless guy. I think he wanted to scare, not hurt or kill him. But we have absolutely reached a low point in society when you take random acts like this, treat them as personal affronts and viciously go after another human being — with or without the intent to harm or kill — clearly at or near the low point of their lives.

A few days can’t pass without somebody being needlessly aggressive on the streets.

Again seemingly small things. But they matter.

Like the other day, when I was trying to do a three-point turn out of a parking place on a street in my neighborhood so I could end up headed in the right direction. It’s a routine and perfectly legal move. They teach it in driving school.

A driver up the block saw what I was doing. Instead of pacing herself and giving me space for my less than 15-second maneuver, she sped up. On purpose. Until the front of her car was literally inches from the driver side door of mine. In the middle of the street. I had no choice but to awkwardly abort my three-point turn.

I could go on all day long. This place feels like a city of big problems alongside daily microaggressions. From what I gather, it’s not all different in other parts of the country.

All of this said, we took a beautiful hike in Griffith Park the other day. We love our apartment. And we have a consistently amazing life full of relaxation and a bounty of planned and spontaneous activity. Los Angeles absolutely is the worst best place to live in America.

However, add it all up, and I gotta get the hell out.

I’m seeing more and more readers respond to my writing with some variation of this actual comment—

Are we living in some kind of alternate universe? An Idiocracy perhaps?

My feeling exactly.

It’s as if all of this absurd stuff is happening around you, yet you feel like you’re the only one who thinks that it’s not only absurd, but matters in the grand scheme of things. Who in their right mind would want to live this way? In this environment.

We must be all certifiably insane.

It has hit hard since returning from Spain.

As I drive around and rediscover how inefficient car culture is as the primary way to get people from points A to B, I can no longer participate in this inanity.

Even if taxes were 50% and the cost of living was higher, I’d be out of here in January.

I love this view—

But I want this view—

In a place that’s not without its problems. But a place where it feels like the people still care.

Where society isn’t (not-so-slowly) deteriorating or regularly taking the equivalent of a 160-year step backwards.

Where drivers stop at crosswalks. Where they clean and even powerspray the streets and sidewalk every single morning.

Seemingly small things.

But small things that add up. In the right, if not a righteous direction.

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